Movie Review: "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"

"The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo": A-. This movie is the American remake of the Swedish hit of the same title from 2009. (The Swedish film was not released in the US until 2010.) Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), an investigative reporter, writes an article for Millennium Magazine in Stockholm accusing a business tycoon, Hans Wennerstrom, of corruption. Unfortunately for Blomkvist, the evidence for his article was only circumstantial, and Wennerstrom wins a big libel suit against him. A despondent Blomkvist walks back from the courthouse to the magazine's office and tells his boss/lover that he is turning in his typewriter. Within a matter of hours, Blomkvist is approached by a lawyer representing Henrik Vanger, an elder statesman from the famous industrialist Vanger family, to ascertain his interest in doing a special research project. Blomkvist takes a train four hours north of the city into the remote town of Hedestad to learn more about the project from Henrik (the always cool Christopher Plummer). Henrik and most of the other Vanger family elders live on a large forested island in the river which flows through town.

Why does Henrik want to hire Blomkvist after Blomkvist has just suffered the national embarrassment of losing his well-publicized legal battle with Wennerstrom? We find out that Henrik, through his attorney, hired a private eye firm to check on Blomkvist to determine whether he was the right man for the job. The investigator who did the work was a mysterious young woman named Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), complete with spiked hair, piercings all over her body, a no-nonsense aura, and most importantly, the ability to hack into any computer known to man. Even before Blomkvist has boarded the train to Hedestad, Lisbeth, and therefore Henrik, knows everything there is to know about Blomkvist. He is, indeed, the right man for the job.

Unbeknownst to other Vanger family members, the "job" Henrik asks Blomkvist to undertake is simply to find out who killed his beloved niece, Harriet, some forty years ago. Her body was never discovered, even though the case was thoroughly investigated at the time by the local police. Talk about a cold case! Henrik suspects it was a fellow family member, or at least someone on the island that day, because the bridge crossing the river into town was barricaded due to a massive trucking accident. There was, and still is, no other way off the island!

Henrik finally convinces Blomkvist to take the case, telling him that part of Blomkvist's compensation will be "getting the real dirt" on Wennerstrom, dirt which Blomkvist never had available to him during the trial. Blomkvist takes up residence in an island cottage, and digs into the boxes of case-related documents which Henrik has gathered in his futile effort to find Harriet's killer. Meanwhile, Lisbeth has her own personal tragedies to deal with. Blomkvist and Lisbeth's paths eventually cross again, and when they do the action really heats up in more ways than one.

This is an excellent movie for many reasons, as was the original. I read somewhere that Lisbeth Salander will go down in literary and cinema history as one of the great detective heroines of all time. Whether true or not, I would not want to mess with her. In the original film, European actor Michael Nyqvist played Blomkvist as kind of an everyman, perhaps because Nyqvist in real life looks like an atypical movie star. By contrast, Daniel Craig's film roles have included a couple of stints as James Bond. The mystique of an island in the far reaches of northern Sweden, especially during the winter season, was awesome. (The movie poster reads, "What is hidden in the snow comes forth in the thaw.") There is also a creepy tie-in between the Vangers and the Nazis. Among the dozens of clues pursued by Blomqvist and Lisbeth, my favorite is the series of photographs taken earlier on the day of Harriet's disappearance forty years ago. The photos show her watching a parade in Hedestad, when suddenly her eyes catch a glimpse of something that rattles her. If Blomqvist and Lisbeth can figure out what she saw, perhaps the case will be solved.

I feel somewhat guilty giving this movie an A- instead of an A. There are many Vanger family members, and some of them are seen and discussed both in the present-day and at the time of Harriet's disappearance when they obviously looked different. Some of the dialogue is obscured by thick accents. To get the most out of this movie, you need to be wide awake and alert. You have to exert some effort as a viewer. It is hard to bestow an A to a movie that had me scratching my head sometimes, notwithstanding my noble efforts to keep track of everything. Maybe the shortfall was mine, but I'm sticking with the A-.

