Danny Boyle's done it again. While I wouldn't say that his latest film, 127 Hours is his best and it didn't give me the immediate rush that Slumdog Millionaire did (but I have a feeling this one might age better), he's made a great film and one of the best movies of the year.

The film is probably better if you know less about it so all I'll say is that it's a true story about an action junkie who gets his arm stuck under a rock in a canyon and is trapped. He had a video camera with him so he was able to record his days stuck in the canyon with nobody around but him and his memories. I'd definitely recommend checking this one out.

If you want to know more about the film, click continue reading below but there will be spoilers.

On the other end of the spectrum is "City Island", which I caught on DVD. This movie hits my biggest pet peeve - conflict arising from unnecessary communication breakdowns. In this case, a prison guard discovers that the son he abandoned before he was born is in his jail and has to stay there if no family claims him. So Andy Garcia's prison guard character takes in the young man... but doesn't tell him that he is his father. He also doesn't tell his wife, with whom he's having huge problems, that the kid is his son (even though he says that he's wanted to tell her but couldn't find the right time.) In this case, bringing the kid home isn't "the right time"; no, it's better just to randomly bring some strange convict into the home.

The film, billed as a comedy, is one inexplicable miscommunication after another. The film feels like it's trying to be a Shakespearean farce set in the Bronx but it fails on most every level. (I'd say that some SPOILERS are coming but, honestly, if you don't see them coming from the very beginning then... well... I don't know what to tell you.) In a well-planned story, the lies are told for a reason and have to be maintained or something could be lost. In this case, the lies are just making a bad situation worse but when the lies are finally revealed... they're just back to their original bad situation. The ending reminded me of Baby Boy, an unearned happy ending that isn't really happy at all; it's just a momentary beat of happiness before the real world knocks them back down to where they were. It's a simplistic story that critics seemed to embrace; I found the movie to be a boring, frustrating chore. Honestly, I think most critics liked it because the film is basically the most positive spin on a midlife crisis that I've ever seen. Andy Garcia's character is chasing his dream of being an actor and I think a lot of the critics, wannabe writers most of whom never made it but would love to make it happen, probably felt like if Garcia's character could make it, so could they.
On the bright side, Alan Arkin has a nice little bit role and I always love Emily Mortimer (even though her character seemed fairly ridiculous.)

So while I think everyone should check out 127 Hours, I'd only recommend City Island to people who are trying to justify their midlife crisis and give them hope that their dreams might come true and make the rest of their life better off.