The Informant 022310

Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a young executive with a company called ADM that deals in agricultural products, particularly corn by-products. He becomes aware of corporate crime and goes to the FBI about it. They ask him to be a spy for them and help take down the company; a job he’s really not qualified for.

This movie exhibits one thing that we are all very aware of: Matt Damon is a really good actor. He’s gone through the roles of a hard raised genius, a borderline psychotic angel of death, a reluctant super agent who doesn’t want to be, a young, excited thief desperate to prove himself to the big dogs, and now a character that can only be described as a dork. The way he dresses, the way he walks, the way he talks are all so not Jason Bourne or even Matt Damon that it’s easy to forget who it is. Mark’s ineptitude at being a spy is really great to watch, and it’s great that this movie never goes anti-corporate America on you. Right now, that’s refreshing.

The biggest setback for the movie is it’s based on a true story. The problem with true stories is they rarely just end and once we get to the end of this one it blends into another story. This would be fine, but the movie also switches gears on you. It goes from being and enjoyable comedy (not hilarious but enjoyable) to being some kind of psychological drama. You essentially end up watching two different, but good, movies. However, you don’t want to do that and the flip is kind of jarring.

Spot on acting throughout from all involved make this movie worth watching but it can’t save it from its story problems. C.

A Serious Man 020910

A Jewish physicist watches his life fall apart in the month leading up to his son’s Bar Mitzvah. His wife decides to divorce him for his best friend, his brother is arrested, his neighbor wants an affair with him, and no one respects him.

The movie has recently been nominated for best picture and has the distinct Coen brother’s touch of feeling extremely real while offering characters so absurd that they have to be based on someone. You feel very sorry for Larry and bemoan the situation in his life that is completely beyond his power to control.

Like Fargo, I just didn’t get most of this movie. This was another not a comedy. I laughed a couple of times but it was nothing like Oh Brother Where Art Thou or Raising Arizona. It was actually pretty depressing to watch this guy’s life sink lower and lower as he desperately claws at the mud to try and get out. You become completely emotionally invested it what’s going on and for that the movie spits in your eye. There is no conclusion. There seems to be some kind deus ex machina that makes everything better but you don’t get to see it. Things just become better. Not only that, but the ending doesn’t make any sense. At all. I’m just a lay man in the world of film symbolism but it was just stupid. For that matter, so was the very beginning. It takes place back in either Poland or Russia and, to the best of my knowledge, had nothing to do with the rest of the story.

D. I definitely count this movie as an incredible waste of time and money, both on our end of the screen and there’s. I might be on the opposite end of most film critics but I’m fine with that.

Cold Souls 020210

Paul Giamatti stars as Paul Giamatti but he’s the only person playing himself. His wife isn’t played by, or even have the same name as, his wife. Anyway, Paul is in a play, some Russian thing about an uncle, and because of his involvement with the character and the standard dreariness of all things Russian due to the fact that it’s possible for them to reach their fifth birthday before seeing the sun, his soul is heavy. Enter a company that specializes in removing people’s souls. Paul tries this but, because of his new lack of emotion, his performance suffers. Rather than have to bear the weight of his own soul, he rents the soul of a Russian poet. His performance is now spot on but he’s just not himself. He then decides to get his soul back only to find that it’s been stolen by a Russian soul dealer because his wife wanted the soul of an American actor so she’d be better in her role in a Russian soap opera. Paul then travels to Russia with the female soul mule, who stole his soul in the first place, to get it back.

This whole thing is a cleverly unique concept. The world is completely believable, and made more real by all the characters’ complete disregard for how strange all of this is. Upon discovering the company exists Paul never laughs at the concept, he never asks David Strathairn, the company head, how this could be possible and instead treats the whole thing almost like a plastic surgery inquiry. Paul’s wife, the incredibly underrated Emily Watson (not Emma), doesn’t respond to the situation with disbelief or “You expect me to believe that?” instead she wonders why he would do that.

The movie’s weaknesses are by no means in the setting but instead in the execution of the idea and setting. The entire concept is a completely ridiculous farce, but however the movie is what I like to call modern comedies or barely comedies. Movies like Adventureland, Observe and Report, and Taking Woodstock. Movies that are comedies because they have one humorous line too many to be a drama (though I laughed harder at the Fugitive than any of those movies), the idea only works as a comedy, or the producers just decided to classify it as a comedy because. This movie’s entire set up is a comedy, the story is a comedy, the setting is a comedy, but it’s played as a drama. Sometimes that can work for a comedy but in this movie it doesn’t. To make things worse it really doesn’t work as a drama either. This could be a very creative way to explore the nature of the soul but it doesn’t even raise questions or discussion. Every time a question is raised about the soul, the immediate response is “we don’t know.” I would rather be told something I disagree with because then I at least think about why I disagree.

This movie gets a generous D+. It didn’t suck outright but it’s a great example of sub mediocrity. After finishing it you won’t count it as time stolen from your life because you won’t actually remember it going by and in your life scheduling you’ll lump it in with time spent sleeping.