Going Postal (2010)

OK, usually I write up a description of what happened in the movie or show I've watched and then I give my opinion on it. I guess I should do that, so, I'll give you the nutshell version.
A conman gets caught and sentenced to hang, but instead of death is forced to head up Post Office in Ankhsport. He is at odds with the evil man running the Clacks Service (a kind of telegraph, but with lights from tower to tower), from the very beginning. He develops a love / hate relationship with a woman who hires out golems and has ties to the Clacks service and a reason to hate the man running it.
Eventually the postman the Clacksman come to loggerheads and have a competition that will put one of them out of business for good. They both cheat, but the conman is cheating for the 'right' reasons, so he wins.
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Now, I can get to what I want to say. I have loved the live action BBC productions of Pratchett's work that have been coming out over the last few years. This one, not so much. The best thing I can say about this two-part movie is that it has good production value. It's not funny enough to be a comedy; not serious enough to be a drama; not involved with the characters feelings and love enough to be a romance; not action-packed enough to be an adventure. Nor is it some kind of hybrid that incorporates all four of these elements, though they are certainly present at times.
Aside from the golems and the fact that this story takes place on (or is that in?) Discworld, this doesn't seem like a fantasy as much as it does a stylized period piece. Meh. Maybe I just don't like the Discworld stories that don't feature Death (who is not even present at all in this one, even though characters do die).
I can't say much for the acting, it was neither brilliant nor horrible.
Perhaps I set my expectations too high, since I have been waiting on this show for a long time, made even longer by another library in the county bumping me not once but twice so that their patron could watch the film. What I didn't know at the time was that they were trying to help me out. This was one that I could have passed on.

Stardust (2007)

A young man enters a magical world through a hole in a wall, a wall that appears to him to just be between two fields. What he discovers is a nearby town with a market and a beautiful enslaved princess that he makes love to before going back to his home in the village. Nine months later a baby is delivered to him - it's his son Tristan (Charlie Cox).
Tristan grows up to work in shop, but not be a shop boy. He is smitten with the local pretty girl, Victoria (Sienna Miller) who is only pretty and lacks the depth to ever be Tristan's true love. Meanwhile, the other side of the wall, in the kingdom of Stronghold, the King (Peter O'Toole) is dying and comes up with a way to choose a successor, and this results in a falling star, Yvaine (Claire Danes) coming to earth. Through comic misunderstanding, Tristan ends up the first person to come upon Yvaine, but not the last - the evil witch Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer) is searching her out, because if she can consume her heart, she can become immortal. The last of the King's sons, Septimus (Mark Strong) is also looking for the fallen star and the stone which she carries which just happens to be the symbol of the King of Stormhold.
Tristan and Yvaine have a string of comically off-beat adventures that sees them each time narrowly escaping death and eventually falling in love.
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What a charming little film. I'm not sure how this one slipped past me. Fantasy? Check. British? Check. Neil Gaiman? Check. Well known actors playing quirky characters? Check.
I literally knew nothing about this film before my favorite librarian handed me the box. And then all I knew was that Michell Pfeiffer was in it. If I had been wearing my glasses, I would have seen that on the cover is also Robert De Niro and Claire Danes. I'll watch anything De Niro or Danes are in, and the two together, well even better. I had actually kind of been putting this one off, because I'd never heard of it, and reading the back of the box (without looking again at the front) I wasn't sure I wanted a film about "celestial love, and a pure-hearted hero". Obviously I stopped reading at that point and never got on to the part about it featuring De Niro. Once I popped the disk in and heard the dulcet tones of Sir Ian McKellan as our narrator, I knew I was in for a fantastic movie. Because of there is one actor that trumps De Niro and Danes, it's McKellan. (In full disclosure, there are several actors that trump De Niro and Danes - Ewen McGregor, Patrick Sewart, Hugh Jackman and Helen Mirren spring to mind, but they're my A+ list, while De Niro and Danes are on my A list, and to be honest, they're both pretty close to the top of the A list.)
I love fantasy movies that keep a sense of humor about them. Hell, that's the only reason I made it passed the first Pirates of the Carribbean movie. (Again, in full disclosure, Jonny Depp is on my A list so I'll watch his films even if they're not quite my cup of tea.) The Captain Shakespeare character played by De Niro is hilarious, if a bit over the top, but what makes it work is that De Niro seems so earnest in his portrayal of this character that at one point I can actually see him saying to himself, "How would Robin Williams plays this?" and then he does that. More brilliantly cast, and funnier in my opinion is Ricky Gervais as the lightning black marketeer. Oh, and the ghosts of the dead princes are pretty funny - very Terry Pratchett, and I mean that in the most complimentary kind of way.
New to me was the young hero, played by Charlie Cox. I don't know what else he has done, but now that gives me something to look into and find new films to watch.
The special effects for this film were quite decent. I guess I assume that if something flies under my radar that it must be a smaller studio or indie film, both of which tend to mean low budget. But this was not the case for Stardust. It was a top quality A list movie from beginning to end.

