Open Range (R)
Kevin Costner needs an editor.
Movie buffs will no doubt immediately pick up on that first sentence, and for anyone who doesn’t get it – 2 hours is what Hollywood figures to be the maximum length American audiences will sit through most movies.
Costner has directed and starred in three:
Dances With Wolves – 3 hours.
The Postman – 3 hours.
Open Range – 2 hours, fifteen minutes.
At least he’s learning to cut some footage.
The movie feels like three hours, but that’s not all bad, considering the early American time period the movie is portraying. It’s the Old West, a time of reflecting as you drive cattle over the hills and prairies of this fine country. No need to rush a movie with great scenery in a time of no cell phones and instant CNN news flashes. Yes, this was a more slow-paced time.
But as history buffs know, soon came resentment of the “free grazers” who pushed their cattle into land that was suddenly “owned by the locals.” And these locals weren’t above murder to show they meant business. And for the sake of this movie, you have to toss in an evil sheriff to make sure we know just which side to root for!
Costner can certainly act, and he was the man behind this entire movie project, but he was wise to cast Robert Duvall in as many scenes as his own. Duvall is an actor’s actor. He’s the pro on any set. His presence is enough reason to see this film.
It’s also rare to see a film that shows realistic gun battles as they would really play out back in the days when pistols were anything but accurate, and gunfights would lead to chaotic free-for-alls. It’s messy stuff. It’s the roots of this country. You should probably see it.
– See it on the Big Screen
T3 – Rise Of The Machines (R)
Good to see Arnold Schwarzenegger in a movie that doesn’t blow. He was overdue for a hit, and T3 was a sure thing.
But the movie is far from perfect.
James Cameron does not direct this movie. Cameron has proven himself a genius director, and this movie suffers in his absence. There is no Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) either. Remember how hard she trained for the role in T2? You’ll miss her. Only Arnold seems to have prepared for the film.
Instead, we get a veterinarian named Kate Brewster (Claire Danes) in a ho-hum performance, and Nick Stahl, who plays John Connor this time. (Edward Furlong has drug problems, so his filming days are on hold.) Other than the fact that Nick Stahl is completely out of breath throughout the movie (like Edward Furlong was), he’s otherwise OK. After all, it’s only when delivering one of his 500 lines of dialogue that you’ll notice he’s out of breath. Strange.
I could tell you why a veterinarian named Kate Brewster is suddenly in the movie, but that would spoil it.
I can tell you that Kristanna Loken (as a Terminator) is just plain awful. I didn’t find her all that menacing, I don’t see any real acting skills, and on a lineup of 1,000 wannabe-breakout-Hollywood-actresses, she might come in 900th. There are A LOT of prettier girls than Loken in Hollywood, and a few in the sold-out theater I was sitting in. And if you’re going to send a killer cyborg back in time, send a dude or come up with a valid reason to send a chick. Species had a better premise, and even that movie stunk. Will T4 feature a 48-pound, 6th-grade-rapper-Terminator for Arnold to battle? Ooooh, can’t wait!
The Hollywood Political Correctness has got to go.
Other things that bothered me:
I know Hollywood wants to wet down the streets to make the car chases easier to film and look sparkly on film, but must they put a star in a $63,000 convertible Lexus (with the top down) when it’s obvious that it has not only been raining, but the car is soaking wet in shots yet the actress still has the top down and she’s bone dry as if on a model shoot! What’s going on?? Is the top broken??? Is she sporting invisible GORE-TEX perhaps????
And the plot use of remote control cars to give chase? C’mon!! Time travel – perhaps. I’ll buy that if the movie needs it. But making a group of average 2002 cars suddenly drive themselves at high speeds for miles on end like land cruise missiles as if an invisible man was at the wheel? Does anyone actually buy this crap? Even a room full of soap opera writers suffering from terminal writer’s block would have scoffed at this most absurd of plot devices. Where’s James Cameron when you need him? Stop this cartoon madness.
I won’t continue down the list of flaws as it will only serve to ruin the film for those just looking for action. The filmmakers and Arnold have fun as they revisit old scenes, (Arnold visits a bar to get clothes, and the, “She’ll be back,” line), but since Arnold isn’t the same machine from the previous film, there’s a lot of history between him and John Connor that is lost. Too bad. It’s like running into a friend you grew up with, and finding out he has had a lobotomy and doesn’t remember anything you shared before. This hurts the film.
