The Cinema For 12/11/09: Another Big Week Of Premieres

Photo from Warner Brothers

In akin to last week, the star power and big premieres are the case with this week's edition of The Cinema on TWD Friday.

It really is hard to give any of these premieres top billing over the other since they all seem to indicate top quality from them. But, I kind of already did that by choosing a clip from Invictus at the top to slide that way (only because the publisher of this site is a massive Morgan Freeman/Matt Damon partisan).

The reviews are generally positive, including one lauding Clint Eastwood, Freeman, and Damon

Freeman, Eastwood's "Unforgiven" co-star, finds the smart strategist living inside Mandela. The 72-year-old Oscar-winner (for Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby") slows himself down some and stoops a bit to play Mandela, but you always see him thinking. In his scenes with Damon — who makes Pienaar a quiet, new-generation hero, even when the rugby captain has little to do but rally his team and face his separatist family — Freeman's Mandela is impossible to say no to. His smile is stronger than Pienaar's athletic prowess.

The movie has a cliched moment or two, especially in later scenes with Mandela's white and black bodyguards. Yet when Freeman is front and center, "Invictus" — its name taken from the poem Mandela says helped him survive 27 years in prison — is absolutely magnetic.

Still, as I have said, "Invictus: isn't the only big premiere, as Disney gets back it's hand-drawn magic with the at times controversial, but seemingly very successful and good "Princess And The Frog."

Robert Ebert enjoyed it

The opening scenes of Disney's "The Princess and the Frog" are like a cool shower after a long and sweaty day. This is what classic animation once was like! No 3-D! No glasses! No extra ticket charge! No frantic frenzies of meaningless action! And . . . good gravy! A story! Characters! A plot! It's set in a particular time and place! And it uses (calm me down here) lovingly hand-drawn animation that proceeds at a human pace, instead of racing with odd smoothness. I'm just gonna stand here and let it pour over me.

But probably an even better movie that those two choices is a film directed by Tom Ford starring Colin Firth and Julianne Man titled "A Single Man."

Firth is getting rave reviews for his role in what could be the sleeper of the year:

Yet on paper it’s such a simple movie, that it might have been easy for A Single Man to dissolve into a mundane bore. Firth’s performance is brilliant, but Ford’s luxurious visual style and the film’s amazingly haunting, layered orchestral score do much to drive the story and, frankly, keep us involved when a less attentive audience might otherwise have dozed off. Ford, whose background is in the world of fashion, seems to take special pleasure in the simplicity of sharply worn clothing or the high-contrast curve of the wood grain on the dash of a 60s automobile. It gives the movie a life beyond what might have been found on the page, a life it needed in order to keep us involved. It’s a quiet and subtle film, one which if embraced has the power to break your heart.

Three big movies that you probably couldn't go wrong with this weekend if you spend the $9, $10, or hopefully no higher than $11.50.

It's The Cinema at TWD for this Friday.