'War Stories'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
Saw "Definitely, Maybe", and amazingly Abigail Breslin didn't steal the movie from the cuteness that is Ryan Reynolds. It was rather sweet and unexpected and the writing rather reminded me of the fun that was The West Wing: lots of smart, passionate, complicated people and very fast-paced dialogue.
And yet, it was so a male Jane Austen story: who will the guy hook up with! / is beaten by Jane Austen fans
We watched Across the Universe. I was amazed at the sheer pointlessness of it all. Aside from the gimmick, there's really nothing there. There's some neat choreography here and there, but the use of the Beatles songs isn't really interesting in and of itself; they're not used creatively. Here's a Beatles song, and here's another Beatles song, and here's another Beatles song. And I'm not sure whether there was an actual plot because I fell asleep.
there's really nothing there
Well there is a story, but I thought it was a very similar story to HAIR. After I got tired of Beatles music I kept getting distracted but little things would pull me back in until I realized that it was the similarities to HAIR that were regaining my interest. I did manage to watch the entire film and the visuals were stunning.
I thought the trailers made it out to be more cracked-out than it actually was.
My mother rented Romance and Cigarettes because it looked like good fun. We sat down as a family and suddenly there's "stick your finger up my a$$" and other horrors and was a lot more crass and vulgar than either of us had been expecting, and a lot less funny/quirky like the trailer was. I tried finishing it later when my father wasn't present and it just slowly got worse. And the musical scenes left much to be desired. Seriously, lip-synching?
Saw The Hammer and In Bruges last night. After a slow start, I really liked Bruges, and thought the performances were excellent. It was clealry a movie written by a playwright, but the actors really dug inot the dialogue. Brendan Gleeson was all kinds of subtle and good.
The Hammer is a cute little low-budget movie which stars Adam Carolla (of Loveline and Man Show game) and was actually quite sweet and enjoyable.
Persian king Xerxes was not an 8-foot-tall Cirque du Soleil reject.
You don't say!
Including 2001 doesn't really seem fair.
I'm amazed they only devoted three sentences to Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Was there one single moment in that movie that wouldn't make a history teacher cry?