But if you ever want to see this movie, you must see it in a theater. Even if you have the latest 84” plasma screen and the baddest surround sound system ever offered, don’t kid yourself. You can’t compete with a multiplex when they are showing a Schwarzenegger film that cost 175 million dollars to make.
Just don’t expect T2.
– See it on the Big Screen
28 Days Later (R)
If you liked Night of the Living Dead and any number of knock-offs from that original movie, you’ll no doubt enjoy 28 Days Later, a modern-day version of the theme with an Ebola/SARS bit of viral twist to the story.
We start by witnessing the saving of chimpanzees from an experimental lab by a whacked-out team of animal rights blokes in London. (Don’t worry, although it’s an English film, the dialogue is understandable by us Patriots.)
Though the animal lovers are warned, before they can stop themselves, one of their members liberates an infected chimp, and the virus “Rage” is let loose into the world. Cool scene. Cool set-up.
28 days later, we watch as a hospital patient comes out of a coma. In a stunning long scene (filmed right at sun-up to capture deserted London streetscapes), our patient soon discovers he is the last man on Earth. Or at least London. Or, as he enters a church, the last man alive in London. Oops, some of the dead are not really dead. They’re zombies!
And then the action begins.
It hardly stops. Especially when he meets other non-infected people who all strive to simply survive. And good-god does the blood flow. Yikes, what a gore-fest!
Don’t get bitten, or get any infected blood in your eyes or mouth. Within 20 seconds of such misfortune, you too will turn into a red-eyed, rage-filled killer zombie. That’s about all I can say about that.
The movie is good but strangely suffers from its lack of a Hollywood budget. For this reason alone, I’d call it a terrific rental. There just isn’t enough Hollywood meat to make a visit to the local multiplex mandatory. I read where the director shot this thing on digital video, then transferred it to 35mm. It shows.
But it will look fantastic on that 27” T.V. in your living room!
– Wait for Rental
The Matrix Reloaded (R)
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
No one knows that quote better than Larry and Andy Wachowski, who are laughing all the way to the bank with their latest movie, The Matrix Reloaded.
This biggest of all box office draws started out on the right foot years ago in 1999, with breakthrough special effects that immediately trickled into T.V. commercials, and a year later, into other box office films from Hollywood to Chinese Hong Kong flicks.
But somehow I suppose the Wachowski brothers figured out that their special effects had been ripped off by so many people, so many times, that if they simply repeated the formula, this movie would be a dud.
The story is the same as the last one, a second movie in what is supposed to be a trilogy. I liked the first one. I saw it once, and that was enough, but I did like it. If you are one of those that saw the original a dozen times all the way through, and you can’t turn it off when it comes on HBO, then by all means, knock yourself out.
For all others, read on.
Some folks like to sit around pondering the deep meaning of the constant pontificating Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), who is trying to free the human race.
#1 His monotone speeches drag this latest movie straight into boredomville, so rest up before watching.
#2 I’ll let you in on a little secret. It’s not real. This is a fictional story that Hollywood writers are making up as they go along. Let it go already, there is nothing to understand.
For whatever reason, the rules of physics refuse to apply at all in this installment. Cars just flip over during car chases for absolutely no reason other than the script says so. Over-and-over-and-over, cars are flipping by themselves. Flipping, flipping, tumbling. COME ON!
And no one can shoot straight, but we’re all getting used to that. But when hundreds of bullets riddle a normal car full of occupants, yet the car still runs and no one gets hurt, it’s time to fast forward the video. Oops, we paid to see it in a theater, and we have to sit through it.
Damn.
Here’s the clincher, and I swear this isn’t giving anything away in this absurd movie. Neo (Keanu Reeves) is not only “The One,” but he’s really Superman. Yep, it’s true. (See picture insert above.) If I hadn’t been in the center seat of a sold-out auditorium, there were several occasions where I would have walked to an exit. This has only happened to me once before during a movie called The Big Bus.
Whenever you find out that the hero of a story can fly up to the stratosphere with little effort, the credits might as well roll. For whenever the hero is in trouble, he can simply fly away. Whenever someone is in dire need of his help, he will simply fly to the rescue. And when he gets REALLY mad, he can fly REALLY FAST! Like Mighty Mouse. And Neo does it exactly the same as Superman and Mighty Mouse too – with one fist out in front of him. Absurd.
