This was one of those movies where reading the book first actually ruined the movie experience a bit for me in the end.  Scorcese does such a good job retelling the book both visually and in casting the parts, that the obvious feeling of knowing everything that’s to come creeps up and you almost have no desire to finish the movie.  That being said, I can only fault the movie on my very biased situation.  For the rest of you, there’s no reason not to see Shutter Island.  It captures the mood of the book very well, and DeCaprio did a fairly decent job as the main character, who, in the book is a gravely voiced, grade-A bad ass war vet who is now a U.S. Marshall trying to crack a missing patient case.  I had more of a Mickey Rourke image in my head for the main character, but Leo pulled it off well enough.  For what it is, the cinematography was excellent, the story was retold to a T, and I’d have to still give the edge to the book, and a big recommendation still to see the movie.  Oscar contender?  I’m not sure, but I still enjoyed seeing the book finally come to life.

She’s Out of My League

Some movies you just watch because you’re not in the mood to see anything that’s too serious.  I laughed a lot more than I thought I would, and if you go into it expecting the comedy of the year, well, obviously you’re going to be disappointed.  Otherwise, it was better than I expected and unless you’re a “hard 10″ perfect person, and are more of a 6 or 7, then this should be a pretty decent feel good comedy for you.  You can’t hate a movie too much that makes you laugh and has the nerdy guy winning in the end right?  Uh oh, did I ruin the movie for you with that spoiler?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.  Go see it on a date and don’t take it too seriously.

Un Prophete (A Prophet)

Now this is a great movie.  I randomly saw it about a month ago and it’s still lingering in the back of my mind.  It basically tells the story of a kid accused of a crime, falsely or otherwise, they never say, and he gets stuck in a Corsican prison to fend for himself.  Godfather comparisons have been aplenty, and I have to say I almost enjoyed this take on organized crime than The Godfather.  I’m not saying it’s better by any means, just the way they present it is excellent.  Amazing acting, great story, and it just felt very real to me.  It’s kind of hard to explain the story, and I’ll most likely give too much away in trying to do so, so I’ll just give it my highest recommendation and let you guys decide.  I was honestly pretty bummed when this didn’t win best foreign film at the Oscars, but it’s one you definitely shouldn’t miss.  One of the year’s best.

Up in the Air

Another one of my favorite movies of last year, this one tells the story of a man whose job is solely to travel around the country and strategically fire people for companies that are downsizing.  When his job is threatened by a new tech idea that has them fire people over the internet instead of in person, he takes the girl whose technology was her brainchild around the country so she can see that doing it in person is really that much more important.  Clooney really won me over playing the main character, and my description is just the main plot, with all the stuff that happens to him along the way, and his unique relationship with the people in his life who barely get to see him, really driving the movie.  If you’re looking for the next movie to really be worth your money, I can’t recommend this one enough.  It’s that good.

Sherlock Holmes

Guy Ritchie is known for his British crime action films, which I love to death, but if he’s going to be making more big budget flicks in the future, I sure hope they’re all on par with this one.  Robert Downey Jr. does his usual great acting job, and his quasi-intelligent mumbling a hundred miles an hour style really works well as Sherlock Holmes.  I wasn’t expecting much out of this one, and maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much.  From the very well done action scenes, to the final moment when all is revealed by one Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I have to admit I left this one with a huge grin on my face.  I don’t want Ritchie to give up the Lock, Stock/Snatch formula any time soon, but if he must dabble in the big budget summer flicks, I can feel a lot more confident that the next one will be just as good as his underground stuff.

Youth in Revolt

If you think from reading these reviews that I enjoy every movie I see, well, you’d pretty much be right.  I grew up watching a movie a week for years on end with my dad, and bad movies were just as fun for us as the really great ones.  But alas, Youth in Revolt was just not that good.  Ignore the fact that everyone’s getting sick of seeing Michael Cera’s face and focus on the actual movie for a second.  Did you see the preview and notice how they all talked in this weird, sort of high class monotone that you’d expect to see in a Victorian era film or in your local country club?  Well, I prayed they didn’t pull a Juno or Napoleon Dynamite and have every character talking the exact annoying way as each other the whole film, but Youth in Revolt does this in spades and it annoyed the hell out of me.  Almost to the point that I just turned it off halfway, but I give every movie a chance and stuck it out.  Cera’s character is a wimpy kid (big surprise) who goes on a trip with his mom and her new boyfriend (Zach Galifianakis, who is hilarious in his brief time in the movie), and finds the love of his life while there.  One thing leads to another and eventually he has to leave.  In order to get back there, he has to get kicked out of his mom’s house so he can live with his dad, which is where his “true love” lives.  Enter the mustachio’d Cera, the evil alter ego he creates so he can do all the evil things it takes to get kicked out.  And that’s basically it.  The evil Cera actually cracked me up quite a bit, and I was disappointed he wasn’t in the movie nearly as much as the trailer would lead you to believe.  But besides that, the rest of the movie fell flat for me.  I got annoyed, the dual Cera parts didn’t carry the movie whatsoever, and the story was just blah to me.  I imagine the book is pretty funny, but the movie just didn’t do it for me.  My rec?  Pass on it and wait for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