Laddering CDs

In my January 24 post ("Cash: The Least Sexy Part Of Your Portfolio"), I wrote about the various reasons why you might want to make cash a certain percentage of your investment portfolio, after taking into account your investment objectives and your tolerance for risk, among other things. Once you have settled on an amount for the cash portion, you typically have the option of putting the cash in a money market account, a government issued short-term security or a short-term certificate of deposit (a "CD"). All three can function as cash. This post addresses the issue of how to build a ladder for the chunk you're putting into CDs, particularly an initial mixture of short-term and mid-term CDs.

A CD is akin to a contract between you and a financial institution (the "Bank"), whereby the Bank agrees to pay you a little bit higher rate of interest on the amount deposited than it would be willing to pay on a regular savings account, provided you agree to keep that deposit untouched for a certain period of time. It is almost always true that the longer the term of the CD, the higher the applicable rate of interest. If you decide to "break the contract" by pulling your money out before the end of the term, you are assessed a monetary penalty. The penalty usually equals about 10% of the amount withdrawn. As you can see, therefore, an individual who is considering CDs has to balance the desire for a higher rate which usually comes with a longer term CD against its illiquidity. Because of the illiquid nature of even short-term CDs, a depositor should put some cash aside, apart from the funds going into CDs.

So, now that we've laid the groundwork, how do you set up a ladder? The goal of a CD ladder is to get to the point where you have a three-year (or if you prefer, a five-year) CD maturing every year. That point can be reached in three years, following these steps:

Step 1: Divide the money you are going to use for your CD ladder into three equal lots. With the money in Lot # 1, buy a one-year CD ("CD # 1"); simultaneously, with the money in Lot # 2, buy a two-year CD ("CD # 2"), and with the money in Lot # 3, buy a three-year CD ("CD # 3").

Step 2: After one year (or in other words, at the very beginning of Year # 2), CD # 1 will mature. Take the money from that matured CD # 1 and buy a three-year CD ("CD # 4"). Don't do anything with CD # 2 or CD # 3; they have not yet matured, so let them ride.

Step 3: After another year (or in other words, at the very beginning of Year # 3), CD # 2 will mature. Take the money from that matured CD # 2 and buy a three-year CD ("CD # 5"). Don't do anything with CD # 3 or CD # 4; they have not yet matured, so let them ride.

Step 4: After another year (or in other words, at the very beginning of Year # 4), CD # 3 will mature. Take the money from that matured CD # 3 and buy another three-year CD ("CD # 6"). Don't do anything with CD # 4 or CD # 5; they have not yet matured, so let them ride.

You have no doubt noticed that once you have completed Step 3, you will have a three-year CD maturing every year going forward, and when that happens (i) you take the money from that matured CD and buy a new three-year CD, and (ii) you let your other two CDs ride because they have not yet matured. That, boys and girls, is what we call a "CD ladder." The beauty of a ladder is that you are getting the benefit of a higher rate for a three-year commitment than you would for only a one-year commitment, but you are investing at regular annual intervals instead of three year intervals. As noted above, you could set up a longer-term (say, five-year) ladder instead of a three-year ladder, but then the issue of liquidity merits even more consideration. Plus, it is not always easy to find an acceptable five-year CD.

Two other related items. First, you do not have to buy all your CDs from the same Bank. Check out the website "bankrate.com" for a search of banks offering the best deals. The search can be run locally or nationally. Second, although this is beyond the scope of this post, you should be aware that some investors use the ladder concept for bonds, as those instruments can also be found in terms of different lengths.

Movie Review: "The Artist"

"The Artist": A. I realize that in my last post I promised to write next about CD laddering. That is in the works, I swear. But, I saw "The Artist" yesterday, and wanted to write my thoughts before they evaporated from my little brain.

The time is 1926, and George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a mega star of silent movies. Theaters are packed to see this dashing Valentino-like actor make his smooth moves across the screen with his little four-legged canine friend. The men in the audience are attired in suits and ties, the ladies are accessorized with their finest jewels. A live orchestra provides the only soundtrack, and when the film ends, Valentin steps out from behind the curtain to take a bow and bask in the glow of a standing O. Likewise, later outside the theater, members of the press push and shove with the public to get a close-up view of the larger-than-life Valentin. One of those in the madhouse scene is an extremely cute young thang, Peppy Miller (the lovable Berenice Bejo), who accidentally bumps into Valentin when she stoops to fetch her dropped purse off the sidewalk. George is smitten when he sees who's bumped him, and they momentarily give each other an impromptu smile and a hug. The newspaper photographers capture that fleeting moment, and the picture of the embrace is all over the Hollywood papers the next day under the headline, "Who Was That Girl?"