And if you could really fly, why would you wait to fly at all? Birds don’t wait until nearly beaten to death before flying away. It isn’t like you’d need to conserve gas or anything.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked the Superman movies. And I can buy into the Superman theory – when I’m watching Superman movies.
As every review has reported, The Matrix Reloaded ends abruptly with a “To Be Continued” notice on the screen. Personally, I believe it is because they were embarrassed to show us what other powers Neo has up his sleeve.
Spider webs!
This is just a guess, mind you. But after this Matrix movie, I wouldn’t be surprised.
– Wait for HBO
Identity (R)
Take John Cusack, Ray Liotta, and an over-the-hill-looking Rebecca De Mornay, and plop them all in a murder-by-numbers slasher film, and you end up with the best slasher film in years.
John Cusack plays a limo driver who’s driving Rebecca De Mornay (playing herself – an aging movie actress) down a dark highway in the middle of a rainy night. Exciting problems ensue, and the two of them end up stranded in an old motel in the middle of nowhere. Nine others end up stranded there for various reasons as well. Like the “Bates Motel,” check-out time has a certain finality to it.
Ray Liotta plays himself too (I’ve given up thinking Ray always takes the same parts – it’s him), but here again, like most of his movies, it works. He’s transporting a vicious killer in chains (in the middle of the night with no other official state cars following? – but I split hairs) when the gas runs so low that he too becomes stranded at the motel. Oh, what luck for the others!
For about an hour, the action is non-stop, and the moments are tense as one by one people start to die in pretty fresh ways. Not a blood-fest, mind you, as Hollywood put their minds to the killings this time.
Then the movie starts to fall apart. Or does it?
Rest assured I have given nothing away in the review above – unlike countless other reviews of this movie, which hopefully you haven’t read. Let me just end by saying you will never guess who the killer is or what the heck is going on until the credits start. And then you might find yourself in the parking lot before everything falls into place.
If all else fails, you can go back and watch it again.
– See it on the Big Screen
The Recruit (PG-13)
The less you know about The Recruit going into the theater, the better. Nothing I say would keep you out of the theater anyway, especially if you are an Al Pacino fan.
I am.
Pacino stars as a CIA recruiter who sees a boatload of “talent” in Colin Farrell, who plays an MIT computer hotshot who tends bar to make a living. At least we see him working a bar once, so we have to assume that’s his job. I suppose MIT recruited him as well, as that school is mighty expensive for a bartender. Perhaps his father left him something in his will, back when he worked for Shell Oil, but that’s another flimsy part of the script.
It’s only when Pacino gets Colin to go to The Farm, where all CIA operatives are trained on how to be all they can be that we really sit up and enjoy this film. Fun stuff. Cool. Gritty. But while we’re watching that, the Hollywood screenwriters are busily getting ready to unleash their cheap, sleazy game of ping-pong with the script so that when we expect (or want) this, they switch-a-rooney to that. And after ten minutes of that, they switch back to this. Then again. And so on, until you wish they would just make up their minds and roll the credits. You’ve seen it all before.
If you want to know how the CIA trains their staff – look elsewhere. Want to know what it would be like to be a CIA spook? Look elsewhere. Want to spend some time eating popcorn in a darkened theater watching Al Pacino in an action movie to waste a Sunday afternoon? Nothing wrong with that – this is your movie.
– See it on the Big Screen
The Ring (PG-13)
It’s rare to find a good scary movie these days. Leave it to the Japanese to come out with one. And leave it to Hollywood to block the release of the Japanese film in America until they could remake it and snatch our hard-earned dollars first. The Japanese graphic even looks scarier!
At least this time Hollywood did a decent job. The 1998 Japanese film Ringu is said to be one of the scariest movies of all time (the Japanese Exorcist) and made huge dollars at the overseas box office. That Japanese ripped-off version is mighty scary if you are an American too, if you can get your hands on it.
The story starts out as an urban legend. You all know an urban legend or two, right? A wild story that someone told you that happened to their cousin – except the exact same story is being told hundreds of times around the country so it’s obviously a yarn.
