Justin Cox
Year in Movies: November
It’s November and that means we’re almost to the end of the Year in Movies run. But lets not get all sentimental just yet. On with the movies. Oh, and this might be one of the best Year in Movies posts yet. I’m just sayin’.
Sunshine Cleaning
This is about two sisters who aren’t really do much with their lives and decide to start a crime scene cleanup business. It’s a quarky movie with some laughs but takes a brief, but very unexpected turn. Wonder what I’m talking about? Just follow the storyline of the youngest sister. There isn’t a lot of character development, or depth for that matter, but it’s entertaining.
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Objectified
This is a documentary on industrial design by the same group that created Helvetica. It’s a fascinating look at what makes up good design and why and a conversation with those who are doing it, including Jonathan Ive who is the lead designer at Apple. If you’re a design nerd, you’ll enjoy this.
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Space Camp
This is one of the best bad movies to come out of the 80’s. It stars a bunch of people, like Kate Capshaw, Kelly Preston, Lea Thompson and a very young Joaquin Phoenix. The premiss is that a group of kids attending space camp end up being launched into space, for real. Why? Well, basically Phoenix’s character, Max, falls in love with a robot, Jinx, who talks to the NASA computers and figures a way to get him on a real launch. I kid you not. But it’s great. Check it out! It has some pretty great 80’s music as well, including a song that landed on my celebrity playlist last year.
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The Blind Side
Going in I thought this was going to be a sappy, tearjerker style movie; I was wrong. It was funny, poignant and an amazing story. If you haven’t seen this yet, go do so. It’s worth the cost to see it in the theater.
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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Kind of hard to not like a Charlie Kaufman story and this is no exception. What happens when people in a relationship decide to forget each other? A wicked trip to Jim Carrey’s mind is what. Did I mention Charlie Kaufman wrote it? What more do you need to know?
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Star Trek
I was never a Star Trek fan growing up, though I did enjoy watching episodes of The Next Generation. But that doesn’t really count I guess. Either way, I didn’t really know the difference between a Romulan and a Vulcan before putting in JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot. This was probably a good thing as all of the characters are re-introduced in a very cool story involving time travel and evil aliens. I really liked this movie and it’s well worth checking out.
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Elf
I’m no Will Ferrell fan, but this was actually a funny movie. It’s silly and quirky and has Zooey Deschanel and, get this, was directed by Jon Favreau — yeah, Swingers‘ Jon Favreau. Crazy, right?
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Angels & Demons
While The Da Vinci Code was a horrible adaptation of the book, this was a much better movie. Imagine that, considering this was the better of the two books as well.
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Dogma
Kevin Smith and the story of two renegade angels trying to get back into heaven. Need I say more?
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12/1/09
Wayne
I’ve never seen a Charlie Kaufman movie, but I remember really liking the Dana Carvey show, which he apparently wrote for, so he’s probably decent. Space Camp is awesome, though.
to Wayne