All films I've seen in 2018 ranked 1 to 32

All films I've seen in 2018 ranked 1-32:
1. Green Book-Exactly what our disastrously polarized society needs right now: Throwing political correctness out the window so we can have a real conversation. Think Driving Miss Daisy with a sense of fearless adventure. If humor is about the release of tension, watching these two completely mismatched people go at each other is downright cathartic and hilarious

2. First Reformed-The film’s cinematography is still and meditative, much like the protagonist’s newfound lucidity that doing good involves sacrifices and uneasy compromise. Films about spirituaility and environmentalism are rarely hot topics in moviedom and writer-director Paul Schrader makes the case that these human elements can work cinematically. 
3. The Death of Stalin-Ten times better than anything else Armando Ianucci has done, fitting your style of writing into a historic tragedy and making it hillarious is a high-wire act
4. Disobedience-Orthodox Jewish film about a community outcast (Rachel Weisz) who returns to sex up Rachel McAdams, shot with a Hitchcockonian bent, treats its three leads with a lot of affection
5. Tag-Popcorn comedies can be treated as highish art if done well and this film is sweet, rebellious and does so much right. It's also thematically got a great thematic parable about keeping the best parts about adulthood as you grow up
6. Crazy Rich Asians-Go Asians on screen (is what people are saying)! But this is a film that's legitimately probing into inter-race racism (if that's a term) and classicism specific to the Asian commuhnity and immigration experience, and it's a lot of opulence and scenery porn
7. If Beale Street Could Talk-Better than Moonlight in my book because it was more overt about its racial issues. Beautifully shot and scored although the chronological jumping was more self-congratulatory than useful
8. Leave No Trace-Think a less pretentious "Captain Fantastic" dealing with ADHD and a daughter who has to outgrow her dad sooner than later. By Deborah Granik of "Winter's Bone"
9. Solo-What Star Wars should be like: Quixotic and adventurous, not too rooted in complex mythology, and loaded with fantasical CGI (Full disclosure: Didn't see Last Jedi)
10. Bohemian Rhapsody-Considering I knew nothing about Queen, it was a solid intro to a unique man and his three sort-of-unique band mates (especially the one who still kept that gnarly hairstyle after the 70s). If you already knew about Queen, you'll be less impressed but hopefully enjoy the music deconstructed
11. Ocean’s 8-After seeing "Widows", went back to this one for an execution of a heist film done right. Even with the standard suspension of disbelief, the way they get around James Corden's character is ridiculous but Corden was pretty charming, nice to see him acting. Had more of an emotional uplift than anything in the entire Ocean's 11 trilogy
12. Night School-The premise: novel, the execution: Formulaic but sweet and funny and throws realistic out the window
13. Set It Up-Reminiscent of "Juno" in its efforts to be hip but its cuteness will bowl you over and it's a romantic comedy that ends pretty organically and logically and that rarely happens
14. BlacKkKlansman-This is a guy who "infiltrated" the KKK on the phone? This is like pranking Pizza Hut and saying you've done industrial espionage. It was exciting in parts but not Lee's best work
15. Ant Man and the Wasp-Definitely the kind of fun-for-all-ages film that I imagined Marvel movies used to be modelled after and had room to do big things special effects-wise
16. Ballad of Buster Scruggs-Definitely dark but if you're a fan of Westerns and want to see the different forms of the genres commented on and taken to absurd levels. If it wasn't such a dark murderous year for movies, my patiences for some of these tragic endings might have been greater
17. Black Panther-It's a good movie, I guess? Don't have that much patience for Marvel films that want to be grounded , and now that so many of the must-see films are commentary on the African-American experience in America in some way, the profoundness of any one of these gets diluted. It still had very awesome visuals and I liked the message of the hero that the end goal was peace and not fighting all slights (too bad some of the more extreme leftist voices liked the villain more)
18. The Clapper-It's a pretty low-stakes comedy but the subject matter has some pretty stinging satire in how exploitative our media (and subsequently all of us who absorb that media) can be of our public figures. Not a bad movie at all
20. Bad Times at El Royale-Shot with a lot of stylistic flair and some very memorable scenes. Again, it was a dark year and I kind of got fatigued of so many people **SPOILER** dying meaningless deaths. If you dig the look and the performances, you'll get this film.
21. Dog Days-Very sweet. I got a little teary at the end. Although you know from the very beginning that all the romantic pairs are gonna get together because this is the romantic comedy. So it's not the most organic film
22. Beirut-The Jon Hamm character is very interesting because he has an attachment to a certain kid from the other side of the battle lines and he has a bit of that Don Draper stoicness in geopolitical negotiations. The plot was compelling up to a certain point and then became sleep-inducing (although maybe it was my particular level of fatigue the night I watched the film). So close to being memorable.
23. Tomb Raider-Alicia Vikander and Anjelina Jolie both have the same number of Oscars, but as far as I can tell, Anjelina Jolie was mostly sold to audiences in the 2000s like waitresses at Hooters are sold to potential diners. I’m a sucker for archeological jungle adventures and while the McGuffin was ridiculously weak, the Alicia Vikander character was progressive without being obnoxious, compelling, and was a unique style of action star (mainly crashing into objects with minimal impact). The races and set pieces were pretty solid.

