Letters from Iwo Jima (7 out of 10)

I am feeling tired right now, so this won't be the greatest of reviews, but I want to get it typed out.

Letters from Iwo Jima is the second part of Clint Eastwoods' Iwo Jima duology, this one told from the Japanese perspective. (Flags of Our Fathers being the American one). It tells the story of three soldiers on Iwo Jima, a general (played by Ken Watanabe) and two infantrymen.

The characters are pretty much cookie cutter archetypes. The general is the guy with radical tactics that nobody else likes, and therefore he himself is not liked. One of the soldiers, Saigo, hates being in the war, and just wants to go home and be with his wife. The other soldier is believed by everybody to be a spy. Really, Letters from Iwo Jima is not entirely different than any other American war movie. Of course, it is greatly different because of the issues in the movie, such as all the ritual suicide, and the fighting to the death stuff that only the Imperial Japanese subscribed to. Still, the characters and the way they acted was very derivative of American war movies, and I'm not sure if this was on purpose or not.

LFIJ tells each characters' story wonderfully, past and present. The way in which each character interacted with one another and the way the plot progressed during the battle was my favorite part. Even though I didn't feel like this movie was entirely original, I was still captivated by the story and it's characters.

I'm not sure if there was meant to be any sort of bias in the movie. The Japanese look somewhat insane at times with their harikiri, and killing off soldiers that disobey. It is no wonder they lost the war if they commit suicide every time something doesn't go their way.

So yeah, I really thought about this movie. In retrospect, I don't really like Bobby as much as I thought I did. I wanted to make sure I didn't do the same here. But it was a well-directed film with great cinematography and colors, and while you aren't missing much if you don't see this movie, because you have seen nearly all of it's elements in other war movies, it is still interesting to see this sort of movie from the Japanese side. The characters and story helped a great deal as well to make this a very interesting movie.

But after seeing it, I don't think it as deserving as Babel/Departed for Best Picture or Scorsese for Best Director... I don't even really think it's worthy of a Best Picture Nomination, but I'm not in charge of that.

Smokin Aces (7 out of 10)

Smokin Aces, starring a lot of peple, among them Ben Affleck, Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven, Ryan Reynolds, and Andy Garcia, is about a gangster/casino showman that turns snitch, and is going to rat about the Mafia to the FBI. The Mafia answers by contracting a number of assassins to take him out, to the winner go the spoils.

As you can see, it's a pretty basic plot, and unless there was a ton of action, you couldn't make too much of a movie out of this. And there ISN'T a lot of action, and instead, there is actually character development and substance, which absolutely shocked me. I was expecting something in the vein of Domino or Running Scared, ridiculous, far-fetched, but still a bit fun, action movies. However, with Smokin Aces, the only action is with the end setpiece, and instead, the film builds off of character interaction and behavior.

I never thought I'd say in a cast of this size that Ryan Reynolds would have the best performance, but indeed he does. Everyone else is pretty good, Chris Pine is superb as the main Tremor Brother. Alicia Keys is alright until the end, when that falls apart. Andy Garcia is made to do a terrible Southern accent and it really kills his character. For the first part of the movie, Jeremy Piven is obviously channelling his Ari Gold character from Entourage, but eventually he plays someone with a bit more heart later.

This movie is incredibly unpredictable, and there is no guessing what is going to happen next. It also has it's fair share of greatly shot scenes, one of my faves being Ray Liotta in an elevator, I won't say anything more.

So, with all these goodness, why only a 7? Well, the "twist" ending. At the end, the director, Joe Carnahan, decides to toss out a few quick twists. They were absurdly out of place, and there was no point. They didn't add anything to the movie, but rather detracted from it. The movie goes through the typical playback of scenes where the end was hinted at, and that's getting old also. Ryan Reynolds' saves the train from going all the way off the tracks with a very good end sequence to close the movie.

Overall, this was a very fun movie that I liked for the characters and the unpredictability. I really want to see it again.

Alpha Dog (6 out of 10)

Alpha Dog, directed by Nick Cassavetes, and starring Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone, and Justin Timberlake among others, tells the true story of the kidnapping and murder of Zack Mazursky by the order of drug dealer Johnny Truelove (Jesse James Hollywood in real life).

Basically, Ben Fosters' character, Jake Mazursky, owes Truelove some money, and it escalates to the kidnapping of Mazursky's half-brother, played by Anton Yelchin. The impromptu and odd kidnapping is not your average kidnapping, wherein Zack is actually treated like one of the guys, meets some girls, gets high and drunk, and becomes close friends with one of the kidnappers played by Justin Timberlake. However, things spin out of control, and eventually Zack is murdered.

I don't know what it is, but at it's most basic, the story sounds like something out of Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. Of course, get rid of all the modern day bits, but the whole idea has some classical about it, and that makes this whole movie a bit more watchable. It's hard to believe this is a true story, though some of it could be exaggerated or made up for film.

This movie was at times great, and at others ridiculously poor. At it's best, it was fun, with just the right amount of suspense and doom in each scene, but at other times, you really wonder what these people were thinking.

The performances were a mixed bag. Emile Hirsch was real good, Ben Foster was unbelievable, and even Justin Timberlake did pretty well for most of the movie until the end when he is supposed to do a crying scene and it fails horribly. Anton Yelchin still has not impressed me, and Sharon Stones' one dramatic scene at the end is literally covered up by her ridiculous fat suit.

This movie objectifies girls to an unnecessary end. Now, I wasn't there, I don't know if all of these girls actually hung all over the guys and made out with their necks and chests constantly, and did nothing but laugh and scream, but I doubt it. However, in this movie, that is ALL that they do. There is one girl that actually seems to have a working brain and is freaked out by the kidnapping, whereas every other girl in the movie acts like complete and utter idiots, and I'm saying that they don't even function as humans, but rather as some sub-race. It's embarassing, and I don't really know why this decision was made.

I had also feared this movie would go the way of Harsh Times, and just so the guys partying, getting wasted, and doing stupid stuff, and at the beginning, I thought that was what it was going to do. For example, everyone is partying at Johnny Trueloves' house, and Shawn Hatosy (one of the members of Trueloves' posse) is drinking and trying to make out with girls for about five minutes. It's just that for five long minutes. I understood that the guy was an idiot after about 20 seconds, but it just dragged on and on. However, this sort of thing ended, and the movie moved forward without getting mired in this sort of subject matter again.

Alpha Dog was a pretty interesting movie that had some bad decisions made during the filming obviously. After seeing Bully, nothing about this movie phased me. Bully still is the most disturbing movie I have ever seen, and it covers much of the same ground as Alpha Dog. Alpha Dog has better acting and is more mainstream, but it didn't affect me on the same level as Bully.