Peppy is an aspiring actress, and realizing this might be her only "fifteen seconds of fame," she maneuvers in certain circles to let the powers-that-be know that it is she, Peppy, who was the girl in the widespread photo. Sure, you might call her conniving, but she is so darn cute that we, instead, are going to say she's savvy. It also doesn't hurt that she is a terrific dancer. She gets a few bit parts in movies, and before long she has worked her way up the list of credits to the point that she becomes a leading lady. She and George have kept in contact, but he is married, albeit unhappily, and she is busy becoming a new celebrity.

Flash forward two years, and the age of silent films is on the wane. Valentin doesn't want to believe it, and turns up his nose when producer Al Zimmer (John Goodman) advises him of that fact. Meanwhile, Peppy embraces the chance to get in on the cutting edge of this new technology, talkies! Her career is on the fast track, while George's is in a free fall, both in terms of his work and his personal life. Can the relationship between George and Peppy, however you want to label it, survive this disparity? What will become of George? He was Peppy's mentor; now he's a has-been. Is this melodrama headed for an unhappy ending?

There is not much to quibble with when evaluating this movie. Dujardin is absolutely outstanding with his ability to use facial expressions and body language to convey his thoughts without the aid of dialogue. That is acting in its purest form. He is old enough to portray a Hollywood icon, yet young enough to be believable as a potential romantic interest of Peppy. Bejo is perfect for her part as well. When she is on the screen it's hard to look elsewhere. The role calls for her to show a wide range of emotions, and she is able to do just that seemingly effortlessly. I loved the musical score which, as you might expect for a film with almost no dialogue, is a key ingredient. The worst thing I can say about "The Artist" is that it is a little too schmaltzy, particularly in the last reel, but that minor beef is not enough to keep me from giving it an A.

Cash: The Least Sexy Part Of Your Portfolio

Other than keeping a rainy day emergency fund in cash equal to about six months of your take home pay, there are a handful of reasons why you might put a stash of cash in your investment portfolio. One would be if you pay attention to the oft-cited principle (the "Rule of 100") that the percentage of stocks and bonds in your portfolio should be equal to the difference of 100 minus your age, with the rest in cash. For example, the theory goes, if you are 35 years old, you should have 65% of your portfolio in stocks and bonds, and 35% in cash (not including the rainy day fund). That is a little too conservative for my taste, but the point is that the older you are, the less time you have to recover from a downslide. Conversely, the younger you are, the more chances you can afford to take, and the more chances you should take. When you are young you have more recovery time from a bear market. The Rule of 100 is especially valid if you start your serious savings during a run of good years, i.e., a bull market, because that kind of market enables you to build up a cushion; a few bad years won't wipe you out. Whether you are young or old, some of your investment picture will include cash.

A second reason for a cash fund, not too much unlike the first, is that you may be running up against a milestone event for which you've been saving, such as a college education for your child, or a graduate degree or retirement date for yourself. If you have been saving for junior's post high school education for the last eighteen years, you don't want that money to disappear right before he goes off to his freshman year at State U. You might be more frisky, investment-wise, when he's in the primary grades, but you should reign it in a little (by allocating more to cash or other safe investments) as he becomes a high school upperclassman.

A third reason for the cash stash might be that you simply have a low tolerance for risk. You just can't get a good night's sleep knowing that the money you have in the market could evaporate in quick order, sometimes due to unforseeable events like economic problems in a small European country (say, Greece, for example) or the bankruptcy of a formerly solid company (like Lehman Brothers). There is nothing wrong with having a low risk tolerance. There are more folks who do than those who admit it. And, those who maintained a high cash position during the most recent recessions looked like geniuses compared to the market players; the former had peace of mind and they did not lose as much moola .

A fourth reason for keeping cash might be that you are holding onto it until you see an investment opportunity for which you can plunk in your dough when the time is right. When shareholders dump some stock, they don't always turn around and immediately reinvest the sales proceeds in some other venture. They might wait for a better opportunity to come along, and in the meantime they keep the proceeds in cash.