23. Sierra Burgess is a Loser-The protagonist is a teenager who is entirely comfortable with being bullied and eventually uses it to her advantage to get something she wants out of it, that's something novel.
24. Ibiza-Pretty standard "people go on a Spring Break like experience and get wild" film

25. Widows-Loved the way that director Steve McQueen treated such a diverse type of cast members with equal focus but the whole heist thing was a mess. Either they wanted to make the heist intentionally confusing to the point of being forgettable, it was a red herring, or they just fumbled it
26. Thoroughbreads-Nice seeing the young woman from Bates Motel do some acting but this was just dark
27. Ready Player One-I was thinking it was nice to see something other than a sequel, but this was like the quasi-sequel to every film from the 80s. It was almost like fetishizing unoriginality
28. Red Sparrow-A bit gruesome and repetitive but a largely coherent plot and less nihilistic than the female spy thriller I saw last year “Atomic Blonde.” Spy thrillers like these often have too many twists and turns and that can lose viewers at light speed, so that this is a coherent story is a major accomplishment. I also imagine a decent sociology thesis can be written about everything this movie has to say about female sexuality and cinema.

29. Racer and the Jailbird-I thought this would be an exciting film about a female race car driver and a prisoner but it's a dark, dark film. If I had known it was a dark film about two people who suffer a lot, maybe I'd have been more ok with it even if I knew it wasn't a popcorn film?
30. Shock and Awe-A film about hotshot journalism which committed the sin of tedium. Cute romantic plot with James Marsden and Jessica Biel though
31. Game Night--I hardly see a reason to justify this film’s existence. A couple (Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman) like playing games? That’s the hook? The violent take on comedy has been done a million times and it just feels tacked on here. The “when is this real, when isn’t this real” tension is stripped of its meeting when we know the plot is “thing that they think isn’t real becomes real.”
32. A Wrinkle in Time-This children’s film doesn’t treat its mythology as something worth caring about yet asks us to endure excruciatingly boring technobabble about said non-interesting mythology. The film is too tonally bizarre and its character dynamics too uninteresting to care about anything at all that’s happening on screen. 

Capsule Reviews of first 15 Films I saw in 2018

1. The Death of Stalin-This comic retelling of the aftermath of Stalin's death is at least five times better than anything else Armando Iannucci has ever done. To do crack-pace dialogue with Julia Louis Dreyfus in the present day sort of writes itself: Just take two parts Aaron Sorkin and add one part dysfunctional workplace comedy. To take your style of screenwriting and work it into one of the most historically villainous regimes in history while staying true to the real-life tics of historic characters and maintaining overall lightness required for a comedy is downright operatic.

2. Disobedience-Rachel Weisz stars as a Rabbi’s daughter returning to an Orthodox Jewish community that has shunned her because she has chosen not to adopt their austere lifestyle. The film has a brilliant pseudo-horror vibe with the voyeuristic looks that others gaze upon her with, as she sits with them at dinner or walks through the streets alongside them. The film is advertised as a film about a lesbian relationship, but it's really a film about free will because being in a pre-marital sexual relationship, dating a secular jew, even having secular Jews in your friend circle or getting an education all lead to the same end result of shunning anyways. Perhaps it’s my experience in this type of community, but the film is beautiful, spot-on, tense, sexy (spoiler: the two Rachels get it on) , and treats each of the three leads (Rachel McAdams and Allesandro Nivola) with the respect to round out their character arcs..