I watch a ton of movies, so I’ll try to make this a more regular section on the site to catch you up on all the movies I watch.  Hope these helped sway your decision either way of whether you should watch that movie you’d been longing to see for a while, and check out the new trailer for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World before you leave.  It looks pretty sweet.

Gigantic
Perch Score:  8.233

(500) Days of Summer didn’t help this movie’s score out in the least, but for the most part I thoroughly enjoyed Gigantic.  Paul Dano is stranger than normal, Zooey is still cute as ever (definitely more innocent this time around than in “Summer”), and John Goodman is hilarious as Zooey’s dad.  I read reviews saying it’s a good movie but the cast brings it down.  I don’t necessarily agree.  I just think it was a movie that tried to be sort of deadpan, especially with how Dano’s character was, and went a bit overboard.  Worth a viewing for sure.  Will it be one I grab on dvd and watch multiple times.  Eh, probably not.  But still worth seeing.  Especially for you Zooey fans.

The Brothers Bloom
Perch Score:  9.329

I loved (500) Days of Summer in a completely different way than I loved The Brothers Bloom.  It’s a quirky, yet amazingly well told and acted, story of the Bloom brothers (Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody), and their quest for the ultimate con.  They are world renowned con men and the story begins with Brody tired of not having his own life and always playing the parts his brother makes for him each con.  The introduction of Rachel Weisz’s character, Penelope, is when the movie goes from good to great.  She’s a shut in millionaire that they decide to take on an adventure, of course, to eventually get some of her money.  But when she takes to their style of life a bit too much, what ensues is funny, heartwarming, and just plain fun.  I realize that sounded like a line from the movie’s poster or something, but believe me when I say it’ll most likely be one of the better movies you see in a long time.

District 9
Perch Score:  9.299

I’m not sure what it is lately, but I’ve just been seeing a ton of great movies.  And the best part is how they’re all from genres all over the map.  District 9 from the dark sci-fi spectrum.  I expected good things going into this movie, but I left simply blown away.  I’ve been told my reaction was a bit overboard, but whether you thought it was just meh or not, I sure loved it.  The movie is filmed in a fake documentary style and makes you think that this could very well have been real.  This was Neil Blomkamp’s test from Peter Jackson to see if he could do a Halo movie or not, and even though he decided not to pursue directing Halo, you can see the game’s influence all over District 9.  The minute they start using the alien weaponry and their mech fighting machines, I couldn’t help but smile to see Halo style guns pulled off in a movie so well.  District 9 won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, as most sci-fi movies aren’t, but this one stands in a class all its own and should find even the most casual moviegoer leaving very satisfied.  I sure haven’t seen anything like it, and I’m sure most of you haven’t either.

World’s Greatest Dad
Perch Score:  7.032/10

I watched this last night expecting good things.  The red band trailer had me plenty excited to see Robin Williams in another dark comedy, and even more excited that he didn’t seem near as creepy as his role in One Hour Photo.  But alas, after a solid two weeks of seeing one great film after another, the stream finally came to an end.  This isn’t a bad movie at all, it just feels more like a good B-movie with Robin Williams heading up the cast.  Bobcat Goldthwait wrote and directed the film, and you definitely leave the movie thinking, well, I guess if I had to envision the kind of strange movie Bobcat would make, this would most likely fit the bill.  The more I think about the movie, the less I dislike it, but overall there were too many things that bugged me for me to let them slide and give it a decent rating.  Robin Williams was good as the down on his luck, nervous, and lonely dad.  The kid who played his son bugged the crap out of me.  I realize he was supposed to be a D-bag and a jerk to his dad, but I just felt like he was trying to be immature like Will Ferrell and John C. Reilley in Step Brothers, only he did a bad job and wasn’t funny.  “Oh yeah dad?  Well, only losers would do that.  Why don’t you make me.”  And so on, and so on.  The pacing was also really slow, but considering the material and the boundaries it eventually did end up pushing, I’ll give it some slack.  Not the best movie, but I’m sure you’ll be left scratching your head wondering if it was the great climax to the movie at the end that won you over, or if you did, in fact, actually enjoy the movie.  I’m putting my money on the former and calling it a day.