The main reason that the typical investor, Mr. Smith, has cash as a definite percentage of his portfolio is that he is hedging his bets. Let's say, for the sake of discussion, that Mr. Jones has all of his money in stocks. If the market goes up he will profit more than Mr. Smith who only had 80% of his money in the market. But if the market goes down, Mr. Jones will lose more than Mr. Smith. I think the trade-off for Mr. Smith is smart. He is not greedy, but by hedging his bet he has a little more peace of mind and can still enjoy the upside, albeit to a lesser degree than Mr. Jones. Yes, this example is a little over-simplified, but it illustrates that cash plays a key role in the investment strategy of the average worker/saver.

If you are convinced that not all of your serious savings should be invested in stocks and bonds, but instead a portion should be allocated to cash, what is the best strategy for doing so? One ploy you might consider is laddering CDs. That will be the topic of my next post.

Movie Review: "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close"

"Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close": C+. When I go to a movie I try to remember to find out the running time beforehand. I then make a mental note at the half-way point of the film (after sneaking a peek or two at my cell phone clock) to segregate what happened prior to that time from what happens in the last half. The purpose of this little mental exercise is to be able to "set the movie up" for you in my eagerly anticipated (?) review without revealing too much. There is nothing worse than a movie review which should have contained spoiler warnings but didn't.

At the half way mark of this two hour movie, this is all we know. Pre-teener Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) is a very bright young man who lost his beloved father (Tom Hanks) when the World Trade Center towers were destroyed. Oskar and his dad were very tight. One of their favorite pastimes was reconnaissance games, in which Oskar's dad would draw up clues leading Oskar to search all over New York City for a reward. After the father dies, Oskar scrounges around his dad's closet and finds a key in a small envelope marked "Black." He proceeds to traipse all over the city with the hope that whatever the key unlocks will reveal to him something that his father wanted him to find. Just as we approach the half-way point, Oskar comes face to face with a mysterious mute stranger who rents a room from Oskar's grandmother. The renter, who is listed in the credits as "The Renter," is played by Max von Sydow, for my money the best part of the movie.

As related above, since the writers and directors have slowly built up the search involving the mysterious key, spending one hour just to set the stage, one might expect either a fascinating, or perhaps dramatic, adventure, preferably both. One would hope the intriguiging Renter would prove to be an essential part of Oskar's sleuthing. Put another way, it would not be unreasonable to expect a big payoff - - a "wow moment" for lack of a better phrase. I am sorry to report, the only feeling of "wow" I had was thinking about how little of that there was for a movie that had big name stars and has been promoted via previews for at least two months prior to its release this weekend. Sandra Bullock is wasted as the mom. She has less screen time than does Tom Hanks, even though Hanks' character is doneskie in the first reel. We figure out the Renter's secret well before Oskar does. And Oskar, although a cute, precocious kid, is not my cup of tea for a two hour stretch. I could not buy into the relationship between him and his mother, both in the way he talked to her and especially with respect to the secret he kept from her. His dead father would not have approved.

Don't Be Afraid To Use "Me"

In my introductory blog from December 6, 2011 ("Following David Brinkley's Lead"), I wrote that one of the topics I planned to write about was grammar. Immediately the old Johnny Mercer song "Fools Rush In" comes to mind. "Fools rush in, where wise men fear to tread." The obvious risk is that when someone writes about grammar, there'd better be no grammatical error in the piece or else all credibility is lost. I am going to play the part of the fool, and periodically tread into the topic anyway. This is my first such blogging effort. When I'm done writing I will proof read it an extra time, hoping to spot any error before pushing the "Publish" button. Since my blog entries are usually inundated with comments (cough! cough!), I'm sure the Grammar Police will let me know if I screw up.

I have found that many people avoid using the personal pronoun "me" and, instead, substitute the personal pronoun "I," even though in some situations the result is a grammar faux pas. I attribute this to two likely causes. First, when they were in school it was probably drilled into them that you never use "me" as the subject of a sentence. For example, you would not write or say, "Me and my mother went shopping." Instead, the sentence should be, "My mother and I went shopping." Unfortunately, the concept of cases, in particular nominative and objective cases, was never taught, never learned, or forgotten. A word being used as a subject or as a predicate nominative is in the nominative case. A word being used as a direct object, an indirect object or the object of a preposition is in the objective case. The word "I" is nominative case; the word "me" is objective case.

