Day: January 15, 2012

Hopefully when you first heard of the title The Ides Of March, you thought of the Ides of March. If not, I demand that you brush up on your Roman history. It is the time when Caesar was killed by the Senate, in the streets of Rome. Considered the ultimate act of betrayal in history, by some.

“Et tu, Ryan?”

The main star of the film is actually Ryan Gosling, not George Clooney. Must be getting too old. Clooney is, however, running for the democratic bid for president. If he can take Ohio, he takes it. If not, well, he still can win with the rest. His opponent is lame compared to him.

Gosling works on the campaign, I think second in charge, despite his young age. Philip Seymour Hoffman is running their ship though. And Paul Giamatti is the campaign manager for the other guy. Both of them are older and have been around the block before.

But when Giamatti calls Gosling to set up a secret meeting, and suggests the possibility of him jumping ship, Gosling says “Fuck that!” but more eloquently. Unfortunately (apparently) in politics, shit like that is bad news. If word gets out that the meeting even took place (possibly by Marisa Tomei, since she is a reporter), he could lose his job and hurt Clooney’s side. Oh, and there is also the other part dealing with Evan Rachel Wood, an intern for their campaign, and daughter of the Democratic National Convention head guy, who might be trying to get it on with Gosling. Politics suck!

I think this is the best real life example of the “:|” face I have ever seen.

Anyways, as expected by the title, there is a lot of backstabbing and treachery in the movie. More than I thought. To me it took awhile to build up, and through most of it, I just thought it was okay. Apparently all politician and politician helpers are cold and corrupt. Ryan should get out of there before it corrupts him too! After a point you really don’t know who is being played, and who can out bluff one another.

But the ending, I really really liked how it ended. The last 20-30 minutes were solid and unexpected. Everyone did a great job. I don’t think its perfect of course. Felt there was a bit of unnecessary stuff in the first half, that didn’t matter as much. But maybe that was the point? To throw you off?

If you like political movies, you will like this. I like political movies, but hate politics. Real people aren’t this clever.

Taylor Lautner! Woo!

Finally what everyone has been hoping for. A movie where Lautner gets to try and carry the movie himself, and not be tied down with two other leads who are attempting to have babies and stuff. The Abduction trailer seemed to pop up in every movie I went to this summer, and every time I saw it I asked myself the same thing. “Why does he sound like he is whining the whole time?”

I think this is him whining at a basketball game too? Have you no shame Lautner?

I just found out that Lautner is only 19. That makes more sense. He looks like some 25 year old guy who would be playing high school roles. Because he is supposed to be 16 I think in the movie. So the whining is probably intentional and he is a fantastic actor for doing that. Also, early in the movie when he is boxing or something with his “dad” and he does a super cool spin kick movie. But you know, not with a stunt double, it is clearly him doing it the whole time. Apparently he was good at martial arts, and as a child voted best in his category, at some point, in some version. So that is how he became a werewolf!

Plot? Oh my bad.

He is on a (high school) sociology project with his neighbor, Lily Collins, about missing people. They find a site about what these kids may look like now, and he finds out that one of them looks like him, and he has a similar shirt from when he was a kid. So they call it up, and oddly enough they track his location. Ruh roh.

Well, some people come to their house and kill his parents! Thankfully they don’t appear to be his real parents? Who would want to be related to Maria Bello anyways. So the CIA gets involved, or at least Alfred Molina does. But he cannot be trusted! Why? Because Sigourney Weaver, his therapist, intercepts him and tells him the truth. His dad was a CIA operative, and has a list of names of corrupt people, which includes that guy above.

Also, Serbian terrorists, lead by Michael Nyqvist, want that list so they can probably protect their spies / find new ones to abuse.

So they decide to try and find that list, to hand over to the CIA members who are not trying to get it to erase their name. But Nyqvist wants the list, meet in a public place (A Pirates baseball game, aka anything but public), and Lautner wants to try to kill him. CIA, CIA dad, lots of running are involved, until the day is over, and no one important got hurt! You know, except for the parents he had for most of his life. Thankfully Weaver will let him live with her. What a nice therapist.

I guess what I am really trying to say with the plot is that this movie has zero to do with Abduction.

If anything, I will give this movie credit for actually ending the story line. They didn’t leave hints of a possible sequel, or leave a plot unturned, or anything. Just made it seem like a one off story, and now he can go back to being a “normal” “kid”. But the acting was blah, and it seemed like they wanted to go for a Bourne like thing, but no where near the same, making it even more blah. I found the story / plot to be mostly boring. Like they tried to make that one moment of his life super crazy, instead of just slightly elevated crazy.

I will give you a do-over Lautner. Make your next movie better, or else.