Movies Watched In 2002

I take it you liked the movie?! I thought the film had a lot to say behind the blood and the gore. I thought it was an interesting sex role reversal--instead of the adolescent boy who can't deal with his raging hormones and turns into a werewolf, this time it's a girl. I believe it's a feminist movie. I didn't like the ending, though.

I did like it, but I think it's one of those movies you have to watch twice or more to catch and understand all the good, rich dialogue.

I had high expectations for Road to Perdition, but I was greatly disappointed. The film was given a "10" by a reviewer for my local paper, but I thought it was the worst movie I've seen in a long time. I thought the cast was great, the acting good, and the 1930s "period piece" setting and style nice to look at, but I thought the actual content to be threadbare and the dialogue to be cliche. I'm not into action movies, so I was bored by all the "good guy, bad guy" characterizations and the attempt to shock the audience with random scenes of violence for the sake of violence. But, mainly, if the movie was about a father's fear that his son would follow in his footsteps, this theme wasn't obvious until it I was hit over the head with it at the end. Besides one fight in school, there was no evidence that the son was turning gangsta and the last scene with the kid's cheesy voice over..."and that's the last time I held a gun," didn't do it for me. What did you think of it?

Yup.

Hey Jim. I didn't like Finding Forrester much. I thought it was badly edited. Yet, as a writer, I liked the part where Forrester instructs, "don't type like that, pound on the keys." Good, albeit noisy advice. Also, I think he was right on when he said that a way to a woman's heart is with unexpected gift at an unexpected time. Too bad Connery didn't offer any advice to the key to a man's heart. What did you think of the film?

Signs was nice-to-look-at shallow summer movie, but the faux spirituality/philosophy got annoying.

Punch-Drunk Love is no Boogie Nights or Magnolia, but I like Anderson's minimalism (e.g., his use of a harmonium to show Sandler/Egan's real character), Sandler's new direction and his very funny anger scenes, and the theme (one of my favorites) that even misfits can find love.

It's actually the Independent Spirit Awards, but same difference. I don't mean to cut in, but I have wanted to recommend this film to someone for a while.
I originally liked the film, but didn't love it. The further away I get from the film, the more cohesive and great it feels. There are real, flawed characters, interesting themes, smart writing, and, best of all, there's great acting. Catherine Keener and Emily Mortimer are both great. Unfortunately, the other aspects of Mortimer's performance have been overshadowed by the fact that she has a painful fully nude scene about halfway through the movie that was all the talk when the film opened. Overall, a very good film that I might move up into my top tier with more consideration.

As shallow as it sounds, the main reason I picked up Lovely and Amazing was to see Jake Gyllenhall, who oddly plays a character similar to that in The Good Girl (although he's the best in Donnie Darko). Not to play the devil's advocate to AAA--I remember our discussion of The Man Who Wasn't There, Jim ;)--I didn't like Lovely and Amazing, mainly because of the dialogue. I found Keener's character's dialogue, where out of nowhere, twice, she ponders the wonders of childbirth, and where her recount of the bad relationship with her father to Gyllenhaal's 17-year-old character in his bedroom is less emotionally bonding than unaccounted for and trite, to be unrealistic. I found the neurotic trio of daughters (with the exception of the wonderful performance of the "adopted sister," by 12-year-old African-American Raven Goodwin who, ironically, is not even listed as part of the cast on the Lovely and Amazing official web page) to be maudlin and annoying and, unless I missed it, I don't think the movie had anything to say. Man, you're really going to have to catch me on a movie that I have nothing but praise for!