A classic from the 70’s is the kid in the neighborhood who ate Pop-Rocks candy, then chugged a Coke, and his stomach blew up and he died! Yeah, right.
Well here’s a legend of a video tape. If you find it, and watch it, you die! Cool!! One teenage girl tells her girlfriend that after you watch the tape, the phone rings and you’re told you’re going to die in seven days. And she has the tape.
If you were a teenager, would you watch it? (And would you want an unlisted phone number first?) Naomi Watts (Tank Girl and Mulholland Dr.) plays Rachel Keller, a reporter for a Seattle newspaper who watches the video tape after four teens mysteriously die. She watches, then… Ringgg! Oops – it’s that damn phone call, warning of impending death. But it’s no joke. It’s downright creepy. For real.
Keep in mind this film teeters on the edge of being corny, and I can’t stress enough the fact that you have to see it in a movie theater of quiet movie-going peers. Two or three clowns will turn this into a quip-fest of chattering up at the actors on the screen. Some audiences actually like talking to the screen. Avoid those inner-city theaters – at least for this one.
If your audience is quiet, I guarantee a creepy two hours that will have everyone nervously chattering afterward, much like the original Friday the 13th but with far less gore. The less you know before you enter the theater, the better. But this one works, folks.
– See it on the Big Screen
The Transporter (PG-13)
From the moment the opening titles start, you can see this is one cool action flick. The foreign cast is selected perfectly, and the movie opens with a roar… before slowly unraveling twenty minutes later. By the time it all ends, the audience around you should be laughing at the lack of direction.
Frank Martin (played by an Englishman named Jason Statham) is a BMW-driving, BMW-loving, professional illegal transporter who lives to transport unknown items from point A to point B while following his special rules. Rules that “bad guys” seem willing to pay a lot of money for. Rules like: Never change the deal. Never use anyone’s name. Never look in the package being delivered.
It’s not that the packages he transports are really unknown to him. He knows exactly how much they weigh and how big they are. Technical stuff is his gig. As any UPS guy knows, the size, weight and dimensions are the key to the price. Right?
It’s what’s inside the package that he cares little or nothing about. And he’s a stickler for his rules. It makes the opening scene both exhilarating and funny at the same time. When the deal suddenly changes and four bank robbers enter his getaway car instead of the three that he was expecting, Frank will have nothing to do with it. Meanwhile, the cops are on their way.
Great scene. Enjoy it. Rewind it and watch it again. (Are you getting the picture here?)
As I said, the casting is great:
Jason Statham (Cool Transporter – (should wear a “Dangerous When Irked” button on his lapel) – tough guy)
Shu Qi (The Package)
Matt Schulze (The Villain (played the scruffy gang guy in The Fast And The Furious))
François Berleand (French Cop)
The problem for some American viewers will be understanding the dialog, with Jason being from England, François speaking English wrapped in a thick French béarnaise sauce, and the Chinese hottie, Shu Qi, who learned just enough English to finish filming. All in all, an English/French/Chinese-in-a-blender approach. The subtitles on the DVD release will be helpful.
Shu Qi is a star in Asia and has been in over 40 Hong Kong films – 13 of which I own on DVD with English subtitles, so I must admit I was anxious to see her first Hollywood release. Shu does the best she can with what script there is, but that’s not saying much. Mostly frightened screaming for her first 4, or was it 8 scenes? A lot of screaming. I’ve seen Shu in too many movies to blame her; it’s the director’s fault for telling her to, “Just scream.” There are moments when you can see her start to blossom, then the script shuts down and runs willy-nilly down a sloppy, brainless action path.
François Berleand is a good French actor and does a great job as the cop who thinks he knows exactly what Frank is up to but just can’t quite prove anything. But his accent is thick enough to cause whispers of, “What did he say?” throughout the theater.
One pet peeve of mine that far too many movies have abused: as any kidnapper knows (or again, any UPS guy), you can’t gag someone with a 3″ x 4″ piece of duct tape across their mouth. But that aside, it really doesn’t matter much because after an hour or so, you’ll begin to lose interest and decide to hit rewind and return the video in the morning.
– Wait for Rental
Red Dragon (R)
Anthony Hopkins is back and witty as ever in Red Dragon, the prequel to Silence of the Lambs, and a remake, of sorts, of Manhunter, which was directed by Michael Mann. (The styles of Manhunter and Red Dragon are light years apart, but the premise is close.) If you like the other two, Red Dragon will creep you out in all the right ways.