3. Tag-Nope, it’s not a drama on any level, but it’s ok to have popcorn comedies high on your lists. This is funny on every level. The timing of the jokes, the rounding out of character tics, the multiple layers of the jokes and the call backs all work. Like “It’s Always Sunny”, there’s a lot of humor where we get joy in watching adults act childish in front of baffled adults who just don’t know how to react to what they’re seeing. Only complaint in the humor department: The attempt to Sherlockize Jeremy Renner’s character wore out its welcome as a repeating joke. The film is also sentimental at just the right level and speaks to how growing old doesn’t mean you need to stop having fun. A good lesson to any critics who didn’t appreciate this film. 

4. Ocean’s 8-To the people who think it’s too much of a feminist statement or not enough of a feminist statement: Shut up, both of you! It’s just a good movie with a legitimate sense of tension and flow, and a good cast that it utilizes well (also, there isn’t really a wrong way to utilize Rihanna or Helena Bohnam Carter for that matter). Sandra Bullock isn’t someone I would think of as a self-assured cat burglar type but I liked the sentimentality she bought to the role. When she toasted to her brother’s grave, it was a more meaningful moment than anything in the original Ocean’s series which was really just an overt self-congratulations of smug rich actors and Soderbergh’s “look at how good of a director I am” flashy stuff. James Corden is perfect as a bumbling foil. I had a couple minor problems with how things unraveled, even after suspending my disbelief and going with the absurdity of it all.

5. Leave No Trace-Best described as a less pretentious “Captain Fantastic”. Ben Foster, an underrated actor, plays a guy ill-at-ease with mainstream life so he lives off the grid with his daughter. The movie twists and turns in a few unexpected places and each of those defines the enigmatic protagonist better without revealing too much about him.

6. Ant Man and the Wasp-For someone who never cared about "The Avengers" or "Captain America", there was a distasteful amount of catch-up involved but nothing detrimental for me enjoying this film that largely knows it's about summer fun and not extended mythology. Paul Rudd is so solid at playing a "cool dad" type that I wouldn't be surprised if a whole generation of young viewers view him as the new archetype. The film works in humor at an extremely organic level and for that alone, I'd be extremely comfortable recommending this film to anyone who has been searching in vain for that comic action film that captures the feeling of the original "Indiana Jones" or "Star Wars" franchise. This is especially true for the micro-microscopic universe which had the feeling of a 1950's B-movie. Credit has to also go for TI, David Dastmalchian (ironically, TI is named David while Dastmalchian is named Kurt, how confusing), and Michael Pena which have graduated from background noise in this movie to a genuinely entertaining band of side kicks. 

7. Tomb Raider-Alicia Vikander and Anjelina Jolie both have the same number of Oscars, but as far as I can tell, Anjelina Jolie was mostly sold to audiences in the 2000s like waitresses at Hooters are sold to potential diners. I’m a sucker for archeological jungle adventures and while the McGuffin was ridiculously weak, the Alicia Vikander character was progressive without being obnoxious, compelling, and was a unique style of action star (mainly crashing into objects with minimal impact). The races and set pieces were pretty solid.

8. Black Panther-The hype and much of the cheering from the left was pretty annoying considering it was a pretty nuanced film about the dangers of not being militaristic in your civil rights movement. In other words, the film was more nuanced than what people were taking from the films. There were good and bad white and black guys, after all. I thought the plot stretched a bit thin, but the narrative flowed smoothly from point to point so not a lot of wasted space while still doing a lot of world-building. The Afro-futurism angle is just a cool hook simply from the perspective of reimagining a world that’s so different but kind of plausible. Congo, for example, has natural resources found nowhere else in the world; the natural healing powers of African shaman medicine has been better than Western medicine in some points in history.

9. Set It Up-Up until the last 20 minutes, this much-praised romantic comedy is formulaic but watchable. In the last 20 minutes it finds a way to upend itself without being cheap or forced and that’s when it sticks with you much longer. Zooey Deutsch is a bit cutesy but she checks the boxes of a progressive feminist cheerleader so the critics are on board. Lucy Liu and Taye Diggs play strong villains and Pete Davidson (currently getting a lot of attention for being in the most high-profile relationship in SNL history) is surprisingly decent.