That leads me to the second cause of the confusion. It is most likely true that one cannot recognize the object of a preposition unless she knows a preposition when she sees one. [An aside: My Uniform Commercial Code professor, Doug Heidenreich, always preferred to use "she" instead of "he" or "he and she" or "s/he," and I am following suit.] The problem with preposition recognition is that, unlike other parts of speech, there is no great definition for the word "preposition." For example, a noun is defined as "a person place or thing." An adjective is "a word that describes or modifies a noun." A verb is "a word that shows action or a state of being/existing." Definitions for pronouns, adverbs, interjections and conjunctions are similarly easy to remember because they are concise. The same cannot be said for a preposition. Check out this definition of "preposition," as described on Dictionary.com:

"any member of a class of words found in many languages that are used before nouns, pronouns, or other substantives to form phrases functioning as modifiers of verbs, nouns, or adjectives, and that typically express a spatial, temporal, or other relationship."

All I can say after reading that definition is, "Huh?"

In view of the above, it is my contention that the only way, or at least the BEST way, to recognize a preposition is to memorize a list of them. Although there may be dozens of words which, arguably, have at one time or another been used as a preposition, if you memorize the following list of 28 words you will be good to go for over 95% of the times when a preposition comes into play. That list is as follows:

about, above, across, after, against, among, around, at
before, behind, beside, between
by, down, during, except, for, from,
in, near, of, off,
through, to, toward,
under, up, with

Sure, you could come up with a few more. What about "into" or "since"? Okay, include those words along with any other of your favorites if you'd like. The point is, you would be well advised to memorize the list. Why? Because (again) we can't tell if a word is the object of a preposition unless we recognize the preposition itself. If you have a choice between "I" and "me" following a preposition, please opt for "me." Examples: Ronald went with Justin and me to the game. Veronica said that the best present she received was the one from Betty and me.

Those of you who are astute readers might wonder why I broke up the list of 28 words into six lines. The answer is that I have borrowed that strategy from my sixth grade teacher at St. Joe's in Libertyville, Sister Jane. She made us memorize one line a day. After six days, we had them down. That was fifty-three years ago, and I can still rattle them off! Yes, I am sold on the theory that memorizing the list is easier and more practical than memorizing the convoluted definition.

In conclusion, be on the lookout for prepositions, and if the situation calls for objective case, be sure to use "me" instead of "I."

Movie Review: "Tower Heist"

"Tower Heist": B-. "Tower Heist" can be evaluated with three words: preposterous but entertaining. I was mostly hoping for at least entertaining when I attended the movie last night at the Hopkins Theater for $2.50. I did not have "Tower Heist" on my "must see" list - - probably nobody does - - but decided to go at the last minute.

Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) is the manager of The Tower, a Park Central West high rise in New York City. The building is top drawer in every way, with state of the art security, a twenty-four hour concierge service, round the clock room service, a doorman and elevator operators, and enough staff to fulfill the residents' every whim, such as dog walking and grocery shopping. Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) is a Wall Street tycoon who lives in the penthouse suite, complete with it's Olympic size swimming pool. We are introduced to Lester the doorman (Stephen Henderson), who is the coolest character in the movie, Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick), the fired Merrill Lynch stock broker who's about to be evicted from The Tower, Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe) from room service, Enrique (Michael Pena), the newly hired elevator operator, and an assortment of a few other folks who all work for the building management company. The company has a pension plan for its employees, but we aren't too far into the show before we find out that Shaw is being nailed by the FBI for embezzelment and fraud, and (as Hollywood luck would have it) that all the The Tower employees' pension money which Josh had entrusted to Shaw for investment is missing. Their life savings has vanished. The majority of the story details how Josh and his cronies seek to recover the money which they believe Shaw is hiding from the FBI, so that their co-workers can get their money back. Somehow they figure that Shaw has the money hidden in a secret vault in his penthouse. (This last example of deductive reasoning is just one of the many preposterous occurrences which occur in just about every scene in the movie.)

None of the participants in Josh's recovery scheme has experience in burglary, so Josh springs Slide (Eddie Murphy), a street punk from his neighborhood, from jail by posting bail and makes him a key part of the recovery scheme. As is typical of other Eddie Murphy characters, Slide does not trust Josh and his white bread homies, and the feeling is mutual.

