unbreakable

back when 'the sixth sense' was still a fresh memory and the director m night shyamalan was heralded as the next big thing he released this gem. its an intimate story of a man who survives a train crash. when he returns home he and his estranged wife decide to take this as a sign and once again work on fixing their relationship. the fact that he survived the accident unharmed starts to raise questions in his mind and through the prodding of an art dealer, he begins to investigate his own past. why did he survive when no one else did? he starts to realize that he actually had never been injured. ever, in his whole life. through out the course of the film he begins to realize that he might very well be invincible. how this affects his wife and his son is played out with such delicate storytelling and honest searching is why this movie is so amazing. watching the story open up in slow folds, and the budding romance once again welling in he and his wife is what makes the characters and the little moments between them so moving. how bruce willis and robin wright didnt get oscars for this is a travesty. shyamalan is a master of his craft on this film, using color, silence, and long takes, he draws us in to these characters and their discoveries perfectly.

up in the air

a great film from the same guy who brought us 'juno'. this one follows a man who spends his life traveling around the country helping businesses fire and lay off their employees. well, it turns out that his own company is thinking of making some cutbacks and he might be the one who is let go! they have decided to try and do their job over the computer instead of in person, which makes traveling all around the country unnecessary. as they test out the system, clooney is followed by the new girl who is getting this computer plan into action. as they travel she is baffled by his ability to disconnect from everything and just breeze by knowing that he will be leaving that town soon. she begins to break this cool exterior as he falls for another jetset traveler. with great performances by everyone involved, this movie takes the standard romantic comedy and brings it to a higher level! clooney does a fantastic job playing the cool guy who starts to break. an impressive film that will surely be remembered come oscar time.

julie and julia

half of this movie is very good, and the other half isnt. the story follows a woman who is at her wits end and decides to go through in one year the entire cookbook that julia child wrote. on the flip side, we follow julia child as she goes through the struggles of getting the cook book written in the first place all those years ago. meryl streep plays julia child as a larger than life woman who loved life and loved food so much that her passion for it exploded at any given moment! amy adams, on the other hand, has to play the part of a whiney self centered woman that we, the audience, can barely tolerate. if this movie would have been all about here, it would have been almost completely unwatchable. meryl streep turns this from terrible to passable.

man on wire

this was an interesting little find, its a documentary about a french man who loves to walk the tight rope. it seems that back when the world trade center buildings were being built there was a guy who actually walked from the top of one tower over to the other tower! he didnt exactly have permission to do it, but that was part of the fun. the film interviews him and others who were involved in this great prank. the tight rope walker, philippe petit, saw the towers and really wanted to walk them. he had done many other stunts over the years leading up to this one, which we hear him talk about, but this was the one that brought him to the states and gained him a lot of notoriety. having never known about this event, the whole movie was pretty interesting. its mostly filled with footage of his different stunts, interviews, a recreation of how they did it, and some of the actual footage of the walk itself. to listen to him talk about it you gain a huge sense of how he thought this was such an important thing. its very fascinating, to say the least. we also get to see what the result of this event was, showing news footage from his subsequent arrest and infamy. a pretty interesting story.