10. Ibiza-Every plot point here abides by the formula of “group of guys/women go wild and lose themselves for a night” and it’s getting slightly old. Despite a complete lack of anything original, it’s a good showcase for the three actresses.

11. Ready Player One-Like the “Transformers” franchise, it’s about shiny manly toys for the most part and doesn’t really sketch out this vision of the future as much as I would have liked but it’s a fairly compelling story. It’s definitely of a go-big-or-go-home style of Spielbergian artistry without being awful. I have a feeling I’ll look back on this a while and find it even less memorable.


12. Red Sparrow-A bit gruesome and repetitive but a largely coherent plot and less nihilistic than the female spy thriller I saw last year “Atomic Blonde.” Spy thrillers like these often have too many twists and turns and that can lose viewers at light speed, so that this is a coherent story is a major accomplishment. I also imagine a master’s level sociology thesis can be written about everything this movie has to say about sexuality and society. 


13. Racer and the Jailbird-I thought this was a sexy action film. Instead it’s a dark film about a couple who both go through extended periods of chronic illness and incarceration. Just a sad, sad story. This might be unfair to judge the film based on the package of information available to the me before the film, but if I was prepared for a sad story, my assessment might be different. At the same time, I do believe the film was legitimately depressing without having more of profound approach.


14. Game Night-I hardly see a reason to justify this film’s existence. A couple (Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman) like playing games? That’s the hook? The violent take on comedy has been done a million times and it just feels tacked on here. The “when is this real, when isn’t this real” tension is stripped of its meeting when we know the plot is “thing that they think isn’t real becomes real.”


15. A Whisper in Time-This children’s film doesn’t treat its mythology as something worth caring about yet asks us to endure excruciatingly boring technobabble about said non-interesting mythology. The film is too tonally bizarre and its character dynamics too uninteresting to care about anything at all that’s happening on screen. Maybe we should just admit that Ava DuVerney (despite being a woman of color, yay!) is just not that good of a film maker. Selma" was "important" but not particularly captivating.

Every Film Ive seen in 2007 II: Films 23-44

This is a continuation of a lengthy exercise in which I ranked every single film I saw in 2007 from best to worst. Here's Part I.

23. National Treasure 2-If you buy the ridiculous premise that another archaeological gold mine that would fall into Ben Gates's lap, then this is a reasonably entertaining film with some top rate action scenes and lots more fun with history. Otherwise, it's the kind of film that makes plot hole enthusiasts' heads explode with possibilities. The president can easily be kidnapped, Buckingham Palace has laxer security than your local library, and you can break as many laws as you want as long as you want as long as it's in the name of a dead relative who passed away 150 years ago. Helen Mirren joins the cast which is always fun and Ty Burrell (before "Modern Family") can be spotted here like Where's Waldo,

24. Transformers - While there certainly wasn't enough creative juice to merit a good sequel to this film and the film was highly Michael Bayish in its love of explosions, superficial human interaction, hot girls, and general coolness, there was a Spielbergian element in the middle of all of it too (common themes: boy needs a friend, boy needs a daddy figure, girl and boy unite over lack of respective daddy figures) that made the film charming at times. 

25. My Brother -A small independent film screened at a film festival I attended, this film tells the story of an African-American kid who watches over his disabled brother as a grown-up. It's highlighted by a great performance by Vanessa Williams and Tatum O'Neal who slum it in the indie world but get some good results.

26. Music and Lyrics-Hugh Grant straddles a thin line between charming and boring and has failed to carry many a film, but he succeeds here because, like Blades of Glory, this is a film that doesn't aim particularly high and delivered on lower ambitions. One caveat: The whole film does rely on you buying the premise that a reasonably intelligent professional songwriter can't string basic rhymes out of words and has never heard of a thesaurus.

