Definitely, Maybe
Directed by Adam Brooks
Starring Ryan Reynolds, Abigail Breslin, Isla Fisher, Rachel Weisz, Elizabeth Banks
Rated PG-13
Released date: Feb. 14, 2008

“You mean, not good like one out of a hundred?”

“I’d say more like one out of a million.”

“So you’re telling me there’s a chance.”

We all make choices in life, every day. Some are smaller and have little or no impact on the grand scheme, and some shake us to our foundation and alter the very balance of power in our lives and completely change the game. For one reason or another a few months back I embarked on a quest to find the first good romantic comedy of the season. I didn’t mean to, but after seeing so many bad ones, I imagined there had to be one out there sooner or later that didn’t make me want to reject my trade. Regrettably, my stubborn nature took over.

Well it happened. Dear God, it finally happened. But my personal victory notwithstanding, the movie isn’t completely without flaw.

The almost divorced Will Hayes (Ryan Reynolds) goes to tuck his annoyingly inquisitive daughter Maya (Abigail Breslin) into bed one night and she starts in on him about wanting to hear the story of how he fell in love with her mother. Kinda like that TV show with the clever title — what was the name of it again? — oh yeah, How I Met Your Mother. He begins to tell the story, through flashbacks, of three loves in his past.

Fool’s Gold
Directed by Andrew Tennant
Starring Kate Hudson, Matthew McConaughey
Rated PG-13
Release date: Feb. 8, 2008

A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I were arguing about the widespread appeal of NASCAR. He tried to convince me that it was a legitimate sport and I gave him the stock hillbilly-infused commentary and a battery of equally stereotyped responses to his argument. This went on for a good 20 minutes. Just when he thought he had me standing there wobbly enough, he attempted to finish me off with a Fatality.

HIM: “Hey, it’s the fastest growing sport in America.”

ME: “Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s any good.”

Not believing my statement to be true, he asked me for an example. I told him to check the box office totals for any given week during the first half of the year and in an alarming amount of examples, the top movies are garbage.

HIM: “It always goes back to movies with you, doesn’t it kid?”

Waiting for the totals this week just to prove my point was worthless — I already knew the answer. Let’s just say this coming week we get to look forward to all new trailers for Fool’s Gold with an updated tagline — “#1 Movie in America.” And I can’t say I am the least bit surprised.

The Eye
Directed by David Moreau, Xavier Palud
Starring Jessica Alba, Alessandro Nivola, Parker Posey, Chloe Grace Moretz, Tamlyn Tomita
Rated PG-13
Release date: Feb 1, 2008

I actually requested this review during a phase I like to refer to as the “sign up for movies I don’t want to see in an effort to challenge myself as a reviewer” phase. Or S.U.F.M.I.D.W.T.S.I.A.E.T.C.M.A.A.R for short. Right out of the gate, I had lowered expectations. Not bleak really, because I tried to keep an open mind, but lowered to say the least.

I suppose I shoulda known better. I shoulda seen it coming. Then I find out the movie was produced by Tom Cruise. I shoulda left after the trailer for Prom Night.

The Eye is a remake of The Pang Brothers 2002 Asian film, Jiàn Guǐ. I first heard about the original from a friend of mine who always tries to find these movies no one has ever heard of in search of the “diamond in the rough.” I never got around to seeing that film, but I can safely attest to the fact that this is not said diamond.

The most frustrating part of this movie is that the concept itself is quite interesting. Sydney Wells (Jessica Alba) is a concert violinist who has been blind for the better part of her life. She undergoes a double corneal transplant so as to have her sight restored. After the surgery, Sydney begins having visions of the dead and premonitions that she attributes to the violent nature by which the donor patient died. The idea always struck me as pretty twisted — a person seeing unexplained visions through someone else’s eyes all while being passed off as her mind simply adjusting to the concept of sight. Or better yet, just the idea of a blind person being able to see for the first time in years and having to re-acclimate themselves to an environment they have grown to not only survive in, but flourish. So the idea is fine, and there is a good story to be told somewhere in there, but even the best laid plans can flop down like a bag of hammers if it’s not executed properly. This is my problem with The Eye.

The Orphanage (El Orfanato)
Presented by Guillermo del Toro
Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona
Starring Belén Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Roger Príncep
Rated PG-13
Release date: January 11, 2008 (wide)

I’m pretty sure any time you are a former foster child growing up in a creepy old house the last thing you want to do is buy it later in life and reopen it. I guess I can’t speak from experience, but it seems a bit off-putting on its own.

The Orphanage is presented by Guillermo del Toro and directed by first-timer Juan Antonio Bayona. The Spanish horror film is about Laura (Belén Rueda), a former resident who returns to the orphanage where she grew up with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and their son Simón (Roger Príncep) with plans to reopen it as a home for sick and disabled children. Simón, an only child, has imaginary friends that worry his parents mildly, but not alarmingly. That is until he informs his mother of a game him and his new friend, Tomás play — a scavenger hunt that leads to the boy finding out a family secret about himself. After a period of reclusion and a chilling scene where Laura thinks she sees Tomás, Simón disappears. Without a trace. Over the coming months, Laura and Carlos are slowly driven apart by the separate paths their individual grief takes. Carlos tries to remain a realist, but Laura begins to see these imaginary friends and continues to search.

Any time you have an old house as a setting, you automatically make an additional character for your movie, good or bad. This film benefits from the subtlety of the “performance” of the house. It helps create a mood here that goes beyond creaky doors and antique furniture by creating a visual style that complements the setting and the mood perfectly. Even the muted, dull, earth tones help add to the ambiance of the film. Of course the setting does not completely make the movie, it just helps. There are also strong performances, namely from Rueda who wisely embodies the emotion of a mother dealing with loss without overplaying.

There Will Be Blood
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano
Rated R
Release date: Jan. 11, 2008 (wide)

“Ladies and gentlemen… I’ve traveled over half our state to be here tonight. I couldn’t get away sooner because my new well was coming in at Coyote Hills and I had to see about it. That well is now flowing at two thousand barrels and it’s paying me an income of five thousand dollars a week. I have two others drilling and I have sixteen producing at Antelope. So, ladies and gentlemen… if I say I’m an oil man you will agree.

You have a great chance here, but bear in mind, you can lose it all if you’re not careful. Out of all men that beg for a chance to drill your lots, maybe one in twenty will be oilmen; the rest will be speculators — men trying to get between you and the oilmen — to get some of the money that ought by rights come to you. Even if you find one that has money, and means to drill, he’ll maybe know nothing about drilling and he’ll have to hire out the job on contract, and then you’re depending on a contractor that’s trying to rush the job through so he can get another contract just as quick as he can. That is the way this works.”

That is the opening dialogue of the movie by oil man, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis). It comes no less than 15 minutes into the picture and tells us all we really need to know about the man. But we don’t know this to be fact until the end of the film, more than two hours later.

There Will Be Blood is director Paul Thomas Anderson‘s latest and best film to date. Coming from me, the last sentence says more about this film that anything else you will find in this review. Singularly due to the fact that I am a huge PTA fan. Eleven years after the debut of his first feature film, Hard Eight, the man has made a grand total of five films. Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia (one of my top five favorites of all time), Punch-Drunk Love, and now There Will Be Blood. With a resume like that, why go for volume? While all of his films thus far have been excellent, There Will Be Blood is his most creatively daring, by far his most ambitious, and easily the crowning achievement of a brilliant career.