chrishend Reviews

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Criminally under-rated

[10/10 · 20 October 2012]

I've read a lot of reviews, for many movies ... and while I understand that this movie will split viewers into different camps, it still makes me want to throw up that at this time this movie is receiving a 7.6 rating overall.

The Royal Tenenbaums is simultaneously perhaps the saddest and most hopeful movie I've ever seen. I'm an old man now, and I've likely seen thousands of movies, yet this movie has remained very special to me over the years.

To this day, I cry every time I see it. And I never cry at movies. Ever.

It may just be impossible to try and explain certain things to those that just don't understand.

This movie is beautiful for those who understand. And I'm truly sad for those that don't.

Dhoom 2 (2006)

Definitely Criminal

[1/10 · 6 September 2009]

Not a lot to add to the other horrific reviews, except an enormous disagreement about the performance of pretty boy Hrithik the Horrific. Would've been nice if someone told him this was a movie and not an Abercrombie and Fitch ad. His continual mugging for the camera and never-ending "blue steel" looks were almost too much to endure. During the Russian Roulette scene I was praying for the gun to go off when Ash was holding it on him. Oh, and Hrithik ... Vanilla Ice is calling and he wants his moves back. Collaborate and listen! Other than having Ash to look at for a bit, I certainly feel 2.5 hrs closer to the grave with nothing to show for it. This was one of the worst "action" movies I've ever seen.

Fanaa (2006)

Rehan's review of Fanaa

[4/10 · 7 June 2009]

*spoilers* Rehan wonders why Mommy slept with some guy after only knowing him for a couple days. Rehan is also curious why Mommy didn't make sure the guy she just met used protection of some type so that Mommy wouldn't get pregnant. Could someone tell Rehan why daddy, an international terrorist, was working as a tour guide when he met mommy? Rehan also wonders why Mommy and Grandpa are living out in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason. Rehan also wonders at the odds, in a country of over 1 billion people, of daddy Rehan coming up to our doorstep at random in the middle of nowhere. But most of all, Rehan wonders why Rehan always talks about Rehan in the 3rd person. Rehan wonders if viewers, annoyed by this characteristic, will wish that Rehan would fall in a well and die a slow agonizing death.

Overall, Rehan thinks Fanaa was a very funny movie. It wasn't trying to be, but it was anyway. Rehan thinks viewers will burst into laughter many times over at the ridiculous, yet still amazingly predictable, plot points. Rehan also really wishes that someone would take care of Mommy's unibrow. She's good looking, but Rehan finds her unibrow distracting.

Electric Shadows (2004)

Is it over yet?

[3/10 · 28 May 2009]

I have a pretty high tolerance for slow period pieces, but this one pushed me to the limit.

The first 5 minutes, and the last 10 minutes were okay. Everything else in between was a snore fest.

If you don't mind watching annoying, boring children try to act for over an hour straight then I suppose this might be the movie for you. Personally though, I spent most of the movie hoping all those kids would fall in a well.

The plot was contrived and relied completely on massive coincidences to drive itself, the children had way too much screen time and were annoying, and I got about ten times as emotionally attached to a puppy that was on screen for about 30 seconds than I was to any of the main characters.

Three thumbs down!

Strayed (2003)

Straying from an originally interesting idea ...

[6/10 · 26 January 2007]

I'll start by agreeing with others here that the acting in the movie was very good, Emmanuelle in particular did a great job. The kids even did a good job although at times they were forced to use lines that kids would never say (um, 10ish year-old girl screaming about wanting to get impregnated? Okay ...) Unfortunately, the actors and the scenery were the best things about this movie.

While watching the film I simply did not understand why there was a sexual encounter between the mother and the teen boy. There was no buildup, there was no real interest between the characters, it just BAM happened. It came completely out of the blue (although bless you Ms. Beart. I'd loved to have been in that kid's shoes during that scene ...) This relationship that was built up somewhat in the trailer and the advertising made no sense whatsoever. The "love" story in this movie seemed like a complete "Hollywood" style cop-out where a little bit of skin or sex has to be included in any movie about "relationships" to make the mouth-breathing public happy.