27. Ocean's 13-Ocean's 12 was such a self-indulgent mess that in press conferences preceding the film, cast members (Matt Damon on Inside the Actor's Studio comes to mind) were saying that while the cast was enjoying each other's company and the exotic locations, they were being professional and working. And the funny thing is they weren't even being asked: They just volunteered this information as if anyone would doubt that actors would do anything but act on a film set. With the disaster behind them, the Ocean's 13 crew had a respectable third outing in that it had a coherent plot but trying to lower the yelp rating (oops, excuse me, diamond rating) of a casino is not as exciting as a classic heist and I found the franchise's choice to reduce the stakes rather then up the level of excitement baffling. On the upside: Ellen Barkin, David Paymer and Al Pacino were all inspired casting choices.

28. The Hoax-For such a grand premise (a guy fooling the world into thinking he's a biographer of Howard Hughes), The Hoax was moderately uneventful which made the film feel a little pretentious. On the positive, it had some nice character moments here and there.

29. Lucky You-Curtis Hanson is a great director (LA Confidential, Wonderboys, In Her Shoes, 8 Mile) and this film has his trademarks of quiet moments, self-reflexive characters, immersion in a subculture, but this film felt a little dreary and the plot lacked forward movement. Wasn't necessarily a bad film but not Hanson's best work

30. Evan Almighty-If you're wondering why this ridiculously tenously connected sequel exists the answer is twofold: 1) Bruce Almighty grossed north of $200 million. For a comedy, that's pretty damn good, and even if it came with a neatly packaged ending, Hollywood economics supercede story: A sequel had to be made 2) Jim Carrey didn't want to do it and, fortunately, Steve Carell had became a star in the interim. Because they built an elaborate ark (fun fact: the ark was constructed and shot in Virginia, a casting call went out to my college and a couple friends were extras) , this was technically the most expensive comedy to date. Some critics ripped on the film for unwisely spending all that money for a superfluous ark but I think they missed the point: plus or minus an ark, the entire film was a grand piece of superfluousness. Evan was a one-note villain who only merited a film of his own unless you sweep it all under the rug and retcon him as a deeper character. If you can get past all that, then it's an, at times, moderately decent comedy.

31. Walk Hard-The best parodies tend to be more subtle. Walk Hard tended to hit you over the head with a grand announcement that it was a parody.

32. Charlie Barrett-I find it interesting that Iron Man was touted as Rob Downey Jr's comeback when here he was in a film the year before. Not one that anyone saw, but still. This film is a high school dramedy about a new transfer (Anton Yelchin) who goes from selling his adderroll to becoming the unofficial school psychologist and sports star. It's kind of a thin plot but has its moments.

33. Fantastic Four Part II-I can't tell whether Fantastic Four came along at an earlier point in the development of comic books or it was the movie's fault but this quartet of superheroes seems oddly one-dimensional: You have the womanizer who won't settle down, the big lug of a tough guy, the dweeby scientist and Jessica Alba's invisible heroines who is, surprisingly, the only character who feels like more than one-and-a-half dimensions. The best I can come up with for a compliment to this film is not awful.

34. Shrek 3-I have literally no memory of this film. How often does that happen five years later that you can't recall a single detail of a film? I clearly remember the Shrek universe and distinctly remember the plots of the first and second installments but this must have been a very unremarkable film. On the other hand, a truly awful film gets burnt on my memory which is why this doesn't have lower placement.

35. Invasion-A remake of the 1950's sci-fi classic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" or possibly a remake of the 1976 Donald Sutherland-Brooke Adams remake, who can really keep track of this unorigiality anymore? The film felt uninspired (because it was) but made for a halfway decent action film.

36. Mr Magoriums Wonder Emporium-After so many remakes and sequels, I'm glad to finally get to an entry on the list that's original. Zach Helm, who wrote the screenplay to the highly inventive "Stranger than Fiction", approaches this film with the same sense of whimsy but it still feels like a second rate version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with an admirably odd turn by Dustin Hoffman as a Wonkaesque stand-in.

37. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry-Adam Sandler's usual mixture of heartfelt emotion and juvenile humor barely worked in its favor in this slightly misguided but ultimately tolerable take on the gay marriage debate. The film was met with some criticism for being outwardly homophobic. Like all Adam Sandler films, the film treats its subjects with underlying warmth but tackles human complexities (in this case, a delicate subject such as sexual orientation) with the emotional maturity of an eight year old, which is what Adam Sandler essentially is. It's not his fault: When he first broke out his guitar and started singing as a prepubsecent boy on SNL, we encouraged it, and enabled him to never grow up emotionally or comically.

