| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me, Myself & Irene - R | January 18, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| The Lion King - G | January 18, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Scream - R | January 18, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Constantine - R | January 18, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| The Matrix Revolutions - R | January 18, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Rocky - PG | January 18, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Armageddon - PG-13 |
I know, I'm probably the last person in America to see this movie. Does anyone need a summary of what happens? Probably not, but just in case a large asteroid is headed for Earth. If it strikes, all life will cease to exist. NASA needs to send a team to the monster to drill 800 feet down and drop a nuke and they end up sending a team of deep sea oil drillers to get the job done. These guys are misfits and screwups and clash with the military.
I thought the movie was good, very suspenseful, and at 2.5 hours, about a half an hour too long. Maybe if they'd cut out some of the training stuff or something. I'd have liked to have seen more of the romance between AJ and Grace, but then there's a reason why I write what I do. I'm very interested in relationships. It was interesting how the scriptwriters kept making things worse and worse and worse for these poor drillers once they were in space. I mean everything went wrong that could possibly go wrong. It did up the tension, but after a while, even while I was on the edge of my seat, part of me was thinking, oh, come on! My favorite line in the whole movie was spoken by the Russian. It was something like: Components. American components. Russian components. All made in Taiwan. There were also some huge problems with the logic in the movie. Some of the space stuff was wrong, at least I'm pretty sure it was wrong. I don't think you can have explosive decompression in space. I decided to overlook all the nitpicky details, though, and just go along for the ride. It was a pretty fun one. |
January 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| The Italian Job - PG-13 |
The Italian Job is my latest movie rental. A group of thieves who steal a hell of a lot of gold bars are double-crossed by one of their own. This is prologue. The main body of the movie is how the gang steals their gold from the double-crosser. Um, not much of a plot summary, I realize that, but that's about the gist of it. BTW, mentioning the betrayal by one of the thieves isn't a spoiler because the summary on the movie mentions it.
I thought the movie was okay, but lacked the excitement and suspense of The Transporter, which I watched last week. The first problem I had was that when the double cross happens, I really don't care about any of the characters yet. Which kind of left me shrugging when it happened. And truthfully, I never really did care about any of the characters at any point in the movie which was part of what hurt the suspense. Which leads me to the second problem I had with the movie. I never felt as if it were all that suspenseful. Will they get away with avenging themselves against the betrayer or not? That should have been a driving question. There should have been twists and turns and setbacks and surprises, but I didn't really see any of that. The few things that were supposed to raise the suspense level as to whether or not they'd get away with it, didn't really do much to that end. Most of it was fairly predictable. Overall, it was an okay movie, but lacked the flair and excitement of the really good caper films where the viewer gets to enjoy seeing how ingenious the thieves are as they pull off their job. |
January 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| The Transporter - PG-13 |
In this movie, an ex-Special Forces soldier (Frank) is a getaway driver/transporter who lives by a few simple rules. I can't remember his first rule, but his second is: No Names. And the third is: Never look at the package. Only he breaks rule number three and finds a beautiful Asian woman who's trussed up and stuck inside a large bag. He still delivers her as promised to the bad guy.
Only this guy wants no witnesses and when the hero finds out he's been double crossed, he heads back to the mansion to kick some ass. The bad guy isn't there, but Frank takes out lots and lots of henchmen before stealing a car. Guess who's hiding in the back? Before you know it, our disinterested, dispassionate hero is joining the heroine's fight to stop a slavery ring. The bad guy, you see, is part of a cartel shipping men, women and children from Asia to Europe to be enslaved. I really, really liked this movie! Lots of great action and martial arts scenes, without the icky trademark moves that some martial arts actors have--like breaking the elbow backward and other gross out stuff like this. In fact, with the music score accompanying one of the fight scenes, it was nearly humorous. I think that one of the best things about this movie is that you can tell everyone was having a good time making it. There was just enough relationship stuff between the h/h to keep me interested, but I would have liked more. I also wish that the relationship would continue in the sequel, which I promptly added to my NetFlix queue after seeing this movie. Unfortunately, the actress's name does not appear in the credits for Transporter 2. I didn't like the fact that the heroine screamed so much and stood by helplessly when she showed such ingenuity in other ways. She ruins her own escape attempt by screaming and there were a few other moves she made along those lines. It would have been cool if she was more his equal. If you like action/adventure, suspense and martial arts, I can give this movie a big thumbs up. In fact, I liked it so much, that I watched it again with the commentary on to hear what the director (?) and Jason someone (hero) had to say. That was mostly uninteresting, but there were a few things I glommed onto. First, was the fact that the Asian actress pretty much didn't speak English, but between the time she was hired for the movie and the time they filmed it, she'd learned a lot. Second, this woman had appeared in the Chinese version of Charlie's Angels for Sony Japan (?) and she wanted her character to be stronger and not a damsel in distress. The director wouldn't let her because it was supposed to be the hero's movie. Since one of my peeves was the fact she did stand around helplessly, I was like, cool, she wanted to do more. |
January 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Transporter 2 - PG-13 |
Last night, I watched Transporter 2. I liked the first movie, about a guy who drove, no questions asked, a lot so I decided to take a chance on the sequel even though the Asian actress from the first movie wasn't in the second.
