Reviews

This is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. It deals with its characters' life situations in a very direct, honest, and unblinking way. Terry and Sammy are a brother and sister who may simply have never gotten over the early deaths of their parents. (Then again, a lot of people without such tragedy have just as much difficulty running their lives.) Sammy is coping with her situation as a single mom, but there's a desperation about her: her new boss is driving her nuts, she has unresolved anger toward her son's father, and when her brother Terry shows up, well, it's not the kind of reunion she had hoped for. Terry on the other hand doesn't even try to make sense of his life; his aimlessness is like the raw material of his character. But the fact is that they are connected, and this is what drives the movie: they care about each other, and it makes you care about them.

Outstanding performances by Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo, and while I think Matthew Broderick may have played the same character before (Election), he was good here too. It was also good to see Jon Tenney as Sammy's kinda dopey on-again-off-again boyfriend...did anyone besides me see him as the obnoxious professor in "Lovelife" a few years ago? He was great!

A while back, I read that this movie had been tested and tweaked many times before its release...a bad sign. There are really just two problems with this movie: there's no plot, and it isn't funny. It's been a long time since I looked at my watch repeatedly during a movie, and I really didn't expect that that could happen in a movie made by the same guys who did Fargo, Miller's Crossing, Blood Simple, and Raising Arizona. So, if you absolutely gotta see a prison break movie, do yourself a favor: skip this and rent "Cool Hand Luke" instead!

I went into this movie knowing only that Ben Stiller (who I like) was in it. I was pleasantly surprised when Janeane Garafolo and William H. Macy also turned up, but...the script was just too weak for this talented cast to do much with it.

The basic problem was that it's too predictable; it follows a very standard arc (think "Ghostbusters"). Flatulence and special effects can't fix the fact that there's not a single original idea here. Note to Hollywood: the pop culture irony thing's dead.

You're still the man, Stan, but this one didn't quite work.

Like all of Kubrick's work, the photography and visual style of this movie were terrific. But the payoff for the considerable dramatic tension in the first 2/3 of the film was weak -- a couple of lengthy speeches at the end of the movie seeks to tie everything together and wrap it up with a nice bow for the protagonist (and the audience). I realize we were running a bit long here, but...

And don't you think Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman already take themselves a little too seriously?

Nevertheless, thank you Stanley Kubrick. You made some fantastic, thought-provoking movies! AND the funniest one I've ever seen. R.I.P. (or should that be O.P.E.?)

They seem to have worked a lot harder on the product placements than on the laughs in this movie, so it seems right not to spend too much effort on these comments. So...skip "The Spy Who Shagged Me" and rent the first one.

My favorite Western. The music, by Ennio Morricone, deserves special mention -- it's epic! dramatic! scary! tender! sentimental! (Another more recent example of Morricone's fine work is Brian De Palma's "The Untouchables.")

Excellent performances by Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards, and Charles Bronson. The story's got some nice twists to it. And it's fun to see Henry Fonda as a Very Bad Man!

Uh-oh. I've read and seen several reviews of this movie now that heaped lavish praise on the acting, the story, the direction, the music, the "important social themes," Oprah's heroic quest to have the film made, etc, while warning that viewers who haven't read the novel "might be a bit confused in places." What a cop out! As another reviewer has remarked, it seems like some serious Emperor's New Clothes action is going on here. C'mon, who's gonna have the guts to step up to the plate and pan the movie that stars (and is produced by) the most powerful woman in show-biz? I keep getting the image of a drunken, ashamed Joseph Cotton in "Citizen Kane," typing up his glowing "review" of Kane's opera-singing wife...this movie is that bad!

I've heard the novel is great. With some imagination (and maybe a couple of tequilas), I could still see how that might be true. But the movie has to stand on its own, folks! Director Jonathan Demme's excellent "Silence of the Lambs" sure did. This one, however, falls flat: the plot just wanders along from episode to confusing episode (with frequent and annoying use of extended fade-outs).

Worse, despite all the horrifying things that happen to them, the movie's characters don't generate much sympathy. Why? Because while there's a strong sense of inner tumult, and lots of Exorcist-style physical turmoil (flying tables and glowing red lights -- gimme a break!!!) there's no sense of any real inner conflict. The characters just react -- to the inhumanity of the white slaveowners, or to the frequent supernatural outbursts. There's no evidence in their actions that there's anything they've had to weigh or be confused by. The things that have happened to Sethe (Oprah) are revealed in flashback form, so unfortunately there's not much chance for you as viewer to get involved in them -- it's stuff that's already happened, and you're just being filled in, in shorthand form ("prefab context").

Another major problem: this thing is WAY too long. The movie meanders for another 45 minutes to an hour after what is clearly the climactic scene, and for what??? It just kind of winds down in some very expected ways.