38. No Country for Old Men-Cinematography was top-notch but was there a point to this film? I'm sure someone out there could watch this film and read some thematically coherent message from it, but I'm guessing most of the film's fans (including the Oscar voters for some odd reason) just liked it because it included a cool weapon, a villain with a weird haircut and dialogue so vague he became interesting, and a couple cool action scenes. I love some of the films by the Coen brothers but when they don't resonate with you, they feel like you're presented with a series of superficial objects and tricks with nothing beneath the surface.

39. Golden Compass-Rule #1 when delving into heavily complex mythological tale: Make it interesting. Otherwise, it feels like you're just reading the rule book to some complicated board game.

40. Pirates of the Caribbean III-Once upon a time, Disney brilliantly revived the pirate genre with a film that was a little bit long-winded but ultimately a lot of fun. Then, in attempting to stretch the series into a trilogy, some terrible decisions were made: Rather than simplify the mythology (this is, after all, a film based on a ride) they added entirely new plots on top of unresolved ones. If you remember, the first film ends with Depp an outlaw and Bloom trying to clear his name. That would be a good movie in itself, but they decided to add some entirely new mythic octopus on top of everything that kind of nullified the first film (Why would Jack care about fighting for control of the Black Pearl if both the souls of he and Barbosa were owned by a giant octopus anyway?). The second film ends with no resolution to the first film and Johnny Depp being taken prisoner by the octopus. The third film bloated things into a gigantic mess by conveniently introducing the fact that the tertiary character played by Tia Dalma happends to be enormously powerful and brings some dangerous spell of her own. Oh and Chow Yung-Fat is some Asian sea captain who imprisons Elizabeth and Keith Richards shows up because, why not at this point?

41. Nancy Drew-I saw this film with a couple younger cousins and while I get that the film appeals primarily to kids, there's no harm in making it presentable to an older demographic. This film suffered because there was a clear need to dumb down and simplify basic plot elements to be digestible. On the bright side, this film is responsible for keeping former Mango/Antonio Banderas SNL stalwart Chris Kattan employed for the year of 2007.

42. License to Wed-Imagine a romantic comedy starring Jim from The Office in full smugness mode without the endearing romantic backstory that made the Jim-Pam relationship work and you're only at the start of the list of problems with this poorly thought-out disaster. See, faux-Jim is engaged to an annoyingly cheery woman (Mandy Moore) and must get permission from pastor Robin Williams to proceed with marraige. Only, Robin Williams is a troublesome creep who seeks to sabatoge him. Or maybe he isn't and faux-Jim's overly suspicious. It doesn't really matter because by the third act, both these plots are bafflingly forgotten and everyone celebrates matrimony on the beach. It's one of the most abrupt endings I've ever seen. If that's not bad enough, the movie features Brian Bumgartener playing an even dumber guy than Kevin Malone and easily the most cringeworthy line of dialogue of 2007: When Mandy Moore suggests they abstain before the wedding, faux-Jim responds "but I want to play tickle my pickle with my girlfriend." Oh the horror.

43. Superbad-Yes, I got the memo that this film became somewhat of a classic. Still, the general populance gets things wrong sometimes. This film is crass, sophomoric, and worst of all, uneventful. I don't mind a film being low-brow if it goes somewhere but it appears that they set the record for number of f-words in a film for no other reason than it sounded cool. Yes, two high school senior boys on an average Saturday night are gonna be thinking about sex a lot and they're going to stumble their way through a party or two in search of it, but that doesn't mean it's an interesting thing to put on film.

44. 1408-I probably made a mistake by watching this one as horror really isn't my genre. Not getting the appeal of the film before I begin the viewing experience isn't a good place to start. 1408 felt like an ameteurish b-movie.

Is it Ocean's 13 or Ocean's 4?

Ocean's 13 is coming to theaters this week and I'm already wishing this film was never made. It's not the actual film I'm wishing didn't exist. Despite the abysmal failure of Ocean's 12, it's very probable that, considering the potential of Stephen Sodebergh and the strength of Ocean's 11, this film will be good and I'm looking forward to seeing it.