After listening to some of the interviews on the DVD I was finally able to figure out where the director went horribly wrong. The author of the original book said that in his story the 2 soldiers tried to rape the mother until the teen boy comes out of the blue and saves her. After that she sleeps with him somewhat out of gratitude. That at least sounds plausible.

However, the explanation of why she slept with him in the movie ... that the she became lonely after hearing about the soldier talking about going back to his family ... I completely missed in the film. When they brought up this idea in the interviews it felt like I must've been watching a completely different movie.

This film introduced the soldiers as potentially dangerous characters, and throughout their scenes we were never led to cast our doubt aside. Therefore the idea of her being so moved by this soldier's story (a soldier that might be thinking of raping her) that her loneliness drives her to have sex with the teen boy (of which she seemingly had no real interest) is laughable. The audience was never led to believe much of anything that left the soldier's mouth, so why should we accept that the mother character would be so moved by it that it would drive her to very suddenly jump the bones of the teen boy? Without the soldiers attempting to rape her, as what occurred in the book, there was never any ultimate resolution between the two world-views of the main characters ... the survival of the fittest mentality of the boy (who was ready to attack the unarmed soldiers with an axe) vs. the living through society/morality viewpoint put forth by the mother. The movie just sort of ended ... If the boy had gone ahead to murder the soldiers there would've at least been some deeper question revealed about how people maybe need to make choices between life/death/killing/stealing/etc when they are forced into the middle of a situation where their lives are in danger. This conflict between world-views, that the movie was seemingly built toward, was completely abandoned and unresolved.

Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999)

Good entertainment ... nothing more

[7/10 · 20 January 2007]

Overall, I enjoyed this movie. It did most of the things I expect from Bollywood ... good songs, good dancing, a ridiculously hot girl, and at least initially a petty and simplistic plot.

As the movie progressed, things got a lot more interesting and my hopes for the movie grew quite a bit as the husband character entered the picture.

At the end, however, I can't help but feeling this movie let me down. It seemed to me to be a poor exercise in rationalizing the custom of arranged marriages and therefore an exercise in rationalizing what is effectively institutionalized slavery (the transfer of property rights ... in this case the "property" being Aishwarya). At the end we have the female lead expressing such notions as "love means sacrifice" which may be true, and was indeed noble when the husband was trying to find Sameer for her (although I don't quite know why the husband thinks he "loves" her when in fact he didn't know her at all at that point. He just recognized she was good-looking) but in this case the notion of sacrifice is only used as a rationalization for why Aishwarya should be willing to take on the traditional subservient role to her father and husband. CLEARLY her love of Kahn must have been silly, vain, and wrong because she wasn't "sacrificing" in that case, but now that she's agreed to do what all the males wanted her to do in the first place it is only NOW that she really understands what love means (a lesson naturally taught to her by her "husband"). And plus, her husband isn't really such a bad guy after all, so why rock the boat ... right?

All pure rubbish, but I'm sure the people that feel arranged slavery is fine and dandy will have no problem sleeping at night after the twisted rationalizations that made it fine and dandy in this movie.

Also, the depiction of Italians was borderline racist, but that wasn't central to the plot so I'll leave that one alone ...

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

Do the interns have glocks?

[9/10 · 31 December 2004]

How does one comment on a Wes Anderson film after only one viewing? Impossible. A complete waste of time.

But I've got nothing better to do, so what the hell ...

I enjoyed the movie. Did I "Rushmore" enjoy it? No. Did I "Tenebaum" enjoy it? I'm not sure. Parts of it.

One thing I've noticed about Wes is, the more times you watch his movies, the more you like them. Much of the humor is EXTREMELY subtle, although completely brilliant, and the details are such that one can pick up things even after a 20th viewing. Rushmore went from a movie I loved to one of my all time favorites. Royal Tenebaums went from a top 150 to a top 20 (and if you've seen my top 100 list, that's a pretty impressive achievement).

This one started out particularly slow I felt. The beginning scenes with all the "society" figures about seemed a little odd. A) they were watching deep sea documentaries, and B) Wes seems kind of speechless in those types of environments. I didn't really get much from this movie through the early parts. Even with the crew introductions and setup, which one would normally think would be enjoyingly odd in a Wes Anderson film, fell somewhat flat.