It’s hard to talk about this movie without immediately giving away what it is about.  The trailer gives nothing away, and I went into the movie knowing only that Sam Rockwell was the sole crew member of a mining base on the moon, and that towards the end of his three year stay on the moon, he starts to go a little crazy and begins seeing things.  That’s honestly just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this fantastic movie, and while I still won’t give away anything about the plot, I will tell you that this is Sam Rockwell at his very best.  I’ve yet to see any performance this year that matches his, and add to that the amazing CGI work done to recreate the moon and the base Rockwell lives on, and you get one of the surprise movies of the year.  Not to be missed by anyone, if Moon is showing anywhere near you, by all means drop what you’re doing and go see it.  It’s that good. (note: Duncan Jones, the director, is David Bowie’s son)

Trailer / Ebert’s Review / Metacritic
Public Enemies
Perch Score:  8.754/10

It goes without saying I prefer to see Johnny Depp any day as someone like John Dillenger over Jack Sparrow.  I also love Michael Mann.  So the fact that I really enjoyed Public Enemies is no surprise at all.  The movie is stylish, fun, and very well acted, portraying Dillenger and everyone involved in his escape plan.  This is one of my favorite performances by Depp in a while, and Marion Cotillard officially won me over with her role as Billie Freschette.  Everyone else in the cast was great, except for Christian Bale.  He didn’t do a bad job, he just didn’t seem to fit with the style of the film.  The rest of the cast was like “this is a robbery see, putcha hands up!” and Bale and his gravely voice were like “I’ll catch you John Dillenger.  That you can be sure of”.  It just didn’t work for me.  Definitely an Oscar worthy film, and one I’d been waiting for for a long time now and it didn’t disappoint.

Trailer / Ebert’s Review / Metacritic

Adventureland
Perch Score: 8.699/10

Greg Mottola, director of Superbad, directed Adventureland as his near impossible follow up to Superbad and my mindset going into this film was exactly that.  There’s no way this can compete with Superbad.  And, honestly, it doesn’t.  But that’s not necessarily a bad thing at all.  It does the job rather effectively of providing us with a funny, down to Earth film about college kids forced to put their big plans on hold and work at a crappy theme park.  Jessie Eisenburg does a great job filling Michael Cera’s place as the super awkward main role.  Although I think Eisenburg’s proven history in dramas, mainly in The Squid and the Whale, which is an oddly wonderful film, makes the serious scenes in this film much better.  I’ll still give the comedic edge to Cera though.  Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the best movie in the world, but as a feel good comedy, it definitely does it’s job.  I laughed more than I thought I would, and by the end found myself saying, “wow, that was actually pretty good.”  And I’m sure you’ll find yourself saying the same as well.

Trailer / Ebert’s Review / Metacritic
The rest of the list…

Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Perch Score: 8.122/10
More of the same great storylines and CGI, only this time there’s a vast jungle landscape hidden under the ice and the CGI guys went absolutely nuts towards the end with the use of 3D and simply making it look great.  I’ll be the first to admit it’s not cool to like the Ice Age movies, but I just can’t help myself.  This one might be the best of the series.

Miracle At St. Anna
Perch Score: 8.799/10
Fantastic movie.  I was expecting something a little more political, considering Spike Lee did it, but it ended up just being a fantastic war movie.  But Lee puts his fingerprint and style all over the movie, and I laughed quite a bit during the build up to the main part of the story.  It’s the story of a troop of black soldiers sent into an area first only to be abandoned, and the town that takes them in and keeps them safe.  A great film that you should rent next time you’re at the red box at McDonald’s.

Valkyrie
Perch Score: 8.455/10
Nothing like Miracle at St. Anna, this was one war movie I honestly had no desire to see.  But Tom Cruise proves once again that, while I can’t stand his antics in real life, he’s still a dang good actor, and his character’s quest to kill Hitler and overthrow the Nazi government makes for a great movie.  Not Cruise’s best, but it sure surprised me how good it ended up being.

