The Impossible

Disaster films are, generally, more about special effects than they are about story, but The Impossible manages to side step that pitfall, and create a story driven tear jerker, with amazing effects to boot. Naomi Watts (in what is probably the best performance of her career) and Ewan McGregor are parents who bring their three sons one a trip to Thailand for the Christmas holidays. While there, One of the largest tsunami's on record hits the coast, right where they're staying. The rest of the film is the aftermath of this event, but I don't really want to go into it, because I don't want to spoil anything.

The film was made by a Spanish production company, which explains why it's a good film. Hollywood would have jacked the budget up, cut anything remotely resembling story or good dialog out of the script, and tried to sell it as a summer blockbuster. This film was perfectly executed and needed to be released just the way it was. The acting and directing are amazing, and the cinematography, while often times the result of having to work around the effects, is still gorgeous.

This is one of the best films of the year. It will stick with you for a long time, afterwards, and I LOVE films like that. I highly recommend it, and if you get the chance, see it in a theater. It really is something amazing.

J. Edgar

Clint Eastwood has always been a hit and miss director for me. I think he's a great director, I just think some of his work is good, and some of it is... Not appealing to me. Mystic River, for instance, was difficult for me to get through, while I really enjoyed Gran Torino. Changeling was also not on my favorites list of that year, but I had held out hopes for J. Edgar, because I thought that, while also a period drama, the story was much more multi-faceted and expansive.

The story is fairly simple - J. Edgar Hoover's life from, roughly, the time that the FBI begins, until the time of his death, hitting on some of the bigger and more scandalous aspects of his career.

Now this is always where it gets hard. This is the part where I have to try and figure out how to justify the fact that I like certain elements of the film, while ultimately finding it slightly more interesting than watching paint dry. I liked the acting. The production design was exquisite. The film, though, was about as interesting as reading the wikipedia entry for Hoover. I think the main problem is that it tried to cover so much stuff, that it was always just touching on things, the way that a magazine article would. Don't get me wrong, I get that the point of the movie was to show how diluted this man was, how "in his own world" he was, but it felt like a long, hard trudge through a lot of mud to get to that point, leaving you wondering, by the time it's over, if it's worth it.