In this movie, the transporter is working in Florida, and as a favor to someone, he's acting as chauffeur for a family, driving the little boy to and from school and to appointments, stuff like that. He's asked to take the kid to a doctor's appointment, but when he does, it's a set up. The bad guys have killed the real medical staff and taken their places in order to inject the boy with a deadly virus. The transporter manages to escape with him, but in the end, the bad guys kidnap the kid. Of course, the cops think the transporter was part of the gang because he was forced to do some driving when the hench woman held a gun on the boy. So when the transporter calls to tell what really happened, they don't believe him. What follows is our hero trying to unravel the plot and rescue the kid and a lot of other people. I did like this movie, but not nearly as well as the original film. The action here was taut and suspenseful--probably more so than in the original--and the fight scenes were almost as fun as the original as well. Yet something fell short for me. The plot was a little over the top and far fetched, but that normally doesn't bother me, and in essence, this is a martial arts movie, so it should have worked. The chief bad guy does take time to explain the situation to the hero, something that irritates me in movies and books. (I've tried to avoid this as much as possible when I write my own books, but geez, sometimes there's no other way to get the info across and it's sooo tempting. But I digress.) After giving it some more thought, I decided what kept me from liking this movie as much as the first one was that there wasn't any romance in it. Not that the original Transporter had much romance either, but there was some and I thought the relationship between the transporter and the woman he rescued was great. I liked their chemistry and I would have loved to have seen them still together in this movie. I know that likely the actress had other commitments, but I did miss her. The French inspector did make an appearance. I enjoyed him immensely and he added pretty much the only humor to this movie. That's another thing I missed from the original film--it had more amusing moments in it than this one did. There was almost a quirkiness about it that made me believe that they were all just having a great time filming it. Instead in T2, the only moments of lightness are the very few with the inspector, and IMO, he wasn't in nearly enough scenes. The police, who in essence were working against the hero, were also not well defined. It would have been nice if we could have gotten a few more scenes from their POV in order to make them feel more real as characters. That probably would have increased the suspense as well. There were a lot of things I did like about the movie. The actor who plays the transporter (I don't remember names real well and these people aren't stars so forgive the lack of accreditation) is engaging and enjoyable to watch. He's got the martial arts movie hero down really well and I think he could be a star in this subgenre. The driving scenes are absolutely fabulous! This is one area where they surpassed the original movie. There's one stunt, where the transporter has to get a bomb off the bottom of his car, that is total genius. The fight scenes are also well choreographed, and while they're not quite as quirky as in the original movie, there is one scene that combined humor and action really well and was one of the highlights for me. Overall, I liked this movie a lot, but not quite as well as the original Transporter. I would watch a Transporter 3 if they make one, and would love to see the Asian actress from the original back in a second sequel with a little more romance between our driver and the woman. (And wouldn't it be cool if she kicked some butt as his partner in a third movie?!?) |
January 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Miracle - PG |
This is the story of the 1980 Olympic hockey team that beat the USSR and won the gold medal at Lake Placid. In this version of the story, the focus is on the coach, Herb Brooks played by Kurt Russell. (See? If someone stays in Hollywood long enough, even I'll learn the name. ;-O) I don't think I need to recap the action, do I? This was voted the sports story of the century by Sports Illustrated, so I'm sure you all know it.
