Reviews!

Avatar: Story: Cliché, but serviceable. Special Effects: So awesome. I’m not one to get excited about special effects movies. I have no desire to see Transformers 2 or 2012, because they look like movies that exist solely for special effects. But, when I heard that Avatar was having technology created from the ground up to accommodate its special effects, I was interested. When I saw the reviews were good, I went and saw it at the IMAX in 3D, and it was quite a spectacle. It might have been the 3D, or the amazing blue people special effects, or the fully-realized and believable alien world, but whatever it was, when I walked out of the theater, I felt like I had just taken a trip to Pandora, or watched a documentary about it. It’s unbelievably beautiful, every little detail. If I could go back and insert this into my Top 2009 Movies list, I definitely would. This is one that should be watched on the big screen in 3D though. I’m not sure the visuals will have the same punch on DVD.

Up in the Air: Also would have made it onto my Top 2009 Movies list, had I seen it in 2009. I really, really liked this movie. I’ve now seen every Jason Reitman movie, and I like them all. This one is my favorite though. It’s heartbreaking and hilarious, and its characters are all realistic and three dimensional (but not like Avatar). It also doesn’t hurt that it has one of the more attractive casts of any movie I can think of recently. I had a lot of fun watching it. You would too.

500 Days of Summer: While at some points the movie seemed a little too cutesy (especially the end), I found this to be a refreshing take on “romantic” “comedies” (and yes, both of those words are in quotations for a reason). I liked the jumping around in time and the cutaways to which “day of Summer” it was. Plus, I will always have a crush on Zooey, even if she is a big old jerk in this movie. This and Up in the Air are not feel-good movies by any means, but I’d recommend this one too. Even if I think that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a weird looking dude and sometimes kind of seems to fake a British accent. And his SNL appearance was totally lame, because he decided he wanted to make goofy faces and sing in every single skit. It was cute at first, JGL, but you can drop it now.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: You know I love kids movies. This was a fun little movie. Not emotionally involving really, but the animation style of this movie was pretty hilarious. There were a lot of famous people who did voices you couldn’t even recognize (except Mr. T as the hilarious town policeman), highlighted by NPH (if you need to know, watch Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) as the monkey, Steve. There was good action, funny dialog, and funny animation. Basically, it’s what you’re looking for from a kids movie. It’s obviously not going to compete with Up for the best computer animated movie of the year, or Mr. Fox for the best kids and overall movie of the year, but I kind of think if you don’t enjoy it you have no soul.

I like getting into things way after the fact. Have you listened to The Replacements? They have a couple of good albums.

Oh, how about a Grandma update? She’s out of rehab and sounds amazing. She’s not perfect. Her speech is a little slow and she has trouble thinking of words, and she walks using a walker (unless you don’t watch her, in which case she tries to walk without it because she’s stubborn), but compared to weakly muttering “I love you” a while back, she’s amazing. She has therapy come to the house a couple times a week, and will for a little while, but she’s a strong woman and she’s going to keep fighting to get back to where she was before.

Okay. Uh… yeah. I didn’t really have much to say. But I wrote here anyway. So have a good day I guess. And tell your mom something offensive.