A Face in the Crowd: Still relevant 50 years later, this story of a folksy ne’er-do-well who becomes a folk hero to the masses stars a surprisingly unpleasant Andy Griffith. Definitely worth viewing.
Junebug: Worth it mainly for Amy Adams’ endearing performance as a bubbly country gal who desperately wants to impress her sophisticated new sister-in-law. But it’s condescending to country folk, and the urbanite, art-gallery-owning couple who descend on the simple people of Generic Small Town, North Carolina, are grating and unsympathetic.
I watched several movies -- Memoirs of a Geisha, Spanglish, and The Upside of Anger -- that I had heard a few good reviews of but didn’t want to waste time or money seeing in the theater. Good call on my part. Memoirs is slow and boring (not to mention the irritation of Chinese women playing Japanese – what, they couldn’t find one Japanese actress to take one of the three main roles? – and dialogue entirely in English); if you’re really interested in the story, read the book. Spanglish is so odious that I got through maybe 20 minutes of it – there’s the stereotypically perky, scrappy Mexican immigrant, her stereotypically precocious daughter, the stereotypically henpecked husband (regrettably, Adam Sandler) of the family she goes to work for, and worst of all, Tea Leoni as his wife, a shrill, self-obsessed harridan whose very character suggests a deep-seated loathing of successful professional women on the part of the screenwriter. By comparison, Anger’s misogyny is relatively understated; Terry’s husband leaves her and their four daughters with no explanation, and she, formerly the nicest woman in the world, becomes angry and mean – and the daughter narrating the story berates her for it! Decent performances from Joan Allen and (I’m as surprised as you are) Kevin Costner, but the daughters are indistinguishable and pretty much all unbearable, and there’s an ugly subcurrent suggesting that Terry has no right to be angry – at least, not if it puts out anyone else – and even that she has to defend the ineluctable fact that she is an older woman.
Ghosts of the Abyss: Stultifying documentary about James Cameron and Bill Paxton’s visit to the Titanic. I generally like Paxton, but he’s kind of annoying here, and it just drags on and on, with admittedly amazing – but never-ending – shots of the Titanic’s wreck. It probably played better in its original IMAX format – everything looks better in IMAX – but even then, this is for Titanic fanatics only.
Enter the Dragon: Surprisingly anticlimactic after years of watching Jackie Chan and Yuen Wo Ping movies. I couldn’t make it through the movie; I tried fast-forwarding just to the fight scenes, but they were so unimpressive I just gave up on it.
The Island: I’m gonna blame Grant for this one; he suggested we watch it. But I was curious enough to agree, so I share the blame. It’s a sad day when a major Hollywood blockbuster has to steal its plot from a movie called Parts: The Clonus Horror. It’s even worse when Parts: The Clonus Horror is the better movie (at least, as presented by Mystery Science Theater 3000).
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