I think it was about half-way through when things really picked up for me. The robbery of his nemesis' station and the pirate attack was when I finally started getting fully interested. The bond stooge as well as the intern that remained with the crew because he wanted to "see you get that shark" even though he took a sword cut in the neck were all hilarious (and the rest of the interns quite rightfully only got Incompletes for their grade. Bunch of quitters). I found lots of tiny things that I thought were very funny, although there were times when i was the only one in the theater laughing heartily. Overall the movie was less funny than his first 3, although I personally laughed enough. Wes has always demanded a lot of his audiences, and this film is no exception.

The movie didn't wrap up quite as well as Rushmore and RT, but it still managed to pull off that bitter-sweet sentimentality that is very particular to Wes Anderson films, and the existence of which rightfully gives Anderson his occasional "genius" label. In its own way this movie is as beautiful as any of his other films, and on its own terms is completely original to cinema, and therefore completely worth viewing.

I won't tell you what # ranking I gave it. For some movies you can do that. But this isn't a film one should judge as to whether "its got a good beat and is easy to dance to". After another 5 or 6 viewings I'll have a better feel for it. Too early right now.

As a small aside, I wasn't sold on the Portuguese Bowie songs. Those that know Bowie well probably enjoyed it more, and thematically I must admit it was a good idea, but for me I didn't recognize most of the songs and they just seemed a bit out of place and superficially interjected into the story. Wes puts together amazing soundtracks and I think the Portuguese might've cost him a chunk of one of his strengths.

Love Actually (2003)

painfully bad

[2/10 · 31 December 2004]

Where to start on this superficial, overly-sentimental piece of garbage?

The blatant sexism? The total lack of any developed characters? Hugh Grant as prime minister?

The flaws are too many to count, but I'll just go over some of my biggest problems with this piece of junk ...

1. There is not one single character that is even moderately developed. We are flooded with all these situations in which these humanoids are supposedly falling in love, or already in love, with each other yet we have absolutely no idea why, nor in most cases do the characters seem to know either.

• Writer falls in love with maid. Let's not bother with the fact they've never spoken a single word to each other (they don't speak a common tongue) and don't know each other at all. She looks good in a bathing suit. Apparently that's all that's necessary for a guy to ask a girl to marry him (and for her to say yes). Superficial garbage relationship #1.

• Prime minister falls in love with his secretary. Do any of us know why, other than the fact she likes to swear in inappropriate places? No, of course not. That would require writing and actual ... you know ... story. Superficial garbage relationship #2.

• Office-worker lady is in love with a co-worker. Do we know why? Do we get to know either of these characters at all? Of course not. That would once again involve actually developing a story. All we know is the guy looks like an abercrombie and fitch model. If there's any other reason to love the guy, we sure don't know about it. Superficial garbage relationship #3.

• Dude is in love with his best friend's wife. Sure, she's Keira Knightley and therefore hot as hell. Do we have any other idea why this guy is in love with her, and willing to hit on his friend's wife behind his back? No, of course not. Once again, apparently all we need to know to is that she's hot ... the end. Superficial garbage relationship #4.

2. Bizarre misogyny. Almost all the relationships in this movie involve some extreme power differential b/w the male and female. The guys want the hot chicks because they're hot, the hot chicks want the old fart guys because ... because ... I'm not sure. Because they have good jobs I guess. There's also an inordinate amount of time where one of the hot chicks is bagged on repeatedly for being "fat". Note this is a girl that could only be considered "fat" in the movie-make-believe world. Even in that world it still doesn't make any sense. The term "fat" is one of the last that would come to mind when describing her and I spent more than a couple minutes scratching my head trying to figure out why characters were making fun of her physical appearance. On any other universe she's a solid "9". If this girl is lucky to have a relationship because she's "fat", all I can say to the rest of you women out there is you might as well shoot yourselves, cause she's hotter than 98% of you.

3. You know how in a good romance movie there is often that one point where the characters finally have their big connection which fulfills the build-up of the movie over the first couple acts? This movie just skips all the stuff involved in actually telling the story of relationships and just has the sappy payoff ... in every scene of the movie ... over and over again. While watching this wreck I couldn't help but feeling that the writer just took the payoff scene in his top 50 favorite romance movies and just wrote them all into one movie. Too bad he left out all the stuff leading up to the payoffs (character, plot, theme, etc) that made them work in the first place.

