For some reason, this movie seemed best reviewed in list format:
I’ll give this movie 7/10. I won’t remember it because of the film itself, but because it was the last movie Lisa and I saw at the dearly missed Har Mar Theater.
I have to admit to being a bit confused as to why A History of Violence was as well-received as it was. It’s not a bad film, but it’s not a particularly good one, either. The acting was kind of tepid, and it was chock full of cliches: Good natured, honest working folk in small town America–is there a dark underside? Of course there is! On top of that, the movie, set in Indiana, doesn’t make the slightest effort to hide the fact it was actually filmed in Canada. Hello, road stripes, people!
Final verdict: It’s good it’s out on video. That way you don’t have spend real money on it. 6/10.
While The Da Vinci Code is by no means the unmitigated disaster some have portrayed it to be, it’s by no means good, and in that sense it didn’t seem that odd that the guy sitting next to Lisa and I fell asleep about a third of the way through the movie. All the actors seemed to be on sedatives–especially Audrey Tautou, who’s character had practically no response to learning she was related to Jesus–and in the end it kind of felt like we’d just watched an action movie that had forgotten to include the action. Robert Langdon’s cop-out speech near the end of the movie was annoying, too, especially since it was worded broadly enough to basically endorse the behavior of the bad guys in the story, not to mention those taking part in religious practices ranging from ritualized paganistic sex to, oh, human sacrifice.
If the book is even half this bad, I don’t want anything to do with it. 5/10.
Shopgirl: Interesting story, good acting, great cinematography, and thankfully not as similar to Garden State or Lost in Translation as its trailer would suggest. It’s a fairly melancholy movie (especially when pondering Steve Martin’s character), but in a good way. 7/10.
First rule of action movies: Thou shall not be boring. By that rule alone, Poseidon is a massive failure. Sure, the special effects are nifty, but, with two very tenuous exceptions, the characters aren’t interesting, and despite it not being a carbon copy of the original, the storyline is exceedingly predictable. (I probably had a 95% prediction rate for what would happen next.) Short ride, zero thrill.
Josh Lucas’ and Richard Dreyfuss’ characters were almost worth watching, but for everyone else, it was like, please die so we can go home. I was prepared because of bad reviews, but it was still disappointing. 3/10.
Mission: Impossible III is a fantastically bad movie, but, unfortunately, not in the so-bad-it’s-actually-good way. No, it’s just really, really bad, the worst movie I’ve seen in a very long time. Bad plot, worse acting (except for Philip Seymour Hoffman, who’s on screen for, what, 10 minutes?), and the most EXCRUCIATINGLY PAINFUL use of the line “I love you” ever committed to film. Topping it all off, Tom Cruise comes across as batshit insane in his performance as he often does in real life.
Avoid this movie. Even if you’re curious, it’s simply not worth it. 2/10.
While I’ve pretty much managed to repress Always, and have never had the misfortune of seeing Hook or 1941, it would seem to me that The Terminal may very well be Steven Spielberg’s worst movie. While the film wants us to root for a number of its characters, most of them are so annoying that’s it’s very difficult to do so. That’s not even touching the situations they find themselves in and the decisions they make. The movie tries to play everything straight, but it comes off as contrived and ridiculous.
On the bright side, the set is pretty cool, but the fact one has to reach for something like that suggests the movie probably isn’t worth seeing. 4/10.
Inside Man probably could’ve been tightened up a bit, but overall was a pretty enjoyable twist on the bank robbery convention. The acting was very solid—Jodi Foster specifically put in an excellent performance—and the characters were generally interesting and believable. In typical Spike Lee fashion, there were plenty of bigoted white characters, although in this case they were pretty much restricted to those in the NYPD. The movie also had a very good look, and although this probably doesn’t matter to many, from a graphic design stantpoint the opening credits were downright sexy. 7/10.
Crash is beautiful to look at, wonderfully acted, and has a great soundtrack. How unfortunate that it has to be torpedoed by a completely unbelievable plot. Complex storylines and crossing paths can make a movie when they make sense—Syriana was challenging but believable in this regard—but Crash eventually collapses under the weight of its own coincidences.
It’s unfortunate, but the movie is a mess, and it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. 6/10.
Rabbit-Proof Fence is a very pretty and surprisingly well-acted film, one that manages to confront racism without being preachy about it. While there’s apparently some disagreement as to its accuracy, it does work as a basic introduction to the Stolen Generations, something I suspect most of us outside Australia don’t know much about. (More surprising than anything else is that the Australian government continued the policy of removing mixed-race Aboriginal children from their parents up to the 1970’s.) And for that, it’s worth checking out. 8/10.
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