Posts filed under 'Movies'
Spanglish is about a mother (Paz Vega) that immigrates from Mexico to the US with her daughter where she becomes a housekeeper to a chef (Adam Sandler) and his eccentric wife (Tea Leoni). A series of events unfold between these characters that makes for some good comedy.
If you’ve seen any of James Brooks’ films (Terms of Endearment, As Good As It Gets), you can definitely tell that this one has his signature on it. His movies are usually very character-driven with a good amount of mush - and this movie is no exception. While I thought the actors did a fine job with their characters (especially Leoni), I found the story to have little grip to it until the end, which pretty much let me down. I haven’t seen Sandler’s first take at a drama (Punch Drunk Love), but this is the first one I’ve seen and I think he did a good job.
April 18th, 2005
I didn’t think I would have liked this movie at all, and only rented it to pacify my wife. But, I have to admit, Mona Lisa Smile was an OK movie. Although, the basic theme (a teacher changing the lives of students) is tired, there is some good acting by the women in the movie. Julia Roberts plays a liberal art history teacher that begins a new job at a very conservative New England all-womens college where all the girls are very educated, but more interested in marrying and staying at home.
I thought the best acting in this ensemble was done by Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Marcia Gay Harden (who played a small part, but very well). I don’t know what it is about Julia Roberts, but she has never really impressed me as an actress even though she’s been in some good movies. I think the closest she’s ever gotten was for her role in Erin Brokocvich. Anyway, the rest of the cast was decent and while the story was good, it was really predictable.
April 10th, 2005
Ladder 49 starring Joaquin Phoenix and John Travolta is a slightly original movie about the life of a firefighter, but full of cliches. The movie is really just one big flashback of the life of Jack Morrison (Phoenix) as he waits to get rescued from a large factory fire by his fellow firemen.
I think if you were or are close to someone that works as a firefighter (or even police), then you will be very touched by this movie. The reason is because of the good job this movie does with developing the character of Jack and getting the audience attached to him. This is why I think this movie stands out from other firefighting movies that I’ve seen. There aren’t any mysteries, corruption, or arsonists to catch. It is simply about the life of a public servant and why he is driven to do his job. There is also plenty of the typical action you’d expect to see. Unfortunatlely, “typical” might be the word to describe most of rest of the movie. There a lot of the cliches that go along with being a rookie and being a firefighter. But, overall, the acting and story was decent.
April 10th, 2005
Finding Neverland is not so much of a biopic of the author of Peter Pan as it is an account of how the story came to be. It basically introduces us to all of the events and situations that inspired the author, James Matthew Barrie (played by Johnny Depp), to write his famous story.
This movie has great acting, especially by Depp and Freddie Highmore, who plays the boy that is Peter’s namesake. Another thing that I kept thinking about while I was watching the movie was how great the timing and tempo of the screenplay was. The story didn’t move too fast or too slow. Maybe I was analyzing it too much, but I’ve never really took notice of that in a movie before. But still, there was something about this movie that didn’t quite put it in my Netflix 5-star category. I can’t put my finger on it, because I liked the movie a lot, but I think it had something to do with not becoming attached to the characters in the movie - specifically Kate Winslet’s character. I’m sure I’m not spoiling anything, because it’s quite apparent in the trailer that she is going to die at the end, but I wasn’t really all that sad when it happened.
April 7th, 2005
I’m finally starting to catch up my reviews! Only this one and another and I’ll be caught up.
I saw The Upside of Anger a couple weeks ago, but it left a pretty good impression on me. All I have to say is this: Joan Allen WILL get nominated for an Academy Award, if not win, for Best Actress. While I doubt it, Kevin Costner might get an Oscar nod for his great performance as well. Anyway, about the movie: Upside is about a man leaving his wife, Terry (Allen), and their four teenage daughters. While Terry vents and watches her life fall apart, her neighbor and former baseball star, Denny (Costner), attempts to court her.
Although this movie is classified as a drama (and rightly so because it deals with some serious issues), I found myself laughing harder than I have in a while at a movie. Allen’s reactions to the string of traumatic events that take place in her life are hysterical! Allen and Costner’s chemistry on the screen is really believable as well. The screenplay was not too predictable and the script was very realistic. The four teenage daughters, played by Erik Christensen, Even Rachel Wood, Keri Russell, and Alicia Witt all turned out great performances. I just hope Wood starts to take on some different move roles besides the dark, broody teenager. There really weren’t that many downsides to Upside. The acting performances were terrific, but while I don’t think the overall movie was Oscar-caliber, it’s close.