Pure junk. One of the worst movies I've seen.

The River (1997)

Now my neck hurts.

[3/10 · 15 August 2003]

Oh, the horror of it all. The ennui. The angst. The isolation.

Must drink ... double shot ... of ... espresso ...



Interesting themes, but a borderline unwatchable movie. This thing makes an Antonioni film look like "Indiana Jones". The use of real-time filming (or whatever technique the film school flunkies are calling it) is interesting in spurts, but it was just plain cruel and unusual punishment here. I get the feeling that the individuals who loved this movie are the same ones who would declare a two hour movie of someone peeing pure genius. Thankfully ming-liang had the decency to keep his pure peeing scene to only 4 minutes. I was rivetted wondering how the sound of it would change as we proceeded from the second, to the third, to the fourth minute. Enthralling filmaking.



If you enjoy watching paint dry I give this movie my highest recommendation. If you expect even a hint of entertainment value in your films I give it a 3/10.

Super Troopers (2001)

light fun

[7/10 · 30 July 2003]

This wasn't a good movie in any regular sense of the concept.

The acting? Meh. Plot? Gah! Theme? Don't make me smack you.

But g'damnit if it wasn't funny. Basically the film was an excuse to splice together a bunch of bits involving zany and likeable cops doing nutty things to themselves or others. On that level it worked very well and was quite funny.

As an aside, I first discovered this movie while stoned with friends. One of them played the intro and it was amazing how disorienting it was. I felt exactly like one of the stoned kids in the car, wondering where the cop suddenly disappeared to ... why's he driving away ... oh s*it how did he end up behind them? ... didn't he already tell them to pull over? ... why's he driving right at them?! ... He's asking for their license again? Didn't he already do that? ... etc. I definately recommend watching the intro while stoned. I think the cops actions were very carefully planned to have disorienting effects on those with altered minds, whether it be the stoned kids in the car or anyone else watching it from their viewpoint (which is how the scene was shot, the only scene not from the officer's perspective btw)

A couple weeks after that I decided to rent it and watch the whole thing (sober). I expected it to be stupid and funny, and it pretty much delivered.

Gangs of New York (2002)

Visual masturbation.

[6/10 · 25 July 2003]

As good as the direction was, I felt that I was alternately either watching a mid 1800's version of either Mad Max or A Clockwork Orange.

The story was a fairly straight-forward revenge tale. Unlike many other commentators, I liked the Di Caprio character and thought he did a good job (which is saying a lot for me, since Titanic is one of my most hated movies of all time and I despise anyone involved in that project) and felt D.D. Lewis was doing a bad De Niro impression the whole movie. To his credit, he was semi-creepy (mostly due to the handlebar moustache though), but whatever he was doing with his voice ... it was cheeseball. Cameron Diaz was miscast, but I didn't mind it much since it at least gave me something to look at while I was trying to stay awake. The plot and story were nothing to write home about, and the movie was about half an hour too long for the lack of substance it had.

The extreme liberties on historical accuracy also were annoying to me, especially since the movie played itself off as being at least somewhat historically accurate (for example the fades to New York in its current real state at the end of the movie, as if the two were even from the same universe much less one evolving from the other). I'm a fairly cynical member of society (left winger and an atheist), but the continual mockings of democracy, voting, value of human life, religion,etc besides just plain getting old quickly also came off as needlessly cynical untruths. If the movie was going for any real insights into early American life/thinking they failed miserably.

6/10 more because most movies are junk rather than this one being particularly good.

On the plus side, I'm off now to watch A Clockwork Orange again. Kubrick makes Martin S. look like an amateur with this type of material.

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

Happily married couples please drive through

[18 July 2003]

While reading some of the other comments for this film I was initially baffled. I could not understand how anyone in their right mind would dislike, much less hate a movie as simple and beautiful as this.

Then it dawned on me.

Most people don't have the equipment to emphathize with real alienation. They're too happy, they're too normal, their lives and their relationships all worked out a little too easily.

Life for Barry hasn't been like that way at all. In fact he has as much trouble comprehending how normal life works as those with normal lives comprehend how easily it is for someone else's life to suck so bad.

