Change Your Image
Jeff-151
Reviews
Two Weeks Notice (2002)
Couldn't sit through it
I'm wondering whether I saw the same movie as all the people on this board who loved it. I found it almost unwatchable, extremely unfunny, and after suffering through an hour, gave up on it and walked out. In general I think Hugh Grant is extremely talented and usually very funny, but he was not given anything to work with in this poor apology of a movie. Sandra Bullock should get over herself and stop playing these parts where we're supposed to believe she's unattractive to the opposite sex in her eyes. Come off it, Sandra, you know you're too good-looking to get away with it, you're no Nia Vardolos (Big Fat Greek Wedding) - in fact I believe the suits wanted to shoehorn Bullock into the Greek-girl role but thank the gods they were foiled.
Harrison's Flowers (2000)
Best film I've seen all year
When Sarah Lloyd goes to find her photo-journalist husband in Yugoslavia in 1991, she doesn't know the hell she's let herself in for.
The film starts quietly with scenes of their home-life in New Jersey, although it's obvious that their son, Cesar, is not happy with Dad being away most of the time in war-zones.
Harrison goes away for one last shoot in Yugoslavia and is soon announced as dead by his magazine, because witnesses saw the house he was in in Vucovar being blown up. Sarah refuses to believe it, and decides to go and find him against all advice.
After picking up a young Croatian in Graz, Austria, who is returning to take his wife and baby back to Paris with him, they head for the rapidly imploding Yugoslavia, with its multi-ethnic hatreds and centuries-old strife. Once they are over the border, they run into a patrol (I don't even know which racial group they belonged to), and hell opens up for them.
The movie is relentless in it's realism of civil war where everybody is considered fair-game by all sides. Young and old women raped and killed, men of all ages slaughtered in firing squads, the barbarity of this conflict is hard to watch at times, but it should be seen by as wide an audience as possible.
I won't give away the ending, but it is a truly remarkable film and should have been given more publicity.
10 out of 10.
Jurassic Park III (2001)
Surprisingly Enjoyable
It's classic summer escapism. Put your brain in neutral, lean back and enjoy the ride. I went expecting something about on a par with JP II, but this was much better in my opinion. The cast was uniformly good, Sam Neill can't make a bad film, William H. Macy and Tea Leoni play very sympathetic characters, and even the people you might not like particularly, i.e. the hired help that Macy and Leoni brought along, are likable characters. It was all a little like a ride through the Haunted House at the amusement park, you know when the scares are coming and roughly what they're going to be, but you enjoy it all the same.
Unbreakable (2000)
As bad as it gets
Oh my God, what a terrible movie. I couldn't sit through it to the end, so I missed the 'twist ending' anyway. About a dozen other people also walked out on it during the showing that I was at. I must be one of the 'mediocre people' that just doesn't get it, and neither did the other members of the 'peanut gallery' I was with, to quote one of your other reviewers. And me with two bachelors degrees - imagine that! Truly, do not waste your money on this schlock, it is NOT moody, beautiful, finely drawn or deep. It is one person's attempt at making a film about good versus evil and linking it to a theme of comic books. It's shot in a horrible grey tone throughout, to symbolize his grey life, I suppose, although Willis's one-note acting could substitute for the mediocrity there. The camera-angles all over the place get very old very quick, this is stuff students at film school come up with. Samuel L. Jackson is the only reason to see it, he's wonderful in every shot, but even he can't rescue this abortion of a film.
The Contender (2000)
A manipulative film
I am as liberal in my politics as you can get, but I came away from this movie feeling manipulated. I agree with the premise that there is a profound double standard in this country where it comes to what is acceptable behavior for men versus women. But did the Gary Oldman character have to be so egregiously evil, and did we have to keep on seeing him shovelling rare steak down his gullet? Perhaps the film-makers were trying to get the vegetarians on their side too. A better film would have made him more human with a more well-rounded personality. That being said, the performances were all excellent, especially Joan Allen's. It's also nice to see Sam Elliott getting good roles again.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Brains Wide Shut more like
After spending what seems like half a lifetime last night watching this endless film, I'm left with feelings of sympathy for Tom and Nicole. Fancy giving up nearly two years of your lives to make such a desperately flawed movie. I've read quite a few of the reviews to figure out if anybody else had any clues as to what it was about. The prevailing opinions are either that you are in some sort of intellectual class above anybody else, and that you get it and the plebes don't, or that it's beautifully filmed schlock. I'm of the second opinion. I get the premise that it's about how fragile relationships are, and that we have to trust each other, but did we have to sit through nearly three hours to make that point. Another problem I have with it is the mannered acting from just about everybody in it (ACTING !!! as John Lovitz would say). Nicole's portrayal of being stoned was over the top, maybe having to repeat the scene time after time for Kubrick had that effect. Every line seemed to take forever. I can't think of anybody in the film who came across as natural, apart from the nymphomaniac daughter of the Russian costume-store manager. The film really started to go down hill in the very first scenes where Nicole at first played along with, then rejected the advances of an ageing Hungarian lounge-lizard at a party. Why would she put up with his tawdry come-on lines? It doesn't ring true at all. As to the so-called orgy scene, everybody looked bored stiff - no pun intended; the women walked about in slow motion, was this supposed to enhance the eroticism? And by the way, do these people have X-Ray vision? How could they possibly know that Cruise was an outsider behind his mask? Any tension Kubrick was trying to inject into the later part of the film was ruined by the incessant plonking on the piano that any toddler could manage. More quibbles: London cannot pass for Manhattan, the streets were much too tidy looking. Also I saw the same mail-box in several different locations, tagged with the same graffitti. I 495 does not go anywhere near Long Island, as far as I am aware - it's in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Maybe that mansion they were at was really in Newport R.I. in which case the film becomes even more unbelievable. The commute would be horrendous! These may seem nit-picking, but look at it this way: either Kubrick is a perfectionist genius, in which case he would have got those kinds of details right, or he's a human being who made some excellent films earlier in life, but unfortunately his final film was not up to his best.
Pushing Tin (1999)
A waste of good acting talent
It's difficult to know where to begin. I was looking forward to seeing this film as I think both John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton are both fine actors, also Kate Blanchette is in it so how bad can it be? It reeks. John Cusack plays a macho air-traffic controller for the New York metro area who thinks he's God's gift to pilots. Billy Bob Thornton comes along and out-machos him both in the control-room and on the basket-ball court, and also happens to have the sluttiest wife in the history of cinema. Name the cliches: 1. Billy Bob's zen-like cool as a half-Cree or is it half-Choctaw? both get mentioned - anyway, he wears a feather when he's controlling the planes. 2. Cusack sleeping with aforementioned slut. 3. Major fight in control-room while planes are haplessly flying around out there - very professional, guys. 4. The stupid ending . There's plenty of other garbage which is too numerous to mention.I almost got testosterone-poisoning from all this schlock. I'm amazed these fine actors wanted to be associated with this horrible film.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
From beginning credits to end, a masterpiece.
From bombers refuelling mid-air to "Try a Little Tenderness" to nuclear armageddon at the end to the tune of "We'll Meet Again", Dr. Strangelove is faultless satire. There are just so many hilarious touches - how about going from a missile-gap to a mine-shaft-gap for one. The thoughtful looks on all the men's faces when they considered the duties of procreation they would have to endure with their quota of ten beautiful women each. It's all truly priceless, and if I had to pick my favorite film of all time, this would probably be it.