In order to enjoy this film you have to suspend all expectations of reality and sensibility. Enjoy the one-liners, the action sequences and the special effects. You can probably guess how this story ends, but it is the journey, not the destination, that you are paying for when you buy your ticket of admission.

Movie Review: "The Iron Lady"

"The Iron Lady": B-. Margaret Thatcher was elected to serve three terms as the Prime Minister of England, that country's highest office. She was the first woman to hold that position, and she did so from 1979 to 1990. Even as a young girl she was never shy about stating her position, even when her audience was comprised of only men. Meryl Streep consumes the character of this woman, who became known as the "Iron Lady" because of her unwillingness to compromise with her opponents. Thatcher's term as PM coincided with President Ronald Regan's years in the White House (1981-1989), but they had a lot more than that in common. Both leaders were steadfast in their conservatism, and were highly critical of unions and the propensity of previous central governments of their respective countries to solve problems by throwing money after them. Their dual mantras were accountability and not spending more than you take in.

At first blush Thatcher's life would seem to be a difficult one to portray in a movie. Many of her finest moments, such as her determination in 1982 to send the British navy thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean to route the Agentinian army from the Falkland Islands, were realized by decisions she made behind a desk. Her private life was not particularly flashy or unusual. The decision to tell Thatcher's bio on film may have been primarily based on Streep's acting ability. When you see her on the screen, she IS Margaret Thatcher.

For some reason the film makers decided to unveil the story by introducing us to the main character after she has lost much of her mental acuity. She has breakfast with her husband and carries on conversations with him throughout the day, even though he has been dead for months. Margaret can't bring herself to dispose of her husband's suits or other articles of clothing, because he may need them. She forgets that her son is living in South Africa. She lives independently but is under the worried eye of her daughter who checks in with her on a regular basis. Her mind carries her back to earlier times when she was growing up as the daughter of a grocer, and later as she became a fearless voice of the Conservative Party in the UK.

I believe this story telling approach, to focus on Thatcher's character as a dottering old woman merely to be used as a getaway point for the many flashbacks, was a mistake. The fact that Thatcher is probably a victim of the onset of dementia does not add anything of value, other than an opportunity for actor Jim Broadbent to provide some light-hearted on-screen moments as the dearly departed Denis Thatcher. The film viewers would have been better served by seeing more of Margaret as a young woman and as a novice politician rising to the top of her country's government. You would think that there would be so much to tell about her eleven years as Prime Minister that little time, if any, would be spent on her post-retirement. Yet, unfortunately, that is exactly what this movie delivers - - an overdose of her days as a diminished senior citizen.

Fourth Annual Movie Ratings Recap

For the last four years I have darkened the doors of my family members' e-mail in-boxes by writing reviews of movies I saw in the theater and assigning a grade to each of those flicks. Then, in January of the succeeding year, I would issue a ratings recap, showing the titles of each reviewed movie and their respective grades.

In 2008, 2009 and 2010 I saw twenty-nine, twenty-one and thirty-one movies, respectively. For that entire three year period I gave only one movie, "The Kids Are All Right" from 2010, a grade of A. I bestowed a grade of A- on ten movies*, and luckily only had to suffer through two movies ranked lower than a C-: "Vantage Point" (D) from 2008, and "Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past" (D-) from 2009.

I saw twenty-eight movies in the theater during calendar year 2011, and, as noted above, on a monthly (sometimes semi-monthly) basis I wrote a review, assigned grades and e-mailed them to the fam. What follows here is a recap of the list of those movies and their respective grades. Within each grade, the movies are listed in order of preference. For example, of the eleven movies to which I assigned a grade of B+, I liked "Bridesmaids" the best and "Water For Elephants" the least. If you haven't done so already, you may want to refer to the Prelude I posted on this blog three days ago. It explains my theory of grading.

Without further ado, here is my Movie Ratings Recap for 2011.