There was a lot to love about this movie. Kurt Russell did a stellar job playing Coach Brooks and every expression on his face helped tell the story. Fabulous acting by Kurt, I thought, and everyone else in the movie. Actually, I didn't think about the acting until after the final credits were rolling, so I'd say that means it was good. I could believe for the length of the story that this was Herb Brooks, not Kurt playing Herb. Another thing I really liked was that the movie opened with a montage of world events for the ten years preceding the 1980 Winter Olympics. This put the game in context for the political and social climate of the time. It's easy to forget that the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan and the US was going to boycott the Summer Olympics that year in protest or that the Soviet Bloc had threatened to boycott the Winter Games. They didn't, but it had been a real threat. The other thing that's easy to forget in this world we live in now is that the Cold War was still very much alive and well in 1980 and that this was viewed as more than a game by a lot of people. The hockey scenes were very well done, and when I watched the extra on the DVD that took the viewer behind the scenes, I discovered it was because they'd cast hockey players who could act. True! They actually tested them on hockey skills with some NHL coaches before they were allowed to read for the roles. They had to have a certain level of ability or they weren't even considered. The casting was done all across the US and in Vancouver, Canada as well. I didn't notice any real deficiencies in the acting, so I think this strategy worked. The best part about this movie, though, was that despite the fact I knew the outcome--the USA wins the gold medal--there was enough suspense during the Olympic hockey scenes to keep me on the edge of my seat. I was actually stressed out, wondering whether or not they'd win. :-) The movie is 136 minutes long, which made me hesitate because it was pretty late when I popped it in and I was already tired, but the time flew by. It felt like a much shorter film. There was always something going on--if it wasn't action, it was character development--and I couldn't believe how quickly the end came. This movie made me remember just why I used to love hockey so much. I might have to catch a few Wild games on TV this winter. :-) At the very end, when the credits were playing, they showed the actors names and what that hockey player was doing now. I really liked that they did that, gave us a chance to catch up on what happened to the 1980 team. My rating: 5 stars Go watch this movie; it's fabulous! |
January 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - PG-13 |
I'd really been looking forward to the release of this movie on DVD. I even considered seeing it in the theater--briefly--but I think I had a book due...or something. I'm glad now that I waited for DVD.
This story opens with Will and Elizabeth being arrested on their wedding day for freeing Captain Jack Sparrow in the first movie. The bad guy is a lord who's part of the East India Trading Company and he offers Will a deal, but to free himself and Elizabeth, he'll have to find Jack and get his compass. Easier said than done since Jack is in trouble with more than a few people, including cannibals and Davy Jones. (Not Davy Jones the fabulous member of The Monkees, but Davy Jones, the scourge of sailors. :-) I just wanted to be clear.) The rest of the movie involves the search for a chest that everyone seems to want. So what didn't I like? I didn't think this kracken beast thing that attacked on the orders of Davy Jones was all that interesting a plot device and it seemed to keep showing up over and over and over again. It also seemed as if they kept showing Davy Jones's henchmen calling the kracken over and over. I felt like, okay, already, we get it, let's move on. The other thing I didn't like was how they ended the movie. I knew it would be a cliffhanger because I heard talk when Dead Man's Chest came out, but I figured it wouldn't be that big a deal. It was. I would have preferred they shoot it as three stand alone movies, or maybe put a plot arc over them, but wrap up the main story. They didn't and I'll have to wait now for Pirates Three to find out what happened. Things I did like about the movie--Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom. How can any woman go wrong staring at those two guys for a couple of hours? Orlando looked hotter in this movie than he did in the first, IMO, but Johnny Depp is still the hottest. I always used to think he was too pretty when he was younger, but now that he's older--oooh, baby! While I didn't like the cliffhanger ending, I did like who they had show up at the very end. Way cool! That alone will impel me to see Pirates Three when it comes out. Overall, I thought Pirates of the Caribbean 2 was okay, but that it lacked the charm and humor of the first one. I didn't find anything particularly wrong with it, it just didn't excite me and enchant me like Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl did. The move is worth watching just to look at Johnny and Orlando and there are worse ways to while away a couple of hours. 3.5 stars |
January 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Unrated |
This was originally a made for TV movie a couple of years ago and I saw it then, but it's better without commercials. :-)
In this movie, the hero, Eddie, is a maintenance worker at Ruby Pier, an amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, one of the rides breaks, and in an attempt to rescue a little girl from a falling car, he's killed. He meets five people in heaven, each of whom had his or her life touched by Eddie in some way. And along the way, he discovers things he didn't know about what really happened. I don't want to go into too much detail, so I'll stop here. This movie is one I recommend highly. It looks at how one life can touch another's and how we might not realize the impact we have. This is a movie that if you think about it for a while, there are deeper layers than what's obvious. It's not a main thread, but one of the pieces is that our view of our lives is narrow and we can't see the big picture, but as we go through Eddie's five people with him, we find out things about his life and how it fit into a bigger reality than he knew. For example, with his father. Eddie thought he knew how the man had died, but he was wrong. He was seeing his father through his misconceptions and it wasn't until he saw what had really happened that he was able to look beyond it to the man his father really was--a man with both good and bad traits. Another interesting facet that's never addressed directly is karma. Because of something Eddie did as a young man, he had a karmic debt to pay. He didn't even realize he was paying it, he simply believed his life had been a waste because he worked at this amusement park fixing rides, but with his last person, he found out differently. This movie is a tearjerker and also very meaningful and deeply touching. It's based on a book of the same name by Mitch Albom. (BTW, Netflix misspelled his name and this is a NYT bestselling author. Gah!) I haven't read it, but if the movie is this good, I can't help but wonder how great the book must be. My rating: 5 stars. |
January 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| The Butterfly Effect - R |
I didn't make it through the movie. I found it confusing and disturbing and turned it off early. If it had only been confusing, I would have hung in there because it was confusing in an intriguing way, and I believe, that's what the director was shooting for--to have the audience wondering what was going on. However, I found aspects of this movie so incredibly disturbing to me personally, that I shut it off. I lasted until the little psycho kid was going to burn another kid's dog alive. On top of the other stuff that had already happened, that was too much for me.
