 An online diary of the movies that matter, as I see
them,explained and explicated daily (hopefully), at least weekly, and
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:: Sunday, November 30, 2003 :: "The Missing" is not as good a western as Kevin Cosner's latest, "Open Range". Where "Range", like "Dances With Wolves", opts for epic sweep and universal characters, Ron Howard's latest, which I give 6 or 10 on the Mikometer, is a straight ahead story detailing the efforts of a frontier doctor (Cate Blanchett) and her tracker father (Tommy Lee Jones, in a role that fits him too much like an old glove) to find her missing daughter, who has been kidnapped by a white slaver. In an earlier time when there were lots of westerns on the filmic horizon, this would have been a "standard oater", but since westerns are few and far between these days, and since I love the genre, I was waiting for this one. The film is better directed than the usual Howard piece. I liked it better than "Beautiful Mind". But this isn't a classic in any sense.:: Saturday, November 22, 2003 :: The big guns are starting to be rolled in for the holiday/Oscar season. I saw "Master and Commander" and give it a 7 of 10 on the Mikometer. I want to give it a higher position, but I tend to give too high a number to too many films, and in retrospect, perhaps M&C isn't as great an acheivement as Roger Ebert led me to believe after hearing him gush about the film on Ebert and Roeper. First: it's chances for Oscar. I don't think it will rate. I love swashbucklers, although this is more a historical "epic" than a simple "pirate" movie. It is tons better than "Pirates of the Carribean", but falls short of "masterful" to my thinking. The story of Captain Jack Aubrey (I almost wrote "Sparrow") who commands a British frigate, the "Surprise", looking for French to fight during the Napoleonic Wars, it is a rousing tale told with gusto and suspense by director Peter Weir. The film seems somewhat hard to follow at points, and there is a lot of camera buffeting meant to simulate the heaving waves. I'm sure I will like this film better when I get the DVD, (I wanted to rewind some of the movie for plot emphasis). Russell Crowe shows he is today's consummate action guy, and plays a mean fiddle as well. I understand he actually learned how to play violin for the captain's and his ship's doctor's musical interludes. One thing that really kept knawing at me as I watched was that Aubrey's friend, Dr. Maturin , the ship's surgeon, is played by Paul Bettany, who played Crowe's nonexistant room-mate in Ron Howard's "A Beautiful Mind". Next week is Howard's "western", "The Missing".:: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 :: This last weekend I saw "Runaway Jury" in the theater, and give it a 7 of 10. It is a standard Grisham thriller, and I kept thinking of Gene Hackman as the head of "The Firm". Overall it is a fine movie, nothing really special, and not one I will someday buy on DVD. The main attraction, and why I wanted to see it in the first place is the actors, specifically John Cusack as the tampering juryman Nicholas Easter. For some reason I don't really think of Rachel Weisz as that pretty an ingenue or that great an actress, but she did impress me in her "Jury" scenes. Much has been made of the Gene Hackman vs. Dustin Hoffman pairing, but they both seemed to be chewing the scenery in a somewhat usual effect. This weekend's "theater film" is the Coen Brothers' "Intolerable Cruelty" and although I wasn't keen on thinking this was going to be "Classic Coen" from the trailers, I give it an 7 of 10, bordering on 8. Both George Clooney and Catherine Zeta Jones are perfectly paired, and the biting Coen humor exists in all it's glory. Especially of note is Cedric the Entertainer as a private dick. The final scene is hilarious. "Cruelty" also has a perfect spit take by Clooney, and one of the best filmed jokes of the year, which I don't want to spoil by giving away. Prime Coen, somewhat below "Raising Arizona", and not in the league with "Miller's Crossing" or "Fargo" but much better, in my opinion, than "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou".
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