This movie starts out before Hannibal is imprisoned, but it doesn’t really cover his entire killing spree because that will no doubt be the prequel-prequel, to Silence, much like the Star Wars epic. But it does give us a taste (pun intended) of his ghoulish side before he was corralled behind the thick glass wall in a basement of a Baltimore hospital for the criminally insane. It’s the Tooth Fairy we’re after in this one, with Edward Norton playing Will Graham, an FBI investigator with a nose for sniffing out creepy white serial killers.
Speaking of noses – I wasn’t the only one in the theater who noticed that the actress who plays Edward Norton’s wife has a strange nose that looks like it met up with a serial killer with a dull pair of scissors. No kidding!
You’ll thoroughly enjoy the banter between Hannibal and Will Graham as they play mental tug-of-war over the inner workings of the Tooth Fairy, and grimace as the Tooth Fairy plies his trade.
The film should hold up nicely as a rental in your dark family room as you eat fava beans and sip on a nice Chianti. But for the full effect, I’d recommend your local theater to pay a visit to Hannibal and the creepy Tooth Fairy who calls himself the Red Dragon. And there’s nothing like a 60′ screen to show off the flaws of a bad rhinoplasty.
– See it on the Big Screen
XXX (PG-13)
If you love Bond movies, you’ll love XXX. If you line up to see the opening of Bond movies, it’s time to get in line for XXX.
In 2,000, an unknown bouncer (and struggling actor) named Vin Diesel starred in a movie called Pitch Black. For those of us who caught that low-budget “B” movie, the bad guy, Vin Diesel, caught our attention, and he was sure to break into bigger Hollywood roles. For those that missed Pitch Black, you just might want to rent it. Part II is in the works now.
After playing supporting cast roles in Saving Private Ryan (a must-see film) and Boiler Room (a so-so movie), Diesel finally got the breakout role of a lifetime in The Fast and the Furious. This would propel him toward Arnold Schwarzenegger status. (Arnold is getting long in the tooth and is in dire need of a hit movie.)
XXX puts Diesel right up there with the top Hollywood dogs, and XXX should put pressure on the 007 films as well. As much as I hate to believe the snowboarding tattooed kids of today will be taking over the world soon, the reality is, they will. Vin Diesel is the future, so you might as well enjoy it. And enjoy it you will. It’s pure energy, from the pounding music to the never-ending adrenaline rush scenes. Believable scenes? Not really. But if 007 makes you grin, you’ll be grinning ear to ear during this one.
Diesel plays Xander Cage, a guy who makes his living doing crazy, unlawful stunts, films them, then sells the video to a huge, bloodthirsty audience. (Those who know who Steve-O is, you know this part is NOT far-fetched. If you don’t know who Steve-O is, just ask your kids.) This illegal stunt work can only lead to recruitment for Xander Cage by the NSA to save the world from… oh, what does it matter? Like all the James Bond movies, you just go for the thrills.
Shame that they cast Asia Argento as the lead female in the movie because she’s the least attractive woman in the film. And there are literally hundreds of women in this thing.
But that aside, this is a must-see flick, in a huge movie theater with a good sound system. There is a HUGE avalanche scene that must be felt to be fully appreciated, so don’t skimp on your choice of theaters. IMAX should be showing this film.
Only one warning for you parents out there. The Xander Cage character has tattoos all over his damn body, and every day it seems kids (of both sexes) are getting more than their share. Diesel is just the kind of role model that will invariably pressure those good-natured fence-sitting kids to go ahead and get some “tats” of their own. If I had a young, impressionable kid going to this movie, I might have an adult-to-kid refresher talk about how tattoos may be cool THIS YEAR, but, blah, blah, blah.
– See it on the Big Screen
Signs (PG-13)
Mel’s back at it again, with another blockbuster hit movie. It’s good to see him act more like a normal guy after a few too many “Over The Top – I’m Losing My Mind” roles. Here he’s a retired preacher and farmer, raising his two children alone after losing his wife to a bizarre accident. Then bizarre crop circles turn up in his cornfield.