However, I was intrigued enough to want to know what the heck was going on and I did a search online. I found a great Movie Spoiler Site and it explained everything that happened in a concise way. Anyway, I found the premise for the movie intriguing from reading the spoiler, however, the execution didn't work for me. People who don't mind dark, grim and disturbing might like it, but I give it 1 star. |
January 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| The Trouble with Angels - PG |
Hayley Mills plays Mary Clancy, a teenager sent to the St. Francis Academy for Girls by her uncle. Her parents were killed and he's her guardian. On the train up, she meets several other girls bound for the academy and convinces them all to lie about their names. Of course, the mother superior (played by Rosalind Russell) catches them out and two of the other three girls she talked into it quickly cave.
This event sets the tone for Mary's entire tenure at the school. She's the hellion, the troublemaker and she brings her best friend along for the ride. If there's trouble brewing, Mary is behind it. Leading other students on a tour of the nuns' quarters, which are off limits--Mary. Putting a plaster cast around another girl's head, one that won't come off--Mary. Sneaking away to smoke--Mary. But while Mary and the reverend mother are constantly butting heads, Mary also sees things that make her wonder. The reverend mother comforts an old woman at a nursing home whose children promised to be there for Christmas and then didn't show up. She puts on a stoic face for her students, but privately mourns the death of another nun. And there are other things she says and does that Mary witnesses, raising her respect for the mother superior even though she continues to cause trouble. The story covers about three or four years and culminates with Mary's graduation. I've seen this movie on TV more than once and I rented it to watch it uncut and without commercials because I like it. It's fun and sweet, and aside from the smoking, very innocent. Rosalind Russell and Hayley Mills are both believable in their roles as Mother Superior and student and their scenes together have some priceless moments. Because of the year this movie was made, there are a few things that are a bit dated, but overall, it survives the test of time amazingly well. Also, because this movie is from 1966, it's pretty much safe for the entire family. (Take this with a grain of salt since I don't have children, but there was no sneaking off to have sex with boys, no drinking or drugs, and while the girls might be in trouble, it's always something relatively innocent. None of their pranks are ever mean-spirited.) I found the film amusing, although I didn't think it was laugh out loud funny. (I did when I was a kid.) There were also a few moments that touched me and teared me up. Like when the old woman was crying on the reverend mother's shoulder about her children. I enjoyed this movie as much as I did when I was a kid and saw it on television. 4.5 stars. |
January 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows - G |
Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows is the sequel to the movie I reviewed last week, The Trouble with Angels. Rosalind Russell reprises her role as the reverend mother and many of the supporting nuns from the first picture also return for this movie. There's one new nun, Stella Stevens as Sister George, and a whole new cast of students.