The Haunting in Connecticut
Perch Score: 7.689/10
Scariest movie I’ve seen in a long time.  We watched it out of pure fun, not expecting anything, and Michelle’s eyes were covered most the time with her screaming “what’s happening!?  What’s happening?!” with me just laughing at how much the last scene freaked me out.  Don’t expect a life changing movie, but there’s plenty of scenes where the camera pans quickly to reveal a ghostly figure with it’s head cocked to the side in the back of the room for only the briefest of moments, but long enough to make you jump and think, what the hell was that.  Yeah, it’s one of those movies, and it doesn’t let up on the eeriness by any means.  Get a group of friends together and see it.
Movies I Want to See

• (500) Days of Summer
• The Informant!
• World’s Greatest Dad
• In the Loop (this look hilarious)
• Cold Souls
• It Might Get Loud (the guitarist in me wants to see this)
• An Education (screenplay by Nick Hornby)
• Inglourious Basterds
• District 9
• Heart of Stone
• Ponyo (Miyazaki’s, director of Spirited Away, next film)

There’s about 10 more movies I’d love to review, but I need to get going.  You’ll just have to wait for the next installment of my Perch mini movie reviews.  But seriously, if you have a chance to see Moon, do it asap.  I loved it.

(mini-reviews after the jump!)

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Jukebox the Ghost
Let Live and Let Ghosts
Perch Score: 9.134/10

Jukebox the Ghosts remains one of my favorite finds on the Sixty One.  Piano driven pop/rock that recalls the grand scope and fun of Ben Folds Five, without actually sounding anything like them.  Their songs range from very danceable (Good Day, Lighting Myself on Fire), to heart on your sleeve tunes (Miss Templeton’s 7000th Dream), but it’s all great and Let Live and Let Ghosts has remained top of my currently listening to list for months now.  Not one to be missed if you want to have some fun with your music.

Good Day [mp3]

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Doves
Kingdom of Rust
Perch Score: 8.956/10

For some reason, Doves have remained under the radar here in the States.  They were right up there with Coldplay around the time they both entered the scene, and while Coldplay caught the commercial wave and made it huge, Doves stayed true to their sound and it really never resonated with US fans like it did with UK fans.  Regardless, I still did my part over the years spreading the good word about Doves’ excellent music, and Kingdom of Rust is no different.  Songs like “Winter Hill” and “Spellbound” are vintage Doves and would fit nicely on any of their past efforts, but the real surprise for me is in the opener, “Jetstream”, which is a dance song like only Doves could create.  I listened to that song three times before I let it finally go on to the rest of the album.  But Doves seem to be an acquired taste for reasons beyond me, but if you’ve been a fan of the past, you’ll no doubt love this new one.

Jetstream [mp3]

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Jeremy Enigk
OK Bear
Perch Score: 9.322/10

I love Jeremy Enigk’s music.  Always have, always will.  That being said, I won’t hesitate to admit I was late in jumping on the Enigk bandwagon.  I’ve only recently begun listening to Sunny Day Real Estate and the Fire Theft (only recently? someone said to me.  That’s ridiculous!)  I know, but better late than never.  That being said, I loved all his previous solo albums, especially World Waits, and I’d have to say OK Bear is right up there with anything he’s released.  It feels less epic in scope like World Waits did, and has a more mellow, personal feel to it.  I couldn’t think of a better time to be listening to this album than now at the beginning of summer, and it’s an album I’ve been recommending to everyone.

Mind Idea [mp3]

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Right Away, Great Captain
The Eventually Home
Perch Score: 9.699/10

My top three songwriters at the moment:  Ben Cooper (Electric President, Radical Face), Chris Minowa (Cloud Cult), and Andy Hull (Manchester Orchestra, Right Away Great Captain).  I’m not talking about all time songwriters, but when it comes to songwriters and their songwriting today, those three sit atop my list, consistently writing song after song that I love.  Ben Coopers instrumentation, Chris Minowa’s lyrics, and Andy Hull’s emotion.  They each possess some characteristic that makes me eagerly await any new songs they come up with.  But with Andy Hull, I have worked backwards.  Starting with his main band, Manchester Orchestra, then digging deeper into his personal songwriting, which led me to his solo project Right Away, Great Captain.  I loved The Bitter End, which was a welcome acoustic change to his main band, but it was with The Eventually Home that he made my top songwriters list.  I can’t remember an album I’ve spent so much time with, liking every song from front to back, and it’s a shame I didn’t catch it when it came out last year.  Right Away, Great Captain isn’t necessarily a stripped down version of Manchester Orchestra, but more Andy Hull at his most comfortable.  And that’s probably why I love this release so much.  Manchester Orchestra fans take note:  this album is great.

Devil Dressed in Blue [mp3]

What a Pity [mp3]