But the question is whether it's worth having to see these self-indulgent fests of self-praise that occurs when Matt Damon, George Clooney, and Brad Pitt all over the press circuit this week? Now, don't get me wrong. I have no problem with Matt Damon and while Brad Pitt can tend to get a little overly metaphysical/spiritual/philosophical when asked simple interview questions, he's OK with me as well. If George Clooney is far off in Africa or campaigning for his dad, I'm OK with him too. My problem isn't really with George Clooney as much as it is how his ability to make every (male and female) Hollywood reporter fall in love with him results in an over coverage of him with hard-hitting stories like "George Clooney: a great and selfless guy or the greatest, most handsomest, most selfless guy there is?." By selfless, do you mean "talks about himself less"? Because, I haven't seen much evidence of that. Also, did you omit actor with range in there? Well, that's cause he doesn't have much of it. I do think he deserved the Oscar for Syrianna (and some people don't), but that's about as far as his range stretches. "Oh, let's not bash George Clooney," you say, "He's doing great stuff for Darfur." Well, the George Clooney publicity machine is not doing it' s job very well because I challenge you all: How much do you know about Darfur because of George Clooney? The articles that have come out with regard to George Clooney are along the lines of "Clooney: Great guy because he went to Darfur" rather than "Here's what's going on in Darfur"

So as I was saying: Matt Damon by himself = Good, Brad Pitt by himself = Mostly good, George Clooney = Mildly Tolerable. However, when you get the three in the same room, it's a whole different monster. They start congratulating each other on winning People Magazine's sexiest man award, fooling around with reporters and giving humorous answers (except when the questions are about politics in which case, George never misses the opportunity to promote his cause*), and talking about how great each other are. Add Julia Roberts and see things get worse. so it might be a blessing in disguise that she's absent from this one.


These guys were so distracted by how much fun they were having on the set of Ocean's 12 that they forgot to double-check at the end of the film if they had made a coherent plot (Stephen Sodebergh has been guilty of this before: see Full Frontal). I remember on three separate (Letterman, Inside the Actor's Studio and Good Morning America) occasions, Matt Damon had felt a need to remind us in interviews that while he and the gang were having fun in Ocean's 12, that they were still professionals and were going to deliver us a professional product. That should have been our first clue as to how bad Ocean's 12 would be. When he was promoting The Legend of Bagger Vance, he wasn't bragging about how professional he and Will Smith were able to maintain their work. That's sort of implied.
Ocean's 11 was notable in 2001 for the fact that all these A-list selflessly took pay cuts so that the film could support such a large ensemble. It doesn't look like their egos took a pay cut, unfortunately. These guys have so much fun with each other that I think they forget there are other people in the cast. I seriously wonder if Brad Pitt could even name the other 11 members of his own cast? Don Cheadle pops up occasionally so at best, we should just call this film Ocean's 4 judging by the press releases. I never see Shaobo Qin, Eddie Jemison, Scott Caan, or Casey Affleck involved in any of the press interviews. Poor Casey has the unfortunate distinction of being Ben Affleck's brother and on top of that he doesn't even get any recognition for his own film.
Lastly, what about Elliot Gould and Carl Reiner? Carl Reiner is a comedic legend and Elliot Gould was one of the best actors in the '70s through a string of Rob Altman films. You would think they might have gotten some recognition as well.
*I don't have anything against Clooney's politics and agree with his viewpoints. In my opinion, the political views expressed in his pictures are that if nothing else, "we should be open and be allowed to criticize our government." At the same time, he babbles on non-stop about his politics to the point where it bores me to death and doesn't seem to have an off-switch. I felt it was slightly insensitive to use his Golden Globe acceptance speech to deliver a Jack Abramoff as if he was filling int for Jay Leno on the Tonight Show.
Footnote:
I'm slightly less upset over this matter, when I learned that Carl Reiner was on Late Night with Craig Furgeson tonight. In the film, he admits that Ocean's 12 wasn't good but Ocean's 13 is well-written and greatly enhanced by Al Pacino. We will wait and see. Reiner was also shilling out for the greatness of Cheadle, Clooney, and Pitt. Well, Carl, don't sell yourself short, you're a great actor yourself.