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Title
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Description
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The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers |
Wow. At times so totally absorbing that you forget it's a movie and 3 hours goes by in a flash. It's definitely got a "middle movie" feel because you transition instantly into action and when it finishes on a down, quiet note, you know there's more to come. I liked the frantic, conflicted Gollum and, surprisingly, the Arwen/Aragorn dream scenes. The movie followed the book pretty closely and the few times it strayed were OK. Some details had to be left out to fit within 3 hours, but I think overall they did a good job. Probably works a little better for Tolkien fans since it's much easier to follow nuances of the dialogue after you've read the book.
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Star Trek: Nemesis |
This one was OK, but just slightly above average. It starts out just fine with the entire gang, but then focuses mostly on Picard in the middle. There were some decent action scenes, but somehow it just felt too familiar and was starting to lose me in the middle, until the last 30 minutes which were very good (involving more of the crew). The series is starting to feel a bit old and tired and needs something new to keep it fresh. The last really good one was First Contact.
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Solaris |
Science Fiction film that remains true to the genre (like A.I.); an exploration of human issues in a futuristic setting and at the end you're still somewhat confused. George Clooney plays a psychologist sent to help a small team of scientists who are behaving strangely in a spacecraft orbiting a very strange world. When he arrives he finds that things have indeed gone very badly and he starts to understand why. Not for everyone, this is a slow-moving adult story without much physical action (it occurs mostly in your own head) and there are some extended periods without dialogue where George is contemplating what's going on.
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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets |
Whatdya know, two good ones in a row. Now this is why you see movies - to be entertained! That Hogwarts school is sure full of secrets and the professors and staff have plenty of character. More of Hogwarts' darker and stranger past is revealed in this "whodunit" that has more special effects (creatures) than the original. I'm ready for the next one, although they're going to have to step on it because the kids are growing up pretty fast.
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Die Another Day |
Well, I thought this one was great! This movie was true to the 007 formula and has everything you expect from James Bond: tremendous action, evil guys trying to take over the world, double agents, gadgets galore - some of them over-the-top, girls, some plot, and even more action. This time it's the North Koreans that have developed a super weapon and some incredible plastic surgery techniques. They seem to have developed a lot of technical expertise and have a lot more money than I thought they had, but no matter, you have suspend your belief for a while. But the critics weren't as thrilled; they were looking for something that hasn't been done before and some deeper plot.
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Half Past Dead |
Steven Seagal is an FBI agent in deep-cover as a convict in New Alcatraz prison who finds himself in the middle of a prison break engineered by a disaffected FBI agent and a team of baddies to abduct an old guy who's buried a fortune in gold bullion. They're also threatening to use the electric chair on an abducted Supreme Court Justice (she was in the wrong place at the wrong time). But Steven's there to save the day, except he's too porky these days to be a convincing martial arts expert.
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My Big Fat Greek Wedding |
Lonely Toula Portokalos is looking for love, but the guy she falls for is not Greek. And that's going to be a problem because her family is Greek beyond belief. Her dad roasts lamb over a spit in the front yard, thinks that every word/name ever uttered by man has its roots in the Greek language, and his house looks like the Parthenon. What follows is a big, dumb, happy, enjoyable family movie.
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Formula 51 |
This quirky film takes Samuel L. Jackson into the underbelly of English society pedaling his magic blue pills that are made of just ordinary over-the-counter medicines, but supposedly make you feel just great. No deeper meanings here, just a bunch of very strange characters in odd situations with a weird ending. You'll be really sorry if you eat any of the red pills.
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Red Dragon |
Sir Anthony Hopkins reprises his role as a jailed Hannibal Lector who assists both the police and another murderer in this story about a dangerously wacked-out loaner with a facial deformity who gets hold of family videos and then kills the entire family. Like Norman Bates in Psycho, an overbearing mom is responsible for shaping the killer's mind as a young boy. This is a very disturbing, but riveting movie.
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The Tuxedo |
Jackie Chan plays a simple New York taximan who accidentally becomes involved in spy games that land him in a super high-tech tux (Tactical Uniform eXperiment) that integrates into his body and turns him into an incredible weapon. Jennifer Love Hewitt plays his secret agent accomplice who doesn't know he's really just a taxi driver. It was OK. Lots of action, but fewer gags than usual and I'm not a big fan of JLH.
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Ballistic |
A perpetually grim Antonio Banderas and a perpetually grim Lucy Liu play government agents in a uni-dimensional plot to stop another wayward agent who's stolen a killer nanoprobe as a relentless soundtrack throbs in the background. There's a fair amount of explosions, shooting and fighting but the plot didn't go deep enough to really interest me, and I was disappointed that the characters just looked pissed-off the whole time; there was no depth to their roles.
