Reviews

What a disappointment. Fine acting, lovely scenery, and nice to

see Giancarlo Giannini again, but otherwise a waste of time. The

characters are what made Silence of the Lambs so compelling,

but here they are one-dimensional figures doing (more or less)

exactly what you'd expect, with silly gore added to make everything

seem interesting. Sorry, I need more than that.

I enjoyed Chocloat for its simplicity and sweet predictability--there's not much new or startling here, but the story

is nicely told and the characters are, on the whole, interesting and

well drawn. The only jarring note is Johnny Depp--I usually like

him, but he was just the wrong guy for this part. The film creates a

sense of softness, of smoothed edges--Juliette Binoche is

wonderful in maintaining this tone, even in her scenes of

emotional conflict--but Johnny Depp's Irish riverman intrudes like a

shard of glass. He's edgy and angular, and he strikes exactly the

wrong note. I could happily suspend my disbelief and enjoy the

movie's unlikely situations, but I drew the line at believing the

Binoche character could ever fall in love with the character Johnny

Depp creates.

The irony that had me giggling throughout Finding Forrester was

that a movie about a great writer had such terrible writing. The

script was cliched and sentimental, and the climactic scene, from

beginning to end, showed just plain lazy writing. It was

embarrassing to watch poor F. Murray Abraham struggle with his

ridiculous lines. I don't mind formulaic movies sometimes, and I

did find this one entertaining, but I wish the script writers had

consulted some real writers before trying to tackle this subject.

Though interestingly acted, the movie is ultimately disappointing.

Billy Bob played up the romance--the least interesting part of the

novel--and left out the more complex ideas that make McCarthy

worth reading. (Biggest crime: cutting the Duena Alfonsa almost

entirely out of the story.) I had high hopes, but found the movie

simplistic and dull.

The Undefeated is fun to watch, but most of the cast--especially John Wayne--could have phoned in their performances. If you've watched westerns, you've seen most of this before, aside from a somewhat ambiguous ending that suggests a definition for heroism at odds with more typical John Wayne fare. But everyone on screen seems to be having fun, approaching the movie more as a lark than a challenge, which rubs off on the audience. Don't hold your expectations too high, and you'll pass a pleasant hour or two.

I have never understood why so many people consider this movie a great thriller. It has a few spooky & exciting moments, but overall it is terribly predictable and disappointing. Brad Pitt is insufferable, and the old, wise cop vs. young, arrogant rookie thing has been done to death in better movies than this one. There is little here that is original or creative--it's fine for a rental, but I'm sorry I wasted my money when it was in the theaters.

When I saw this movie, I felt like I was at a double feature.

The first half is exciting, the second half is intriguing, and it seems to me that each could more or less stand on its own. Fused together as one, however, the movie has a forced, discomfiting intimacy, as if Wenders had spliced a set of twins together and called them conjoined. Worth seeing, however, and it also has a great soundtrack.

An interesting premise, with civil law vs. tribal law, and a culture clash so imbedded in a society that it lingers even in the soul (?) of an otherwise unassuming lawyer. However, The Last Wave bogs down in a muddled narrative and loses itself in dark dream/chase scenes that come too late to salvage a story that moves at the rate of molasses. I like Weir, and I can see plenty of Weir-ness here, but this movie taxed my patience.