March 31st, 2005
Like most everyone else, I liked Dodgeball - liked it, but didn’t love it. I didn’t roll around on the floor laughing or anything, but I found it humorous and entertaining. To summarize, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story is about the (almost too) easy-going owner of a local gym (Vince Vaughn) winning back his gym by competing against a more well-to-do gym owner (Ben Stiller) in a Las Vegas dodgeball tournament.
The cast of the underdog team from the local gym supported the movie’s laughs pretty well. Vaughn didn’t get many jokes, since he played the love interest of Christine Taylor’s character. Stiller was funny, but only because of the incredible butt his character made of himself. I was generally disgusted by Stiller’s character, White Goodman, and I thought for a moment that he was doing a bad job acting, but then it clicked - he was exagerrating his character to make me not like him. Well, it worked - and that’s what makes this an underdog story. You get to hate White so much that you can’t wait for him to get beat at the end.
March 28th, 2005
If you are a fan of martial arts and oriental storytelling, then please rent Hero as soon as possible and you won’t be sorry. I would also highly recommend this to anyone that liked Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or anyone that is a cinematography buff. The story of Hero, without giving too much away, is the narrative account by a man that killed 3 legendary assassins that were out to kill the first emperor of China.
If anything, you should see this movie for some of the most breathtaking images that you will ever see on a movie or television screen. The martial arts are exquisitely done as well, a la Crouching Tiger style. What I mean by that is you will see the characters do things that aren’t humanly possible (like jump gracefully 50 ft into the air), but somehow believe that they just can because of who they are. The acting also seemed to be very good, but not great. One thing I have trouble with in watching foreign language films is reading the subtitles while trying to watch the imagery. But because of that, I got to really understand the dialogue and story, which was great. Finally, and I will repeat this if necessary - this is not your typical Jet Li film. Even though Li is in it, this is a very different type of film from the others in his portfolio.
March 28th, 2005
I’m going to make this quick. I like Woody Allen movies, and Sweet and Lowdown was no exception. The movie follows the short career of a 1930’s conceited jazz guitarist named Emmett Ray (Sean Penn). Along the way, he falls in love and marries a mute girl named Hattie (Samantha Morton).
Sean Penn and Samantha Morton both gave excellent performances. That’s not saying much for Penn since he always excels, but Morton took on the role of mute girl (i.e. - no lines or dialogue) and still projected a lot of emotion in her body language. I would recommend this movie to people looking for something lighthearted and original, and I would highly recommend this to Woody Allen fans.
March 28th, 2005
Ok, I am soooo overdue on movie reviews, so unfortunately, these next 4 might be lacking in quality and length.
I Heart Huckabees was an interesting movie that kept me pretty entertained, although I felt lost at times with all of the metaphysics mumbo-jumbo. The movie is about a young man, Albert (Jason Schwartzman, who is awesome), who hires a pair of existential detectives (Lilly Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman) to solve the mystery of some strange, coincidental meetings he had with a tall African man. And that’s where to movie starts to get weird. Mark Wahlberg, Jude Law and Naomi Watts also star in the movie as having a connection to Albert’s coincidence and each have great performances.
I thought the movie’s content was really strange and sometimes hard to digest, but I think that’s part of what makes it entertaining. You aren’t just given some dialogue to listen to, but instead have to think about what has just been said. Also, the performances by the cast and the direction that was given was very well done. The movie starts out very silly, but starts getting a little serious towards the end, and that’s when the actors shine - especially Jude Law.
March 17th, 2005
Since this blog is movie-centric, I thought it should be noted that Google now does move-based searches. Basically, just type in “movie:” proceeded by your zip code (to find movies playing at theatres near you), an actor, a movie title, a quote from a movie, or anything else, and you’ll get special results relating to movies that relate to your search string. Each result comes with an average movie rating for each movie based on reviews on the Internet. If you click the movie title, you’ll get a page that lists all of the reviews it takes into account and has very simple Gmail-like navigation and filtering. Go to their blog post to find out more info on how to leverage this new searching power.
March 2nd, 2005
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