Run Fatboy Run (2007)

Women's clothing store security guard, Dennis Doyle (Simon Pegg) left his pregnant girlfriend, Libby (Thandie Newton) at the altar five years earlier. Doyle is a loser who wishes he could get another shot at Libby. It's not until he meets her new boyfriend, Wytt (Hank Azaria) that he realizes that he might not have any more chance at getting together with her.
In a move of jealousy driven bravado, Doyle matches Wytt's claim that he can run a marathon and in fact will run in the upcoming marathon which Wytt is training for.
No one believes that Doyle can do it, except for his best friend Gordon (Dylan Moran) and his landlord (Haresh Patel). The two believe in him even when he has given up on himself.
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I really wanted to love this film. I go out of my way to watch Simon Pegg - I've been a big fan since Spaced. And with his buddy being played by Dylan Moran, whom I've been a fan of since Black Books, I thought this would be an even better than usual film. Did I mention that I am usually entertained by Hank Azaria, with Simpson aside, I love as the Blue Raja in Mystery Men? But this film never really found it's footing, couldn't keep up the pace, got winded - insert your own running pun of choice.
The film had funny moments, but it was cliched and not very consistently paced, not to mention it was a bit schizophrenic as to which type of film it was going to be - light romantic comedy, buddy film, touching family comedy, morale-driven comedy. Did I mention that the script was cliched? You know how this film is going to turn out as soon as they are done with the setup, maybe even before them. That's okay in a comedy, but I shouldn't be able to predict the lines, and I definitely shouldn't be able to predict when Moran is going to appear pantless in a scene.
To be absolutely frank, Azaria was phoning in a lot of this lines, and there were a couple of scenes where Pegg and Moran did the same. When that happens in a film, the only person to blame is the director, which in this case is first-time David Schwimmer, better known as an actor. In my opinion, it would have been better with Schwimmer and Azaria switching roles - not because I like Schwimmer better than Azaria, au contraire - I think Azaria could have been a better director, and then when the American runner character turns out to be a real dick, I would buy that better from Schwimmer.
The bright spot in this film is Thandie Newton. She's consistently on as the straight / love interest / object of desire. The kid, Jake, played by Matthew Fentox was pretty good to, and worked well with both Newton and Pegg.
My advice? Watch the opening flashback sequence and then fast forward between Pegg and Moran's antics. Or better yet, pull out your copy of Shaun of the Dead and watch that instead.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

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The Descendants (2011)

George Clooney stars as Matt King, he's an attorney living in Hawaii where his family has lived for generations. His wife is in a boating accident which leaves her in a coma in a slowly deteriorating state which the doctors think she'll never recover from. Matt had not been the best father, and now must come to terms with his two daughters.
Matt must come to terms with learning that his wife had been cheating on him, while brokering the sale of the family land held in trust for his cousins and him. As the sale draws closer, Matt becomes more and more obsessed with tracking down the guy who his wife cheated on him with and finds that the guy is a realtor tied up with the deal for his family trust.
Matt ultimately decides that he wants to keep the land, and he has seven years to figure out how to do it, likely seven years of his cousins trying to get the land from him, but he doesn't really care.
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Nobody forced this movie on me, but it was offered for my viewing pleasure, so I took the bait. I would have ended up caving in eventually, because I am a big George Clooney fan. I should have known that when I read the word, "unapologetically" that I was in for it. This is not a happy movie, even though it mentions "funny" several times. I'm not saying it's not a good film, it is, it's just really fucking depressing.
The quotes on the box about a great ensemble cast are spot on. There was not one single weak link. Particularly good, in addition to Clooney of course, were Shailene Woodsley as his oldest daughter and surprisingly Matthew Lillard as "the other guy".
This was shot on location in Hawaii, mostly on Oahu and Kuai. I can't think of a more beautiful locale than this. Of course the story line was tied to Hawaii and probably wouldn't have worked in any other US location, thought I suppose they could have made it forested land in Northern California or Upstate New York. I'm glad that they didn't.
The soundtrack was pretty rockin' with a lot of traditional sounding Hawaiian music. Okay, I may be making a fallacy with that statement, I am just assuming this since all fo the songs were in Hawaiian. It was great none the less.
Oh, and for the record, I only teared up when Clooney did, talking to his wife right before she passed.