Barry knows he's not doing things "right". But everytime he's reached out he's been rebuked harshly. He doesn't want to leave his apartment or his place of work. He hates visiting his sisters, going "out" to eat, or meeting new people. He's collecting up millions of frequent flyer miles because it's a good deal, but doesn't really see himself ever using them. Everytime he steps a millimeter out of his usual, safe routine it ends up horribly.

But Barry's hell doesn't end there. In addition to all this, no one will ever let him FORGET about any of it. He is continually reminded of everything by his family and all his actions are continually questioned and examined by outsiders so that, in his mind and in his experience, it will add to yet another story on the heap that he will never be allowed to forget. Whenever anyone asks him a personal question, or a question about his actions, he usually responds with the safe and evasive, "I don't know." Any other answer leaves him open to likely ridicule for the rest of his life.

Barry spends most of the movie, quite understandably, in a continual state of social paralysis, suffocating to death before our eyes.

And then eventually, a break comes. Naturally he's defensive, naturally he expects things to go horribly wrong, and that he'd never be able to live it down and be forced to remember every excruciating detail on through eternity. But it doesn't ... and eventually he let's himself go. He tells the truth. He opens up. He tells about the pudding, he admits to the phone-sex line. He becomes a bit less paralyzed.

Many people complain that the movie isn't believable because no woman would ever go out with this type of guy.

Well DUH. Of course not.

But the movie isn't about painting a realistic relationship. It isn't about whether a woman would actually go for a guy like him. Her background and her motivations are irrelevent. Accurately painting a fully-fleshed out love interest would be self-defeating. The more accurately painted she was, the less likely we'd EVER believe someone could fall in love with Barry.

The girl he meets is his dream-girl. She represents the idea that even the nuttiest, most repressed, most socially inept individuals deserve a chance at happiness. OF COURSE there'd really never be a person there for Barry, but far more important is the idea that she COULD exist. That somewhere she should exist.

The movie isn't about her, it's about Barry.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)

Big Fat Over-rated Wedding

[7/10 · 15 March 2003]

After hearing a few things from friends about this movie and reading about it a little I figured this movie would be of the overbearing family meets square family wedding genre with the paint by numbers light-comedy scripts that always go along with it.

Well, I was right. A computer might as well have written this movie.

It wasn't bad necessarily, but it was a long, long, way from being anything but mediocre fluff.

The jokes were okay, but we've all seen them before.

The chemistry wasn't particularly believable. What's with her going into a mute shock the first time she saw that John Corbett fella? It's like she's never seen an attractive man before. Does walking a few blocks down the street take her 12 hours due to all the mute shocks she goes into every time a moderately good looking guy walks by?

Some movies can subtly show a relationship developing without the red-flashing lights indicating to the audience these two people are going to end up together. I wouldn't even call what they had a relationship. Still not sure what they saw each other as they were getting married like 4 seconds after they met. Seems like they both wanted to get married, and hooked onto the first attractive person that came along.

I'd also like to point out for a woman that's supposedly trying to find her own identity and buck off a few of the cliches she's forced to live with as a Greek unmarried woman, why is it she only finds happiness after ... you guessed it ... SHE FINDS A MAN AND GETS MARRIED. And why does she basically force her betrothed to become Greek Orthodox? Screw that. She was pretty spineless in the end after all.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

um. okay

[7/10 · 22 February 2003]

I've read this movie was supposed to be frightening and suspenseful. There's only three ways I could ever picture a universe in which someone would say that about this movie:

1. They were a young child, and watched it in 1955. 2. Their OWN father had been hung and their mother had been murdered. 3. They've been living in a cave and the only time they've ventured out was to watch this movie.

I did enjoy it on some level ... the atmosphere and cinematography were outstanding and there were maybe 3 or 4 scenes that were quite ingenious. BUT the acting and dialogue were absolutely horrible (and no, you can't tell me doing horribly obvious pratfalls to avoid catching a couple of little kids 2 feet away from you is good acting). And the symbolism was so thick and obvious in every way there might as well have been a flashing sign going off every time you were supposed to notice how "deep" the movie was.

In the Mood for Love (2000)

Close but no cigar

[8/10 · 24 January 2003]

After loving "Chungking Express" I rented this movie with very high hopes. I did end up liking it ... kind of ... But I haven't fully made up my mind on it. I can say:

I wasn't bored.