Joaquin Phoenix plays his brother who has returned to live with Mel after the accident. Remember Joaquin Phoenix? He’s the actor who played the “Wimpy Lover of His Sister and Little Boys & Leader of Rome” role in Gladiator. Tough role to shake, tough typecast to break, and I thought about it the entire movie.
I was never a fan of Macaulay Culkin, and his speech impediment might have impeded my ability to listen to him talk for more than thirty seconds. His brother, Rory Culkin, shares his brother’s deviated septum affliction causing him to sound like he could use a good nose-blowing. Rory plays Mel’s son, a kid who has a big asthma problem (you can see the scriptwriters using that angle a while later, HUH?). Rory acts as though he has been given an overdose of Ritalin throughout the movie, but this being the infamous Macaulay family, that’s probably a given.
All in all, this thing limps along like a TV movie, and commercials might actually help the pacing by breaking up the monotony. This isn’t bad acting, and not a bad story. But you can feel the actors – acting. It’s unnatural, almost stage-like, with the only thing missing between scenes is the director yelling, “Cut!”
Another bone to pick: Why do people in the movies turn on a flashlight with it facing their faces? Then they s-l-o-w-l-y turn the flashlight downward into the room in which they are curiously looking. Stop That! Do you do that? Nobody in the world does that! Just stop it! And how many times do you drop a flashlight when you are gripping it in the dark curiously peering through pitch blackness? Once, twice, three times? Never?
The correct answer is, Never. Unless you are directing a movie.
Director: “Now here’s the part where you’ll drop the flashlight, again.” Actor: “HUH??”
At least the little daughter Bo (Abigail Breslin) can act. She’s probably six or so, but she out-acts everyone in this movie and will no doubt be directing next year.
The movie’s not 100% about those dreaded hoaxes called crop circles. The existence or nonexistence of aliens (and God) is the real meat and potatoes of the story. But the biggest question of all for you and your family is whether you should rent the movie Signs or wait for its HBO release.
– Wait for HBO Release (If you can)
Minority Report (PG-13)
Fifty years from now, holographic TV will be disappointing. That’s just one of many things that I came away with after watching Spielberg’s latest action movie, Minority Report. It seems a lot of things won’t be quite as good as one would expect 50 years hence, except I’m sure that’s not what Spielberg had in mind when finishing this movie.
The film is not a flop. How could it be, given the amount of money involved and Tom Cruise as the star? It’s just that Spielberg should have given it just a little more thought before releasing it. Although you might worry that I’m giving away crucial facts after reading the following, rest assured I’m not ruining anything about this thin movie plot.
1) Real human eyeballs won’t roll down a hallway like marbles when carelessly dropped unless you are watching a Saturday morning cartoon. Why doesn’t Spielberg know this? Maybe in 50 years, this can happen?
2) When you leave or are terminated from a company for any reason, your passwords/keys/ID cards, whatever, are always immediately revoked/changed so you can’t come back later on your own. I know Spielberg has never had a day job, but does he really not know this? Everyone in the theater knows it! Maybe in 50 years, security will become sloppy?
3) When you want to steal a brand-new, state-of-the-art Lexus, just walk down to the local Lexus auto factory, hop into a car as it’s being manufactured, and after the robots apply the paint, simply drive off. No problem. In 50 years, this will be easy, and no one will care. Spielberg must believe this.
I don’t.
The first time you see the police using their cool jet backpacks, think back to the scene of the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. They were low-tech 1939 special effects, but for some strange reason, Spielberg has trouble beating it. One policeman lands so sloppily (acting-wise) that Tom Cruise kids him about it. If these things are supposed to be so hard to land and operate, why then can they suddenly fly with Olympic Jedi grace and style through open windows when they start fighting with them? And if you’re wearing a jet pack, I suppose your body must suddenly take on a Superman shell that enables you to crash through floors of buildings without so much as a scratch.
Maybe in 50 years.
Keep in mind this is not a superhero comic remake like Spider-Man or Superman. It’s just you and me in a world 50 years from now. I think Spielberg got the pages of his script mixed up with another movie.
But back to the holographic TV. I’m a gadget freak, and I fully expect to see holographic TV in my lifetime. But if it looks as poor as the version Spielberg shows us, I’ll be holding on to my Sony for a while. I’ve seen smoky sports bars with better projection setups.
