The comparisons to Bad Santa are quite fair. Any attempt to be like other teacher movies and make memorable students roles to go with the lead teacher takes a backseat to focusing on an evil Cameron Diaz and her rocking bod. Diaz runs with the chance to play a bitch of a character instead of the usual bubbly-and-ditzy routine that has made her a star.
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The fictional story of Larry Crowne is not unlike millions of other and more real American stories. People are downsized, budget-cut, and let go at alarming rates in our present day. People are taking extra and odd jobs just to make ends meet and the housing foreclosure crisis is unprecedented in our country's history. The story and lesson here is how to bounce back and roll with the punches. How do we best downsize our life when we ourselves are downsized?
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Unlike those last four Pixar movies, Cars 2 is not trying to be taken seriously and shouldn't be put on that pedestal.
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While I'm not an experienced renaissance man of film like DeNiro or anywhere near the critic Ebert is, but, forgive me, I didn't see a single shred of a point behind The Tree of Life. Don't get me wrong, I'm an open-minded guy and savvy enough to see the artistic point of cinema. Knowing the metaphor the title alludes to, I can tip my hat to a creative filmmaker tackling something that deep and ambitious, but that's it. I can pay attention to just about any slow or extreme movie you put in front of me, but I couldn't stop looking at my watch to wonder when the brain-draining torture was going to end.
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Well, as a teacher who just happens to write a movie review blog where the hook is discussing the life lessons anyone of any age can learn from any given movie, I felt obliged to make my own list, especially in honor of Bad Teacher coming out this Friday.
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Here's my official blog list of the top 10 movie father-figures. Again, true to this blog's hook of life lessons, each example is listed with an important lesson they instilled in their respective film.
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In honor of Father's Day and in hopes of spurring some debate and conversation, I present to you my blog's official list of the best movie fathers. In keeping with this blog's theme of life lessons, the top dads are also presented with a key fatherly lesson conveyed in their film.
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Unlike the trend to make comic book movies plausible and realistic, Green Lantern makes no qualms about being out of this world, literally. You'll be getting starry galaxies and faraway planets, more colorful costumes than a Spider-Man flick, and the most alien species since a Star Wars prequel. You know what. Let it be. It's true to its source material, but, again, you're going to have to suspend your disbelief... not just a little bit... a lot of it...
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From top to bottom, Midnight in Paris is very well-acted and very well-written movie for the twists it sets out to tell. Midnight in Paris comes along to cutely take you off our feet maybe more so than those big spectacles will.
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It's a slam dunk to call Super 8 this summer's most original movie, even with all of the nostalgic and 1970's period touches, among all the slate of reboots and sequels.
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X-Men: First Class crafts this engaging story, spy-film look, and retro style with enough action and tricks to impress those still looking for a comic book movie.
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To say Kung Fu Panda 2 isn't as good as the original is true, but no entirely fair because of the original's brilliance. It's still a step above a lot of other really bad sequels and, if you stay into the end credits, promises a very interesting third chapter that may redeem the series.
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