I did find the atmosphere, cinematography, and style interesting.

I didn't mind that there wasn't really a plot.

The one thing that really did end up sticking in my craw however, besides the fact the characters are fairly boring individuals, is that I just didn't find their behaviors believable.

*spoilers*

I don't know anything about 60's Hong Kong, but I don't think I should have to in order to make sense of their behavior. Like another reviewer wrote, the setting is what WKW makes it, and there wasn't anything there to make me think these people would or should have this bizarre sense of obligation to these terrible spouses. The facts are: their spouses have abandoned and cheated on them, their lives are amazingly isolated and boring, and they (apparently) love each other. I just don't buy the unrequited stance in this particular scenario and I don't see any validity in arguments trying to make sense of their behavior.

I still thought it was very interesting, and it COULD'VE been great, but to me that was a fatal flaw.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

Good, very good, but ...

[10/10 · 24 December 2002]

Well, roughly 720 comments in ... there probably isn't much I can say that hasn't been repeated a few dozen times in other posts. But, oh well, I've always enjoyed redundancy (and I do have a few new things). Not to mention I also enjoy redundancy.

First off, let's get one thing straight. This is a good movie. A VERY good movie. Compared to any other movie you'll see this coming year, chances are they won't come close. It was action packed, the cgi and setting was engrossing, and the 3hr or so running time went by very quickly.

HOWEVER!

This movie simply was not as good as the first one. There were many things that either broke up the flow, or undermined the amount of suspense that could've otherwise been built into the movie. This movie could've been perhaps among the best of all time, but due to some planning errors it turned out to just be extremely good.

Cases in point:

*spoilers throughout*

1. The Gandalf fight with the balrog at the beginning.

This fight was cool as hell, and was a pretty good way to open the movie, BUT one of the coolest things about experiencing the story the first time (reading the book) is thinking that Gandalf is probably really dead and then when he does finally make his appearance as the White Rider, he's the coolest thing on 2 legs. In the movie this is spoiled since we know he's most likely alive from the outset, and then when there's talk of the White Rider and Gandalf does finally show up it is something we've just been sitting around waiting for, not a shocking surprise that adds to the legend that is (or should be) Gandalf. In the book you don't really even know how the hell he got out of that extremely sticky situation, and it almost adds to the awe.

2. Aragorn's fall down the cliff.

Waste of time. Happened to Gandalf and we knew he was okay. What was the point of doing basically the same thing over again with Aragorn? Totally redundant and unsuspenseful.

3. Gimli the Disney character.

After reading many posts I see I wasn't the only one annoyed with his complete demotion to comical sideshow. On the plus side he WAS often funny. On the minus side, he was no longer Gimli the bada** from the book, he became Gimli the stooge. What's worse than this however, much worse, is his jokes constantly undermined the tension and danger that should've been building with the Helm's Gate battle. More than a couple times things were looking bad, we were getting worried about our heroes and their present situation, and then Gimli says/does something goofy that totally takes us out of the story and reminds us these people are really in no peril at all because they're the heroes and this is nothing but a movie. A basic rule is: When people are engrossed in a dangerous situation, it's usually not a good idea to make them laugh. I know they were just trying to lighten things up due to the darkness of this second film, but Jackson should've just gone with the darkness. Sometimes things are dark for a reason.

4. The cuts to Treebeard

Treebeard was pretty cool, but everytime they cut to these scenes I could feel the movie go straight into a pile of sludge. Pip and Merry on his shoulder, Helm's Deep, Pip and Merry on his shoulder, repeat, etc. I don't think they could've picked a worse point in time to put the Treebeard thread. Add in the Gimli distractions to these cuts to Treebeard and to me it really hurt what could've been an amazing sequence.

5. Orcs WAY too wussy.

The first movie also suffered from this pretty badly, but there I don't think it hurt the story. Here it does. Orcs apparently are easier to kill than flies, and therefore why should I worry about these people at Helm's Deep? Seeing Aragorn and Gimli alone on the bridge against the entire orc army and not being completely over-run was excessively lame, almost unforgivably so. That scene shouldn't have ever made the movie, and once again took me right out of the story. The horses splitting through the orc army like water as they sped out of Helm's Deep was also lame. In the actual fighting scenes from Helm's Deep I never really got the feeling that a BATTLE which could go either way was occuring. It just looked fantastic, and that's all.

