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The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023)
Better-and worse-than I expected
The weirdest part about this movie is that Kiefer Sutherland gives by far the best performance. Delivering pretty much every minute of it from a chair, he manages to convey the tension of restrained/unhinged quite effectively. The other actors are less impressive, particularly Lance Reddick and Monica Raymund. And the ending is incredibly lame.
They do a good job of moving it to the modern day, while still following the book quite well (as far as I recall, anyway-it's been a few decades since I read it). And the decision to focus entirely on the court martial is a good one, turning what could have been an expansive, huge-budget fiasco into a taut <2hr suspense flick. Nicely done.
Larry Crowne (2011)
Tries too hard, and simply doesn't succeed
I had expected that Hanks would manage to do a decent screenplay, but he seems to be really going for a lot of quirk, and he simply didn't pull it off. By contrast, the romance plot line was just taken as read, and he hardly even bothered devoting five full minutes to it. Acting-wise, Hanks was also trying way too hard. Julia Roberts, on the other hand, completely phoned it in. For the record, I prefer the latter, if only because it seemed proportional to the weight of the film itself.
It's not painfully bad, but even for a fairly by-the-book RomCom, it wasn't very good either.
Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
Don't watch this movie for anything other than educational purposes, and even then, don't.
One of the most pretentious, manipulative pieces of dreck I've ever seen. The filmmakers simply place various images in a certain order, which has a pretty compelling overall effect--and unlike (apparently) everyone else, I don't think that's a good thing. What this movie is good for, potentially, is as an example of how well you can present an argument, and manipulate/distort ideas, without using words. It should also make apparent the difficulty that lies in trying to counter such tacit arguments (which is where the danger is, in my opinion). As such, it might be worth watching in a film theory/crit class, or in a rhetoric class. But outside such spaces, I wouldn't subject anyone to it.
Planet of the Apes (2001)
What a waste.
This movie was disappointing in so many ways. As my wife put it, they had so much to work with, and they completely blew it. I don't even know where to begin with how disappointing this movie was.
The action sequences were non-existent. Times when there should have been a good scene (like the horse-ride through the camp, which could have been really great) were very detached from the action, and consequently quite boring. Both the cinematography and the editing in such scenes were really, well, bad.
The acting was stiff. I guess Burton was trying to do this whole thing where people actually moved like apes. But that was annoying. And they seem to have spent two or three times as much time and effort on that as they did on more typical (and effective) elements of acting--you know, emotions, character development, little things like that.
The CGI was pretty transparent. When Marky Mark first lands and is standing in the forest looking around, for example, it's SO clear that he's in front of a bluescreen. Ugh. The makeup, on the other hand, was really well done.
The score was stifled, I thought. But maybe it was just because it had nothing decent to accompany/illuminate.
I expected more cool references to other movies. 2001 was a completely obvious allusion, for example, and they only made one (probably accidental) allusion to it--when Pericles is about to take off in the pod. They could really have done a lot of cool stuff with that--both on the planet and in space.
So, what was good about the movie? The makeup, as I already mentioned. That's it, as far as I can recall. Enjoy.
Spy Game (2001)
b. o. r. i. n. g.
This was absolutely one of the longest, most boring movies I have ever seen. I like dramas, in fact I prefer them. Twelve Angry Men, for instance, is one of my all-time favorite movies. I think they were trying to do something similar here, with all the intrigue taking place between a bunch of men sitting at a table. But they failed. Miserably. There is no intrigue, the plot is hackneyed and trite, the acting is stifled (and that's giving Redford the benefit of the doubt), the suspense is missing entirely. If you've seen virtually any movie released in the last, say, fifty years, then nothing in this movie will be a surprise to you. It's all been done before, and much much better.
Oh, and if you saw the trailer and thought this was an action movie, then you will REALLY be disappointed.
No matter what you were expecting, I would say, you're likely to be disappointed with this movie. It's sixteen hours of my life that I know I'll never get back. I think that in honor of this movie I may do away with my long-standing policy of not walking out on movies. If I have to sit through another one like this, I won't make it.
A Short Wait Between Trains (1998)
Well conceived, well executed
This is a really well done film, bringing out in a very convincing way the "war at home." The idea is a powerful one, and it is very well translated into the film itself. Good directing and acting, and an on-target soundtrack. Well worth the watch.