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City By The Sea |
Robert DeNiro plays a New York City cop with a totally messed up and abandoned family. His father got the electric chair for an accidental murder and now his estranged and drugged-out son is heading in the same direction. This forces him to review all the failures and misgivings in his life and decide to do everything he can to save his son.
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Undisputed |
Long-time California state prisoner Monroe Hutchen (Wesley Snipes) takes on Ice Man, the World's Heavyweight Champ just recently imprisoned on a rape charge, in a prison boxing match at Sweetwater State Prison - and guess who wins? What's undisputed that this movie is not really worth watching. Character development and plot are woefully minimal. I was actually rooting for the Champ since Snipes' character had no character except that he builds pagodas and suspension bridges out of toothpicks. Peter Falk was OK as an aging mobster who's cursing vocabulary was rather limited.
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Austin Powers in Goldmember |
Dr. Evil is trying to take over the world and Austin Powers must stop him. This is the first Austin Powers movie I've seen and I found it to be mildly amusing and somewhat outlandish, a few snickers and guffaws, but nothing too memorable. I think it might have been better if I had already know some of the history of the characters beforehand since there were probably some inside jokes I was missing.
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Signs |
Mel Gibson is a mild-mannered former minister who doesn't like the alien signs he sees in his cornfield and protects his young family from the intruders. The movie focuses on the scary sounds of the mostly invisible aliens and the unknown of what they're doing. I think it would have been even better to keep the aliens totally invisible throughout or slightly shimmering like the Predator, but they're sufficiently scary. Why doesn't somebody just try to shoot them? The question of life's events being purposeful or coincidence is examined and the minister regains his faith.
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Reign Of Fire |
Fire-breathing dragons are awakened from their deep sleep since dispatching the dinosaurs 65 million years ago and modern-day humans and their weapons are no match for them. Bands of humans have survived but the dragons are feasting on them. The biggest and baddest of them hangs out in London and toasts anybody who comes near. Close up the dragon is pretty cool, but he's only shown clearly at the very end of the film and there's just not enough dragon and not enough story.
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K-19: The Widowmaker |
Harrison Ford is the commander of the first Russian nuclear-powered sub and he's in a whole world of trouble. Based on the true-life story of the crew's heroic efforts to keep it afloat when the nuclear reactor goes critical this movie, and the more recent sinking of the Kurst, makes you glad you're nowhere near the Russian navy. Those guys sure went through hell. This is an OK movie although not in the same class as "Das Boot".
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Road To Perdition |
Father/son relationships and loyalties are highlighted when a 1930's Chicago mobster's "adopted" son's family is destroyed by another mobster's jealousy and greed. Oscar winners Tom Hanks and Paul Newman have central roles. The cinematography and soundtrack are great, but the pace is slow and the story is just average (except for that odd photographer/hit-man).
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The Powerpuff Girls |
Yep, another animated kid movie! This movie tells the story of how the 3 Powerpuff Girls came to be and takes them through their first action against evil. Since I'm already thoroughly familiar with all of this, about half the movie was like watching re-runs. It's actually much more entertaining if you don't know anything about them and are not expecting their high-level of energy and their kick-ass city-whomping action.
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Lilo & Stitch |
It seems like I'm mostly watching kid movies this summer. This one's not bad. A rough and tough little born-to-be-bad blue alien with an attitude escapes from his home planet, crash lands on Earth and is adopted as a "dog" by a little orphaned Hawaiian girl. The bad doggie is eventually found by his alien buddies who are on a mission to terminate him. This Disney hand-drawn animation is done in vibrant watercolors and it looks just great.
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Scooby Doo |
This live action version of the cartoon series has Scooby (digital) and the gang trying to figure out who's behind the mysterious goings on at the Spooky Island amusement park. I'm going against most of the critics on this one - I liked it. It helps to have seen the cartoon series about a jillion times and know something about the characters and the basic plot of all the episodes (the team gets royally frightened by the ghostly happenings, but eventually they solve the mystery). It kept me and the kids entertained for the full length and there are no slow spots. I wish the Spooky Island amusement park really existed because it looked really fun too.
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Bad Company |
Just an average movie with a now-typical plot: a terrorist group wants to detonate a stolen suitcase-sized Russian nuclear bomb in Manhattan and the CIA has to stop them. Anthony Hopkins' portrayal of a weathered and somewhat weary CIA agent doesn't lend much spark and Chris Rock as his street-wise cohort never has enough comic material to really get going and there was just no chemistry between them. It was OK, but certainly nothing to write home about.