Sister George is an activist, participating in protests and getting arrested time after time in the opening sequence. (This film was made in 1968.) The movie itself opens with the reverend mother having a conversation with the bishop. He's approved Sister George's request to take some students on a cross-country trip to an interfaith rally in California. The mother superior tries to get out of it, but the bishop is a "forward-thinking" man who outmaneuvers her and she finds herself forced to take this trip. As they prepare for the journey, Sister George is there, constantly criticizing every one of her fellow sisters for not doing things the way she'd do them. They're all behind the times and stuck in tradition. Clearly, she's the only sister who has her fingers on the pulse of today's world. The group sets off and encounters problem after problem. They run out of gas (they have a new bus) and Sister George berates Sister Clarissa who's driving. Then a group of motorcycle thugs shows up and threatens two of the girls. Sister George steps in and saves the day by facing down one thug with a knife and talking to the leader of the gang. He gets them a can of gas and lets them go on their way. The bus stalls out on railroad tracks, just as a train is coming. The doors are all stuck, both the front exit and the emergency exit in back. The girls are climbing out the windows at the reverend mother's orders, but not everyone can get out. Fortunately, the bus starts at the last minute and they're all safe. The bus gets a flat tire in the desolate desert and Sister George rides a conveniently located donkey, complete with reins, to get help. The group runs into a detour that takes them 125 miles out of their way. It was marked on the map, but Sister Clarissa didn't see it. This gives Sister George another opportunity to berate her fellow nun and tell the reverend mother that they should have hired a professional driver rather than allow the incompetent sister drive. Never mind that Sister Clarissa has been driving the bus for years. Never mind that she finds pleasure in performing this task for others. Never mind that anyone can make a mistake. Somehow, the bus ends up attacked by Indians. Our intrepid travelers fight them off, only to find out they ended up in the middle of a film set. Okay. Sure. Actors are going to attack a school bus full of students and nuns when they're supposed to be attacking covered wagons. I almost buy that. Not. Other events of lesser importance include the group stopping at another school to stay for the night and it turning out to be a Catholic boys' boarding school. The reverend mother asks the sister in charge of finding their accommodations why they're here, but Sister George speaks up. She arranged this. Of course, the reverend mother doesn't like the idea of her girls in a dorm with all these boys, but the priest (again, clearly a forward thinker, not like the stodgy nuns) and Sister George convince her it will be okay. While they stay there, two of the students teach the boys how to make a bomb--just like Sister George showed them back at school. After the lab explodes and the window breaks, the boy runs out to catch the departing girls' group and pay the two students for the info. He honestly can't understand that he's going to get the girls in trouble. Sigh. The girls are assigned to wash the bus as punishment. There's a truck wash there and they decide to run the bus through--and forget to close the windows. Every single window is open and all the group's things are on the bus. The one girl, Rosabelle, played by a young Susan St. James, is supposed to be a straight-A student. It didn't occur to her until too late to close those windows? The movie ends with the concession that of course Sister George was right, they are too set in their ways. It's time to change. We close with all the nuns in short dresses and smaller head pieces so we can see their hair. Everyone is smiling and happy. Sorry, I couldn't resist a little commentary along the way and I probably gave out some spoilers too, but I felt it necessary to show the full scope of the picture. I hadn't seen this movie since I was about 13 or 14 and it was better in my memory than it was in real life. I think I know why I was so enchanted as a young teenager--I liked the theme song and there was a part where a boy at the ranch (after the flat tire incident) falls for Rosabelle at first sight. Unfortunately, as an adult, neither thing was able to make up for the other issues I had. First off, Sister George was so strident and so intolerant of anyone who didn't think the way she did--hardly the attitude I'd expect from someone who supposedly wants to do good. I have no clue what the church was like in this time, so I can't say whether or not the message of the movie was on target or not, but I will say that I felt banged over the head with it over and over and over again. I don't want to be hit like that with anyone's agenda. Secondly, could one more thing have gone wrong with the bus? It runs out of gas, it gets a flat tire, it stalls on the railroad tracks, it breaks an axle. I thought it got ridiculous after a while and I had a hard time caring about what misadventure would befall them next. It's like the scriptwriter had a checklist of what could possibly go wrong with the bus and used each and every possibility. That's not to say the movie was all bad. Rosalind Russell gave a fine performance, especially considering the script she had to work with. I still enjoyed the theme song, although I'm not about to download it onto my MP3 player anytime soon. And there were a few cute moments along the way. Overall, I don't think I'd recommend the movie, but it wasn't a totally awful way to spend a couple of hours. My rating: 3 stars |
January 17, 2007 | N/A | |||
| Ace Ventura - When Nature Calls - PG-13 | January 14, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Charlie's Angels - PG-13 | January 14, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Space Jam - PG | January 14, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| The Waterboy - PG-13 | January 14, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Mary Poppins - G | January 14, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Scary Movie 4 - PG-13 | January 14, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| George of the Jungle - PG | January 14, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - PG | January 14, 2007 | N/A | ||||
| Tim Burton's Corpse Bride - PG | January 14, 2007 | N/A |
298 ratings
20 reviews