The spiders were cool. The plasma-firing shotgun was cool. But both scenes are pretty short. The film is 2 hours and 30 minutes long. Perhaps more spiders? More guns?
The scene where Tom Cruise “orchestrates” the computer with his hands (see picture above) could have been totally comical, and I found myself holding back a chuckle at times. But given 50 years, I’m sure the mouse as we know it will be dead. This might be one option, though you would work up quite a non-mouse sweat after an 8-hour day at your workstation using those gloves. Got to be a better way.
At about the one-hour mark, the film went into MTV, Blair Witch shaky film mode. Everyone noticed it, and it took away from the movie. I would expect more from a veteran filmmaker. It’s not a bad L-O-N-G film, but if it were a great film, I wouldn’t have noticed how L-O-N-G it was. If you haven’t seen Spider-Man, The Sum of All Fears or The Bourne Identity, go see those first. They were all better.
– Wait for Rental
The Bourne Identity (PG-13)
Matt Damon hangs by his fingertips in The Bourne Identity, a movie that will no doubt entertain you and catapult Matt Damon (Bourne) into 007 star status. He’s a good choice for this film as an assassin in a relatively bloodless PG-13 movie (like 007). But blood or not, the action is still there, and whether or not you understand what’s going on, the quick camera work will keep you interested.
Bourne also has Bond-like abilities, except in his case, he doesn’t know he has these special talents until he suddenly needs them, like a martial-arts-McGyver with memory loss. But unlike Tom Cruise, Matt probably couldn’t have carried the movie himself. The casting department made a strong choice in Franka Potente, the woman who starred in the movie Run Lola Run. She accepts Bourne’s offer of $10,000 to drive him to Paris, something most people would jump at, but whether or not she’d stay a minute longer in real life might be questionable. But this being a Hollywood movie, there is never any doubt.
I realize a lot of women like the “bad boy” image of life on the wild side, and they may even enjoy latching on to it for a free (or paid) ride. But there is a big difference between dating millionaire bad-boy Dennis Rodman for excitement and hanging around Bourne, literally putting your very life on the line hour by hour. I’m willing to bet there is a finite limit on the amount of adrenalin one will endure before calling it quits and walking away with a pocket full of free cash.
But having said that, I’m glad she sticks around. It makes for a very enjoyable film.
– See it on the Big Screen
The Sum of All Fears (PG-13)
To tell you too much about the movie would be to risk giving too much away. If you’ve watched too many previews or newscasts about this motion picture, they’ve probably already spoiled it for you. So much for keeping key moments a secret.
The story has some laughable shortcomings concerning the actual workings of the U.S. Government, as well as some timetable issues, because after all, this movie is a prequel (prequels seem to be the “in” thing these days) in a list of Tom Clancy books which follows the career of a CIA analyst, Jack Ryan. But if you try to tie the other movies (The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger) to this one, you’ll come away feeling the whole series is a Hollywood sham that doesn’t add up.
But if you go simply expecting two hours of popcorn-eating enjoyment, this movie will more than fill the bill. Especially if it hasn’t been ruined for you by all the prerelease press that gives away all the surprises.
– See it on the Big Screen
Spider-Man (PG-13)
One of the most anticipated movies of the year after the new Star Wars installment, Spider-Man finally hits the theaters after some post-9/11 twin-tower reediting.
Is it a great movie? Well, no, it isn’t. But it’s good enough that although you probably wouldn’t want to see it twice, you’ll want to see it once. Children will come out of the theater crime-fighting one another and jumping about like an atomic Spidy on a blood sugar rush, while adults will come out hopeful that the sequel will be even better than this first installment.
The casting is good, with Tobey Maguire playing the meekest of leads. But Kirsten Dunst playing the love interest is a bit odd. Though not ugly, Kirsten seems to have sharp incisors left over from her role in Interview with the Vampire.
But it’s hardly the star power we’re after here, as even Willem Dafoe (spelled correctly, by the way) takes second fiddle to the special effects we all paid to see. And the effects aren’t half as phony in a theater as some of the trailers you’ve seen on TV.
All in all, it’s one of those rare films that works equally well for both kids and adults.
– See it on The Big Screen
Panic Room (R)
Forget what the critics said. Wait for video and pick it apart for laughs.
– Wait for Rental
End of Review List