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Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron |
This is an animated tale of a wild horse in the Old West, struggling with everyone who wants to tame him including the US Cavalry and an Indian tribe, and yearning to be set free. The beginning sequence and the action scenes, particularly water and fire, are absolutely beautiful and the vivid colors of the landscapes are breathtaking. The plot is pretty average and predictable, even for a kids film, but there are moments of animation that are stunning.
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Insomnia |
An R-rated Alaskan murder-mystery where we know who the murderer is near the beginning, but the mystery is where the movie is taking us. Al Pacino plays a confident, experienced LA Detective who's sent north to help a small northern town solve the murder of a young girl, but over the course of a week becomes completely worn-out and frazzled by the land of the midnight sun when he can't sleep, becomes personally involved in a second murder and then gets deeply tangled in a dangerous "cat and mouse" game when he tries to make a deal with the congenial, mild-mannered, but wilely murderer (Robin Williams).
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Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones |
This was a disappointment for me. The digital technology was great as expected; I especially liked the opening space-age city scenes that were reminiscent of Bladerunner and The Fifth Element, the chase through the asteroid belt, and the final mega-battle in the arena. But the middle was awful - lots of talking with unoriginal dialogue and uninspired directing. Anakin is totally unidimensional - just consistently angry and aggressive. The romantic scenes between Anakin and Padmé seemed contrived and unconvincing - there was little of the bantering and humor that made the original movies so fun - and the wedding ceremony at the end was so wooden that I left the theatre without much enthusiasm. This series needs different writers and a different director.
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Unfaithful |
A bored wife (Diane Lane) has fling with a young stranger and wrecks the trust of a long relationship (with Richard Gere) reminding us to choose carefully lest it all unravel. Rated R for adult situations, the suspense builds as the wife and husband gradually discover the hidden secrets about each other, however just as their relationship is being regained, the movie abruptly ends. I thought the acting was very good and there were many occasions where nothing was actually said, but the body language said "Uh, Oh" or "My God, can this be the same person I thought I knew?". I do wish the ending had been better.
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Spider-Man |
Not too surprisingly this movie has a whole lot in common with the original Superman movie - a nerdy young man with superhuman powers battles a supervillian in the Big Apple, secrets himself behind a costume and has a girlfriend that has frequent encounters with him in and out of costume and she never figures it out. But this film has less humor, is pretty grim in its portrayal of evil and has broader mushy/gushy dramatic spots. The action sequences are very well done and are very dizzying. It's all right for teenagers, but I wouldn't recommend it for smaller kids.
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Frailty |
A disturbing view of a religious man and his two sons who believes he's been visited by God and been told that it's his mission to kill "demons" and bury his victim's axe-hacked bodies in a nearby Rose Garden. The decades-long story is told from the point-of-view of one of the sons to the local FBI agent who's responsible for the "Hand Of God" case. Lots of body hacking and a few unexpected turns at the end. I was not overly impressed, although the critics seemed to like it. Don't bring the kids.
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The Scorpion King |
Another good summer Saturday afternoon-type romp through the deserts of the Middle East a couple of milleniums ago, pitting the muscle-bound Scorpion King (WWF's "The Rock") and his rag-tag band of desert misfits against the best swordsman in the world and his massive army. Don't try to make any historical sense from this film, just enjoy it. It relies less on visual effects than the previous "Mummy" movies and has more character development and a lot more humor. It's a very familiar plot - hero gets girl after struggling against long odds and dispatching the villian, but I liked it.
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Changing Lanes |
An aggressive young lawyer (Ben Affleck) causes a minor car accident and puts down a disillusioned middle-aged guy (Samuel L. Jackson) who's going through an unhappy child-custody divorce and they take turns sniping at each other and messing up each other's lives until they finally call a truce. It leaves you with the impression that some lawyers are total sleazebags (which they are).
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High Crimes |
A successful lawyer (Ashley Judd) enlists the aid of a disreputable former military lawyer (Morgan Freeman) to clear her husband from a multiple murder charges in a secret military court resulting from a massacre in El Salvador. A few twists in the end (did he or didn't he do it), but nothing very memorable about this film.
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Ice Age |
This engaging digitally-animated story could be titled "Three Extinct Animals and a Baby". The plot is very straightforward (save the human baby), the pace is snappy, the humor is less sophisticated than Shrek (I liked it better) and it's a story with a moral. Equally entertaining for adults or children. Interestingly enough the humans never say anything, it's the animals that do all the talking (except for that silly mindless squirrel critter).
