EmpressR Reviews

Ocean's Eleven (2001)

Trouble staying awake

[5/10 · 28 January 2002]

Having been listening to all the good reviews I was so looking forward to seeing this film, with its cast of handsome men and all, but was quite disappointed. I have not seen the original so I guess I went in expecting a much better story -- expectations set by the more recent and much better heist movies like The Score.

I was also expecting it to be funny. It wasn't. There may have been a couple of amusing lines but none that I can remember. And it took forever to gather up those 11 characters -- and none of those meetings were in any way memorable.

Julia Roberts looked awful (almost as bad as she looked when she played Tinkerbell in Hook) and there was NO chemistry between her and Clooney, or between her and Garcia for that matter. As for the handsome men -- Clooney was so much more interesting as the erudite convict in O Brother, and Pitt has had more appeal in just about every other movie I can think of that he's played in.

Also, in most movies of this ilk, one is supposed to find oneself rooting for the lovable crooks because they are doing it to someone really evil or they are at least morally superior. But I didn't find Terry Benedict (Garcia)to be that bad of a guy -- he was just an aggressive businessman minding his business, or these guys to be that lovable. So, there was no big satisfaction in seeing him getting ripped off big time.

It wasn't awful, but was a lot less satisfying than I expected, and I did have trouble staying awake. 5/10

Behind Enemy Lines (2001)

Really, really silly!

[4/10 · 18 January 2002]

Okay, the initial missile chase and shoot-down were very exciting and well done. After that it was all down hill.

The scenarios were totally unbelievable, the characters were paper-thin stereotypes, and the script was built by numbers. Gene Hackman must have been asleep when he accepted this role, and remained so throughout the film. It's just as well, since he didn't have to learn any new lines for it -- they were just lifted from every other war movie that has ever been made.

***SPOILERS FOLLOW*** It's totally amazing how someone is not even slightly out of breath after having been dropped out of a plane, fallen several hundred feet down a dam, crawled through a field full of rotting bodies, and run miles through freezing terrain dotted with landmines, pursued by 50 bad guys in jeeps and tanks. And tell me how you can, in 30 seconds flat, completely undress a dead man and yourself, then dress him and yourself, while being surrounded by gunfire and bombs? I guess the other fellow must have been still alive when he agreed to swap his clothes. Oh, and by the way, how come you see the ejection seat frozen in snow and ice, but only 20 feet way the snow has completely melted? And that sniper (the bad guy) needs to get a new job since he can't hit anybody that's more than five feet away from him. He should probably get himself a jeep too since the 50 guys that always show up two minutes after he gets somewhere on foot never let him ride in their vehicles.

If this had been a comedy, or a Bond-like action movie, then okay. But trying to pass itself off as a war drama about serious issues? give me a break!

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

Didn't live up to expectations

[7/10 · 20 February 2001]

I guess I am not much of a fan of fantasy-type stories, but from all the rave reviews of this film, I thought there would be more drama to this story. However, I was disappointed. I found the story to be similar to Star Wars -- you know, the battle for the child between the good and the evil, that type of thing -- but not as exciting or even as complex. And, apart from the flying fight scenes (I particularly liked the one in the treetops), I didn't find it as visually interesting as Star Wars.

But worse, I found this film to be somewhat slow and talky, especially at the beginning. Now, I can understand and speak Mandarin, and being able to hear their conversation did not make it any more interesting. In fact, I thought their voices were stilted and pretty much devoid of any expression.

Okay, it was reasonably entertaining, but emotionally, it didn't grab me at all.

Dogma (1999)

A high-school skit

[2/10 · 7 August 2000]

I was so glad to see that a few other people felt the same way that I did about this film -- overrated, pretentious, and dull. It was as if it were written by a bunch of 15-year-olds trying their best to be witty, profound, and controversial. And it was so TALKY and contained so little content that they could have delivered the whole thing right there in the classroom without benefit of props, cinematography, location, or special effects. I admit the Buddy Jesus concept was somewhat amusing, but everything else seemed to me to be neither original nor funny. It was one of the least interesting movies I've seen. I rated it 2/10.

There's Something About Mary (1998)

I tried ...

[4 August 2000]

Okay, I admit I never wanted to see this movie in the first place, so maybe I was just prejudiced. However, I've seen movies before that I hadn't initially been interested in and been pleasantly surprised. My reluctance was not because I had heard about the gross humor -- I have nothing against gross humor when it's funny (Naked Gun movies, for example) -- but I rarely find "romantic comedies" to be particularly interesting. But, since so many people found this film to be hilarious I thought I'd check it out. So I rented it tried to watch it. I didn't find anything funny about it at all -- the stepfather, the retarded brother, the PI, etc. were neither funny nor interesting -- just nasty, annoying and BORING. I got as far as the PI scene where he's lying to the Ben Stiller character about Mary, and couldn't watch it anymore.

Now, I hate paying for movie and then not watching it, and I remember only doing that once before (Braveheart, because it was so relentlessly intense and bloody, and I knew he was going to come to a nasty end), but in this case, I'd rather have just wasted a couple of bucks than to have wasted more of my time as well.

The Fan (1996)

Not a perfect film, but I enjoyed it

[7/10 · 4 August 2000]

While I agree with some of the previous comments about the lack of attention to detail and the confusing cinematography, I really did enjoy this movie. The story itself is not particularly original and the ending is weak -- but I thought the build-up of Gil's (De Niro) character to be quite effective. Although Gil was what one would typically label a loser, I couldn't help but feel for the guy. Many movies about psychos/stalkers fail to give you any insight into why he's doing all these bad things -- all you know is that he's not a nice guy. This movie did a great job of portraying how Gil's volatile personality, his obsession with the baseball and with Bobby (Snipes) in particular, and his loss of everything else that mattered to him, ultimately led him to do what he did.

The Straight Story (1999)

About as exciting as watching the grass grow

[4/10 · 16 June 2000]

This movie was recommended to me by a colleague whose preferences are generally similar to mine. Not this time. I knew it would be a "gentle" story, but this was downright sleep-inducing. I heard it was scenic; yes, 50% of the running time was taken up with footage of cornfields, wheatfields, harvesters, and clouds. Then another 10% was just spent on photographing the road itself, double and single yellow lines and white lines, and various wheels turning on the road. There is no story except what we are told: 73-year-old man rides his mower from Iowa to Wisconsin to visit his ailing brother. Some of the people he meets on the way are fairly amusing, but we don't have a chance to get to know them. In any case, they don't seem to be that interesting.

I know that this film has been well-received by many people, but I just don't see it. There were a couple of touching moments at the beginning, but for the remaining time I kept thinking that I "should" be liking it more than I was. Sissy Spacek's talents were completely wasted in the role as Rose, George Straight's speech-impeded daughter.