6. Intrusive music.

For all of you that will buy this movie and watch it a million times (like I will probably), watch for this. There are scenes of dialogue and events where not much is happening really, but this dramatic music is just blaring, almost drowning out their speech. I got the feeling that if Jackson was to film 2 regular people drinking coffee and reading the morning paper it'd be accompanied by a 50 piece symphonic orchestra playing the most dramatic and emotionally charged music they could find. I found this very annoying.

7. The revamped Faramir

While this scene was going on I was thinking back to the book trying to remember if Faramir ever took them back to Gondor. I didn't think so, and I know exactly why ... because it'd be dumb. Up to this point we'd been following Frodo, Sam and Gollum go through Mordor, head up to the black gate,etc ... They are on this supposedly dangerous trek and then suddenly... oh wait they're back in Gondor now. So they get to do everything over again? Guess we just wasted our time watching them all this time. Hell, let's just stick em back in the shire again and start the movie over. I couldn't see anything that added to the movie by this little stunt of Jacksons. If you wanted to put our triumvirate in danger or show the weakness of men or whatever, there's ample opportunities to do so without trivializing trekking through Mordor, as if going in and out is like going outside to fetch the mail. Plus they treat Faramir as a dolt basically, instead of the very cool character he actually is. I found it pointless. Unless they've got plans for him in the next movie, they might as well have just cut him out completely and not ruined the vibe Sam,Frodo and Goll had going.

That's about it for my peeves tho. Overall I did think it was a great movie, there were just a bunch of little things like those above that kept interrupting the flow for me, or that seemed pointless. Because of that I have to give the nod to the first movie, since I thought it did what it was suppose to do a bit better than this film.

A Heart in Winter (1992)

Wow

[10/10 · 6 September 2002]

Claude Sautet is a genius, pure and simple.

This is an incredibly beautiful movie, with sparse, multi-layered dialogue. You would absolutely never find a "love" story quite like this one in the U.S. This was made by a true craftsman.

At times it felt like there were 2 movies going on at once. One that's going along with the dialogue, and another that is pure subtext. Anyone interested in screenwriting should take a look at this thing. Sautet can do with one sentence what it takes others pages to pull off.

*mild spoiler*

The movie also has one of the best endings I've ever seen. There are a few ways to interpret it, and the way you do interpret it has more to do with you as a person than it does about the movie. Very sad, but also hopeful, like some of Woody Allen's endings except put together much more skillfully. If you have it on tape, please rewind and watch the very ending a few times. The dialogue is so subtle and brilliant it'll take a while to get an interpretation. Not one letter is out of place.

Adam's Rib (1949)

Can you say over-rated?

[4/10 · 6 September 2002]

It always surprises me when I go to watch one of these supposed great old movies and find out how bad it is. This one has truly not aged well at all.

There are a few things this movie does well, but the things it does wrong makes it impossible for me to consider it good.

The best part of this movie is the low-key chit chat and relationship dialogue (as long as its the relationship stuff, the courtroom dialogue is inane to the nth degree). It's done well, and there are quite a few mild chuckles to be had.

*mild spoilers for the rest*

The treatment of the court case however is unforgivable. These are most definately two of the stupidest "movie" lawyers I've ever seen in my life. I was sitting throughout the court scenes pulling my hair out waiting for one of them to at least make SOME argument that had anything to do with the case at all. It seemed like neither of them even had a clue what the person was being charged with. Hepburn spends way too much time talking about equal this, equal that, blah blah blah and none of it has anything to do with anything and Spencer is apparently too stupid to argue his side of the case either. And during Hepburn's closing where she is talking about reversing the roles of the males and females, all I could do is sit there and think... so what? Is she telling us we should let this lady off after shooting her husband because we'd let a man off for shooting his wife? What universe is she living in? I have a hard time believing even people in the 40s were that stupid. This kind of stuff totally ruined half the movie for me, and I almost turned it off because these people were acting so irrationally.

Also as an aside, for a movie that brings up the issue of equal rights, I found it pretty misogynistic. The main female characters in the movie are all stereotyped as flightly, emotional, and illogical.

In a nutshell ... relationship stuff ok to good ... rest complete garbage.