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plumsmuggler82
Reviews
Love Hollywood Style (2006)
Love, Hollywood Style
You'll see me as a random extra in the crane shot of the poolside party scene. Where you won't see me though, is in the credits as one of the PAs in spite of the slaving I did. In all seriousness, I'm not bitter about the experience, but the set decoration is possibly the worst I've ever seen. I've been looking forward to seeing the finished product for three years since I worked on it and hope that some day it's available on Netflix.
Michael Stein, if you read this, (and I know you will) I think you're an awesome guy and a pretty damn good director. If you ever run into a spare million dollars or two, I've got some projects that need funding.
The Last Castle (2001)
Pay the $9
I managed to catch a press screening of this movie back at the start of summer and what I saw blew me away. When I received the initial invitation for the screening, I read on the paper that it was about a convicted general and his fight with the warden. So needless to say, I went into this movie thinking that it would be more or less another crappy prison movie. Like The "Shawshank Redemption" meets "Attica". Not that those movies are bad, but I was expecting a bad mish mash of the two plots. The other thing that was bugging me was the fact that James Gandolfini was cast in the role of the warden. Now, I have seen almost all of Gandolfini's work, including some of his plays, and I was doubting of his ability to pull off his certain role.
Right from the beginning, my doubts of Gandolfini's ability were thrown out of the window. He was able to pull off something completely different from what I was afraid he was going to be typecast as. As for Robert Redford, he was vintage Redford. As I watched, I saw remnants of his roles in `Indecent Proposal', `Sneakers' and `The Sting'. Even more interesting, I had striking flashbacks to Harry in `The Great Escape.' As the movie progressed, I watched in awe at the way that everything was sewn up tight leaving no loose ends.
All throughout the movie, I never once got bored or annoyed with the characters or the action unlike other recent movies like say, `15 Minutes' or the grossly treated `Pearl Harbor'. For once, I was genuinely engrossed in the whole movie. The characters were sharp; the plot was predictable but damn good in spite of that and the way everything was executed with pinpoint precision. How refreshing to have a movie experience that doesn't leave you wanting more.
I won't go into detail with the specifics of the film, but I will tell you that this is truly deserving of the $9 to see watch it. I also suggest that you go and see this one in the theater and not wait for it to come out on video. I do apologize if this seems to be a little serving to the movie, but it was good enough to keep me interested and if any of you know me, for a movie to keep me interested, it has to be damn good. So I encourage you, even if you are not of the prison/war movie genre, go see this movie. Pay the money, buy the popcorn rip the ticket and watch the movie. That is all, go back to surfing