Fantastic Mr. Fox

One of over 400 movies that George Clooney starred in during 2009, Fantastic Mr. Fox is a stop-motion movie about Mr. Fox who raids farms and steals birds. To eat, of course. His wife, Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep), talks him out of stealing and he eventually becomes a writer for the local newspaper.

Feeling like his life is going nowhere, Fox plans to start raiding farms again. However, the farmers are on to him and they begin to make life hard on the animals. Now it's up to Mr. Fox to save the day.

The movie is an animated adaptation of the Roald Dohl children's book. The movie also stars the voices of Bill Murry, the opossum, Jason Schwartzman, Cate Blanchett, Willem Defoe, and Owen Wilson.

The movie was directed by Wes Anderson, who is known for The Darjeerling Limited, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Rushmore. The Fantastic Mr. Fox is rated PG for smoking (gasp!), smoking, and some mild violence (including shooting of guns - gasp!).

The Fantastic Mr. Fox is very melodramatic. There is very little inflection in the dialog and the humor is very dry. VERY dry. It's drier than a $4 bottle of white wine. Both of my kids watched the movie and neither got into it very much. And neither did their Papa.

This was not my favorite kids movie, nor my favorite dry humor movie. I just didn't find it all that funny. For this I can only give it 2 stars.

Julie & Julia

As stated at the beginning of the movie, Julie and Julia is about 2 true stories, put together in parallel.


Julie Powell, played by Amy Adams, is a customer service representative in post-9-11 New York City at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation who answers calls about victims and complaints about the new proposed tower.


Julia Child really needs no introduction. But if you lived under a Chia Pet your whole life, then Julia Child, played by Meryl Streep, is a famous chef that was on public television and taught the world to cook French foods with her unique voice and accident-prone style mannerisms.


In the movie, Julie needs some direction in life as she hates her job and her so-called friends, so her husband convinces her to do something, like blog about something she enjoys, like cooking. Julie then goes on to cook every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook in 1 year and blog about all of them.


Meanwhile, we follow Child's life in France with her husband who works for the American government. She went to a famous French cooking school, then began teaching cooking classes, and then collaborated with friends to write their own cookbook.


Meryl Streep was phenomenal in this role. Of all of the movies that I've seen her in, this is easily the best. She characterization of Julie Child was dead-on. The adorable Amy Adams, on the other hand, plays a bit of a whiny obsessed girl who can get a little bit annoying at times, but I always try to remember she's playing a character.


At one point in the movie Julie mentioned that they could make a book or a movie about her experiences. I immediately thought that would be a great idea, then I realized that I was watching that movie. Duh.


Streep was nominated for many Best Actress Awards, winning a Golden Globe for her performance, and the movie received a nomination from the Golden Globes for Best Picture.


Directed by Nora Ephron, no relation to teen idol Zac Efron, the movie also stars Stanley Tucci as Child's husband, and Chris Messina as Julie's husband. Julie and Julia is 2 hours long and is rated PG-13 for some potty language and some minor sexual imagery, though I think they threw that in there just to get the PG-13 rating. Otherwise, the movie was harmless.


I really enjoyed this movie and thought most of it was hysterical. Streep had me laughing all the time. And Amy Adams is always nice to look at. My only criticism is a couple of jabs at Republicans. One was deserved as it dealt with Joe McCarthy, who was a paranoid idiot. The other was totally unnecessary and even illogical. You'll see what I mean. Despite this, I give Julie and Julia 4 stars.

Lions For Lambs

Honestly, Tom Cruise hasn't made a decent movie since Top Gun. There are some that will argue that Cocktail was a good movie. No it wasn't. Eyes Wide Shut? People only liked that movie because of the gratuitous nakedness. And Mission Impossible? More like Mission Imposter.


So when Lions For Lambs came out, I should have known better. It stars Tom Cruise as a Senator who's working on a new strategy in the war on terror. What drew me to the movie was that it was directed my Robert Redford, a decent actor. However, Meryl Streep was also in it. Not so decent.


In this movie, we are presented with 3 plots - Robert Redford as a professor at a college trying to engage a student whom he thinks has potential. Tom Cruise is in a dialog with Streep, a reporter to one of the big newspapers. He is trying to promote the new strategy. And finally, some troops have been deployed to Afghanistan to implement this new strategy and they are getting creamed.


Almost the entire time I kept thinking, when is this movie going to start? Where is it going? I figured the 3 had to be tied together by more than circumstantial activities. But no. That was the movie. Was anything resolved? Nope. Conflict resolution? Was there conflict? Good feelings at the end. Nada. What was the point of this movie? I know it was a jab at the Bush Adminsitration, not that I have a problem with that. Are we supposed to start looking at the bigger picture in life? Maybe.


I think this is the type of movie where you need to watch the directors cut or his interview at the end so that you can understand what the hell his intention was. As far as entertainment value, this movie had none.


Lions For Lambs is 92 minutes long, but it's a long and agonizing 92 minutes. The movie is rated R for violence, if you can make out the violence on the dark blue on black screen that is supposed to be night, and some language. Overall, I give this movie 2 stars. I figure there's some point in there somewhere and I can understand actors and directors using their stage as a place to push their agenda. But at least make it somewhat entertaining. Booo!