Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

     Not much to say about this movie, other than that it is pretty entertaining.  The plot is outrageous, the effects are amazing and the overall tone is light and silly, all of which add to the film's fun.  Tom Cruise is very comfortable poking fun at himself, which is even easier to do when Simon Pegg is his new sidekick.  Jeremy Renner is pretty great in his role and, from what I hear, is the heir-apparent to the franchise.  If that is true, I look forward to seeing him take the baton.
    The whole Dubai sequence is mind blowing, but I was most impressed by the screen illusion in the Kremlin - very unique.

Into The Abyss

   

Werner Herzog's latest doc dives deep - and I mean deep - into the depths of death row.  Into The Abyss is a fascinating look at capital punishment from all angles.  I didn't love it, however.

The Skin I Live In

   This was my first look into the world of Pedro Almodovar and I must say that I was extremely impressed.  I saw this film a month ago, so I won't write too much about it other than that I liked it quite a bit and was not ready for the twist at the end.  Almodovar has a style all his own, with futuristic, clean-looking photography that makes this film look like a modern painting.  In addition to looking great, this film really sinks deep into questions of self identity, gender and what it means to be beautiful. (not to mention the horrific crimes that take place)  I look forward to seeing some of his other films.

Young Adult

  From quirky writer Diablo Cody comes this 2011 character study about a beautiful 37-year old former prom queen who is having monumental struggles with finding contentment in her life.  Cody's most famous work has been the Michael Cera, Ellen Page hit Juno from 2007 - it's hard to believe it was that long ago.  I liked Juno quite a bit, but I wonder if I went back and watched it again if I would be able to even stomach the annoying Codyisms.  I probably would, simply because Cera, Page and Jason Bateman are really, really likeable.  In Young Adult, Charlize Theron is purposefully unlikeable, which makes it very hard to swallow Cody's style of writing.  She plays Mavis, a (ghost) writer of young adult books who hails from a very small Minnesota town called Mercury, whose natives are normal, hard-working Americans who get excited when a new Applebee's opens near the mall.  Due to the wildly successful series of books she has penned, she lives a lavish lifestyle in Minneapolis, which might as well be Paris in the eyes of the common Mercurian, but she is devastatingly dissatisfied with her life and yearns to reconnect with her one true love from high school, Buddy Slade (played by Patrick Wilson).  Buddy, however, is quite happily married with a newborn baby, a nice house, and a lovely new SUV.
  When Mavis travels to Mercury and meets up with Buddy, she has plans to steal him away from his wife and baby.  Along the way, she is approached at a bar by Matt (played with vastly overrated effectiveness by Patton Oswalt), a crippled former high school classmate who keeps the books at the local sports bar.  Oswalt is good at times, but mostly I could tell that he was acting, which is never a sign of a truly good performance.  Matt and Mavis begin a somewhat-believable friendship based on them both being social outcasts - Matt back in high school when he was nearly beaten to death by jocks, Mavis who peaked in high school and has been on a perpetual down-slide ever since.  They drink a lot of whiskey and talk about their problems.  Matt tries to convince Mavis that she should not try to get Buddy back, but she does not want to hear it.  Things, of course, turn ugly with Buddy when Mavis' persistence turns into spiteful, angry jealousy.
   I did not care for this movie at all and neither did my girlfriend.  Theron's performance was hammy enough to consistently remove me from the story.  Her charade was annoying.  Cody wrote this character as being artificial for the first 95% of the film, and by the time the final ten minutes (which I hated) arrived, it was too late to save it for me.  I know that the whole point of Mavis was to be a masquerade, but Theron just didn't sell it for me.  This being a character study, the plot is sort of secondary, and since I didn't find anything about the character that I could latch on to or sympathize with, I was never on board at all. 
  From director Jason Reitman, who made Juno as well as one of my favorite films of 2009 Up In The Air, this movie was a big disappointment for me.  I heard so many good things about the actors' performances and the accessibility of the story, but I just didn't find anything compelling about it.  Maybe if Cody actually gave Mavis more legitimate reasons to be unhappy (she only provides one truly traumatic moment in her past), I could have bought into it more.  Mavis has a great life and needs to grow up and appreciate life for what it is, not for what it could have been.  That is not a movie, it is a 22-minute sitcom.  Diablo Cody relies so heavily on being clever and hip with her writing, but she may need the assistance of young talent like Cera and Page in order to sell her quirkiness.