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E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial |
The classic with a couple of new scenes. I think I liked it even better this time around than my kids did, although there were a couple of places where the dialogue seemed a bit like our usual home life and they thought that was pretty funny.
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The Time Machine |
A remake of the classic, but what a disappointment. It starts up very well in New York City in the 1900's, but begins going downhill when our time traveler's true love is killed and, remorsefully, he goes back in time to save her and she's killed again - it should have been tragic, but instead it's almost comical. He then goes forward in time in until he encounters the passive Eloi and the dreadful Morlocks. I liked some of the forward time travel sequences, where the machine is buried in ice and the landscape changes over 800,000 years. After arriving he loses track of where his time machine is (wouldn't you want to know? - he never even asks) and eventually goes mano-a-mano with the Morlocks. The lack of effective character development and any kind of philosophical musings from our time traveling engineer about humanity versus technology makes this a pretty average film and not worthy of the book.
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Hart's War |
Filmed in mostly white and diffused light blue winter colors, this grim R-rated WWII German stalag movie is hard to characterize. It's definitely not a "shoot-em-up", there's much more character development which I generally like, but the underlying themes are really just too diverse. The German kommandant and the head American POW (Bruce Willis) are both very brutal characters working hidden agendas and playing an ugly and deadly chessmatch with their POW pawns, 1940's black racism is played-up and then hugely overplayed including a rigged POW murder court-martial, then there's an unlikely prison-break/sabotage and the final unrealistically contrived "heroic death" of one of the main characters. Although seriously conflicted, I gave it a higher rating in spite of these many faults since I found myself glued to the screen most of the time.
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Big Fat Liar |
This movie is "Home Alone" gone to Hollywood with the 14-year old "Malcolm In The Middle" kid getting even with an obnoxious movie producer who stole his homework paper. The kid and a girl friend somehow sneak off to Hollywood for a weekend to torture the producer into admitting his theft. Totally predictable, ridiculous and barely worth watching.
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Collateral Damage |
Schwarzenegger's career takes some damage in this uninspriring and casually-paced film about Arnie singlehandedly taking out a Columbian terrorist group after they accidentally kill his wife and son. Bullets flying, unkillable villains, doleful music. Ho hum. It's been done before. Nothing too new here. Boring. This movie almost rated a bomb, except it kept my attention long enough to escape my cellar.
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The Royal Tenenbaums |
For me this should have been named The Royal Tenenbombs. This movie is the tragicomic story of a ridiculously disfunctional and eccentric New York family. For all the star power (Gene Hackman, Bill Murray, Danny Glover, Anjelica Huston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller) it just didn't work for me. The situations and dry humor were somewhat amusing, but by about half-way into it I was already losing focus and wanting it to be over or at least change direction.
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The Count Of Monte Cristo |
A stylish, picturesque version of the classic tale. I liked Richard Harris who plays the grizzled veteran cellmate, but the swordplay was very limited and Guy Pearce (playing the Count's former friend) was just pompous and frilly did not seem that evil or threatening. High points for the lavish sets and landscapes, but low points for action.
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Snow Dogs |
For the kids, this Disney picture stars Cuba Gooding Jr. as a Miami dentist who goes to Alaska to receive his inheritance which includes a team of Siberian husky sled dogs. It's a mildly amusing snow/ice romp with co-stars James Coburn and Nichelle Nichols. The Alaskan scenery and soundtrack are outstanding, the Oscar winning actors do their best, but the plot is paper thin.
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Black Hawk Down |
Wow, this is one movie that's never going to be on TV, well at least not without some major editing that will lessen the visual intensity. Based on the October 3, 1993 Somalia incident, this R-rated movie clicks into full gear after a slow start and follows the brutal, chaotic, harrowing 15-hour firefight. Its been compared to 2 hours of the most gritty parts of Saving Private Ryan, and that's pretty close to the truth. If you decide to see it, be prepared: the violence is realistic, intense and sustained and there is no happy ending.
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Imposter |
It's 2079 and the remaining war-ravaged Earth cities are protected by electromagnetic domes from attacks by the technologically superior Centauris, but now it's only a matter of time. Spencer Olham (Gary Sinise) is a doctor with a spotless record who's accused of being a human-looking bomb-carrying agent for the Centauris and he goes on the run. He knows he's a real human, but why is everyone after him and how can he prove he's innocent? I liked the premise, the Sci-fi effects and the unexpected twists at the end. Most critics thought it was pretty stale, but I'm a sucker for short-story Sci-Fi. The doctor has a really cool light/sound controlled, multi-fauceted shower in his house - I'd like to get one just like it in mine.
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