Brothers

[a.santi]

haha

you're getting really good at it.

[Bethie]

Might as well be called, Brothers In America

[I Love a Magician]

http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2009/11/ravatard-brett-ratner-photoshopped-into.html

[Stefen]

Mentioned at the playlist? Okay, we can cancel the board. We'll never be better than we are right now. Might as well call it a wrap.

[polkablues]

Fuck, yes.

[ono]

Excellent.  Is Xixax plugged on that blog?  (EDIT: Ah, I see it is -- maybe make it a little more prominent than a little link at the bottom of that page.)  We might get a nice new influx of members from this little bit of publicity.

[Fernando]

it was just a matter of time somebody noticed, maybe someone from the board tipped off the playlist.

major kudos to polka and everybody else invloved in this.

[ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ]

With this and the reverse mermaid, polka is setting the internet ablaze.

[polkablues]

I'm a meme machine.

[I Love a Magician]

not extraordinary or anything, but a very solid movie nonetheless. there are plenty of clunky decisions (especially with the music cues) and parts of the script come off undercooked (a lot of the dialogue with the dad) but the performances are the main selling point here and they're all pretty great. jake gyllenhaal pulled off that charming underachiever part really well and made me realize that i've liked him in every movie i've seen of his (got bubble boy on my To See list fo' sho). the kids were good too even if they were written as a bit older than they were actually supposed to be.

[modage]

It wasn't a great film, there are some bad music cues and unnecessary narration, but the 3 leads make it extremely watchable.  I haven't seen the original film and wished I hadn't seen the trailer which gives away the major twists and dulled their impact a bit.  Still I did enjoy the film, and it was interesting seeing Portman, Gyllenhaal and Maguire stretching themselves a bit dramatically.

[Pas]

[picolas]

i would give it to gyllenhaal over maguire. he had more to do and brought some levity. they were both really good though. *minor spoils* the scene where maguire refuses to understand his daughter's joke is pretty great.

[Pas]

I'm surprised that not more people have seen this... in an effort to boost my best actor choice I'll try a little review

Yes, the screenplay is pretty clumsy. Direction is meh, alright at best. The ending is extremely annoying, as much as 500 Days of Summer's ending really. Same kind of hollywood-ending forced shit. In fact, if it wasn't for the end, I'd probably have this in my top 3 of the year...

But, as it's been said before, the performances are really out of this world and for them to have no buzz for the Oscars is astounding to me.

Having a close friend of mine in Afghanistan right now doing his fourth tour, I can tell you that the scene when Tobey doesn't get the joke is really, really well acted and true to life. I don't know if it's post-traumatic stress or prolonged sleep deprivation or what else but these guys who come back from Afghanistan get really weird and creepy. Before he goes batshit crazy, Tobey hits that eerie feeling really well.

I'm sorry to keep comparing this to 500 Days of Summer when that makes no god damn sense at all, but again, like 500 DoS, if you look at the big picture it's easy to judge harshly the whole thing. Some scenes are cringe worthy and it's impossible not to see the missed potential there. With such performances, a good script would've made this an oscar contender.

You just have to focus on the awesome scenes, and forget about the sucky ones. All the scenes around the dinner table are great, especially the one that is the "élément déclencheur" of Tobey's rage. Where did they get that little girl, she's awesome. (the older one)

Also, my girlfriend loved it and it's her favorite of the year, so maybe your gf will like it too.