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Reviews
Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
A pretentious, irritating film
I never thought I'd see Emma Thompson in a role that made me dislike her, but this film did it. She plays a rude, neurotic novelist who seems compelled to treat people badly without reason. Dustin Hoffman is similarly irritating as a lordly literary don who, despite Ferrell's request for help, seems bored and too busy to really give a damn about whether the troubled IRS auditor lives or dies. An added irritant: Hoffman doesn't make a move without a coffee cup or coffee pot in his hand (coffee swilling has become the successor to the compulsory cigarette smoking of the older movies).
Maggie Gyllenhaal is fetching as the love interest, but I liked her a lot more in the first half - when she was giving Ferrell a hard time - than later when she falls for him and turns into a fawning teen-ager.
If the novelist did indeed have the power to determine the fate of Ferrell, she surely chose a cruel and painful alternative to actually killing him off.
This film tried to be clever, inventive and message-laden, but to me it pretty much failed.
Brick (2005)
Incomprehensible semi-gibberish
This film is a throwback to the James Dean, everybody-look-miserable-and-mumble era when neurotic, semi-literate losers went stumbling about trying to find the meaning of life while lacking either the brains or the motivation to come to grips with reality once they found it. I think the actors possess talent and passion; it's too bad the director told them to either whisper or slur most of their lines. With a plot as twisting and complex as "Brick's" the director and cast have an even greater need to be clear in their delivery of lines. And was there an ounce of humor in this film? God knows it could have used it, but I failed to see it.
Broken Trail (2006)
What caused the Chinese woman to get trampled by the horses?
About two-thirds of the way through, one of the Chinese women inexplicably (to me) jumps from the wagon and is soon crushed or trampled to death by the horses. What caused her to take that action?
This was an excellent production, possibly not as memorable as Lonesome Dove but still a welcome return to the western format. At 75, Duvall deserves all the recognition he gets as a major actor. I wish the movie magazines would devote more attention to the actors who, like Duvall, never attain the star/celebrity status of the $20 million a movie crowd, but without whom Hollywood would be in even worse shape than it is today.
Winter Solstice (2004)
Meaning of title?
/Can anyone tell me why the film was given this title? All or most of the story took place in warm months. The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year.
/I mostly enjoyed this movie and its acting, and was charmed during most of the movie by the director's use of silence. Much of the emotion came just from the actors' expressions, glances, restraint. But after 80 minutes or so of restraint, I wished to God someone, anyone, would open his/her yap and speak true feelings, as well as some revealing dialog.
/I can appreciate slice-of-life movies that lack a neatly tied bow at the end, but this one felt truncated to me. I wanted to know much more than we were told. Where was the setting of the film? Where was Allison Janney's "real" home?
/Are there really entire families that substitute "hey" for all other forms of greeting, such as hello, hi, how are you, good morning?
Coma (1978)
Ridiculous premise -
We are asked to believe that a medical warehouse filled with suspended coma patients would not attract enormous public and media attention, especially in light of the weekly conducted tours for a variety of outsiders, who are then asked to take literature home with them. The Globe would have jumped on this story in a minute, with a resulting outcry of "Just what in God's name is going on here?" The film - which had a great deal of suspense and good acting - was padded with too-long segments of lead actors crawling through interior plumbing and electrical supply. // I enjoyed seeing the young Rip Torn,before he became beefy and saturnine. He's had a good career. Same with Widmark, who did well in this flick because he was not asked to snarl and talk out of the side of his mouth.
The Negotiator (1998)
Two-thirds of a good movie.
The Negotiator is a gripping film for the first 80 minutes. Then it rides off the rails in a confusion of fake negotiations, firepower, Chicago-FBI conflict and unbelievable plot twists. The movie is at least half an hour too long. Overall, however, the cast is excellent. Jackson does his usual fine job, but he's most effective in his movies when he is NOT screaming and shooting people. J.D. Walsh can do more emoting just by staring at someone than most actors can achieve with eight minutes of dialogue. I'm trying to remember how movies were made before the existence of computers, the Internet and cell phones. Without them, most of today's flicks would be relatively empty