MOVIE RATINGS RECAP FOR 2012:

A True Grit
A- Drive; Win Win; The King's Speech; Moneyball
B+ Bridesmaids; Midnight In Paris; The Ides Of March; Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows; My Week With Marilyn; Page 1: Inside The New York Times; J Edgar; Jane Eyre; The Black Swan; Crazy Stupid Love; Water For Elephants
B The Fighter; Friends With Benefits; The Trip; The Descendants; Contagion; One Day; Like Crazy
B- Cedar Rapids; The Double Hour
C+ Footloose; Certified Copy; Melancholia
C None
C- None
D None
D- None
F None

Movies which arrived in Minneapolis toward the end of 2011 which I still plan on seeing include "The Help," "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol," "The Artist" and the American version of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo." My initial decision not to see "Dragon Tattoo" was based on the fact that I doubted the original 2010 movie from Europe could be improved upon very much by the American film makers; I gave the original a grade of A-. However, after seeing the trailer of the American film and excerpts from a few critics' reviews, I've changed my mind.

Please don't forget to turn your cell phone ringers off, and if you slurp your soda or text during the movie, I just might dump my popcorn over your head.

____________

* The ten movies I've graded A- during 2008-2010 are: from 2008, "Under The Same Moon," "Roman De Gare" and "Juno"; from 2009, "The Wrestler," "Inglorious Basterds" and "Doubt"; and, from 2010, "Inside Job," "Shutter Island," "Crazy Heart" and "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo."

Prelude To 2011 Movie Ratings Recap

The blogosphere must be getting pretty excited, because tomorrow I plan to publish my fourth annual Movie Ratings Recap for the twenty-eight films I saw in a theater during calendar year 2011.

Unlike a professional movie critic who must review many movies which he might not have personally chosen to see, I only attend movies which I think will prove to be well-made, entertaining and worth the price of admission. I go into the theater expecting that the movie will be at least a "B." If I expected less, I probably would not even stick my big toe in the theater. If a movie meets, but does not exceed, my expectations, I give it a "B." Therefore, a "B" is my base. Accordingly, it stands to reason that I am going to award more movies with high marks than low marks, because I am pre-sorting what I predict will be inferior movies from the list of flicks I want to see. With that as a given, here is what follows:

JOHNNY ROCK'S RATINGS SYSTEM:

A One of the best 40 or so movies I have ever seen.
A- One of the very best movies I will see during the relevant year, but not quite worthy of an A.
B+ Very good; exceeded my expectations.
B Met, but did not exceed, my expectations.
B- Not a bad movie, but did not meet my expectations.
C+ Not a good movie, but had some redeeming qualities such as a particular acting job, a clever dialogue passage, or an interesting concept which could have been better executed.
C A mediocre movie with few, if any, redeeming qualities.
C- A below average movie which I would not recommend to anyone, even if there was free admission.
D+ I never give a grade of D+ (nor do I ever give an A+). If a movie deserves a notch better than a D, I give it a C-.
D Obviously below average. I might invent a bathroom break just so I don't have to watch the whole thing.
D- A movie which deserves an F, but someone like Scarlett Johansson or Julianne Hough saves it from damnation.
F A movie which I simply cannot watch to its conclusion because it sucks, so I walk out and don't return.

My unwillingness to grant an A+ or a D+ plus goes back to my teaching days (1969-1980). I figured if a kid got an A he should be extremely delighted, not dissapointed that he did not get an A+. I was, and remain, a tough grader. Getting an A from me should not leave the recipient wanting more. As for the grade of D+, it was, and remains, my opinion that there is a perception of a vast gap between a D+ and a C-, moreso than, say, the gap between a C+ and a B-. Even though each pair represents a difference of only one notch, the stigma associated with getting a D seems to adhere equally to getting a D+.

Finally, a word or two about timing. As mentioned in the first paragraph above, this will be the fourth time I have published a Movie Ratings Recap. (The first three Recaps were e-mailed, not put on a blog.) Each Recap pertains to movies I saw in a theater during the preceding calendar year. Thus, a few of the movies seen in the first couple of months of any year may have actually been released toward the end of the year before. And, because some of the big buzz movies are released at the very end of the calendar year (and even then, sometimes not at any movie house in the Twin Cities), I did not get to see them until mid-to-late winter. The choice of using a calendar year for my Recaps, therefore, is not totally ideal. Maybe using a twelve month period starting March 1 would be better. But, being the linear guy that I am, using a calendar year is more appealing to me, so that's what I'm going with.