iris

this film is a moving portrait of a woman who has spent her whole life as a writer crafting words and teaching about their importance as she begins to loose that very thing she loves so much. judi dench plays iris who is a famous author and professor known for her verbose vocabulary and love of the english language. she is now growing old and loosing her memory, most specifically she is forgetting words, the language of her soul. by her side is her long suffering husband, played to hapless perfection by jim broadbent, who must try to help her stave off the effects of dementia. through out the film we see flashbacks of the relationship between the two of them as they meet and fall in love. she was always the leader, the strong one, but as we see now she has to accept the role of follower and is struggling with that position. she knows she is loosing her memory but cant do anything about it. the film is a heartbreaking study of the love between these two people as they come to terms with what was and now what is to come.

parenthood

my wife and i have been enjoying the nbc show 'parenthood' and so were interested to go back and check out the source material! this movie follows the life of different members of one family: grandpa and grandma, the married couple with kids, the divorced sister with a teen, and the reckless wanderer brother who only shows up to ask for money. the stories of each of these family groups were funny at times and everyone is rather likable, but the movie hasnt aged very well. steve martin does his wholesome exasperated thing very well here, but its not quite enough to make this one work. the current tv show does a much better job (but then again it has 20 hours a season to really create the characters instead of two hours).

pandorum

the whole time i was watching this movie i just kept thinking 'im pretty sure i've seen this before'. turns out, i had, except last time i saw it it was called 'event horizon'. this movie seems to be a pretty bad rip off of the sci fi film from a dozen years ago that stared laurence fishburne and sam neil. this sci fi horror movie starts off with a man waking up too early from his deep space sleeper tank. when he gets out, he is on a huge space ship thats headed for some far off destination. as another guy wakes up as well, and they discover that they are still far away from their destination. it seems that the ship has malfunctioned and they are just now getting out of hibernation. they try to get to the bridge of the ship but find it locked off. as they make their way around the ship to find out what the problem is, they come across some creatures that are trying to kill them. are they going crazy? do they have 'pandorum', or is there something really really wrong? the pretty lame set up is made worse by the campy creatures and stupid characters they come across as they try to save the ship and themselves. the ending is pretty interesting and almost makes up for the pathetic middle section that reminded me of all those terrible post-apocalyptic movies where the characters wear car parts for armor. over all though, i felt like i had already seen it, and any of the new twists were not worth seeing in the first place.

i'll do anything

i had never heard of this sweet little movie before, but was rather charmed by it. the story follows nick nolte as a divorced father who is an out of work actor. never able to pull much of a career together, his wife has left him in hopes of greener pastures. unfortunately, she never found those greener pastures, and now must drop off their daughter for him to take care of by himself. as luck would have it, nolte comes across the right people with the right audition at just the right time. he doesnt end up getting the part, but he makes some friends at the casting office and finds a part time job to support himself and his daughter. he attempts to juggle a new relationship at the same time, which doesnt always work out the best for him. as these new changes happen, nolte's character must juggle everything around him in order to do whats best for his daughter. its a pretty good little movie that reminded me why nick nolte became a star in the first place- he's really good! in this movie, he elevates the film from a bland rom-com to something much better and sweeter.

gigli

honestly, its not as bad as everyone seems to think it is. sure, its pretty stupid, but most romantic comedies are. ben affleck plays a low level mob guy who is trying to make a name for himself. in order to make his boss happy he has to watch the little brother of someone they are trying to get money from. since the boss doesnt have much faith in him, jennifer lopez plays the extra help thats hired to make sure affleck does his job. so far so good. here's where it goes off the rails: the little brother is mentally retarded. yeah, that wasnt exactly necessary... if you can get past all the terribly offensive jokes, you have a traditional romantic comedy. he likes her, she doesnt like him, eventually he wins her over. of course there has to be a misunderstanding, but by the last reel they figure it out and all is well. lame, but not as 'worst car wreck of a movie ever!' as they kept telling us.

ladyhawke

i had no idea what to expect with this one, i just knew michele phiffer was in it, and usually thats enough for me... this medieval fantasy movie follows a young man, played by matthew broderick, as he escapes from the local guards and runs away. as he is trying to loose them he runs into a strange traveling swordsman, rutger hauer, who has a pet hawk. later that night he finds a beautiful woman wandering around in the forest and they are attacked by a ferocious wolf. as the story unfolds we begin to understand the strong connection these seemingly random people and animals really have. its a love story at its heart, and the unfolding of the romance is really fascinating. the fantasy elements are not too over the top and the quest to fix what has happened is worth the viewing. my one gripe with the film is that it felt like matthew broderick was kind of wedged in there. he doesnt really seem to fit. he is meant to be someone living in medieval times, but he just comes off as farris beuler in a robe, he even talks into the camera at times. his character doesnt fit at all, but the strangeness of his modern day quality gets played down as the movie progresses. not bad at all for an 80's flick!

the adventures of johnny tao

i was hoping to like this one. the description of it sounded like a cool asian meets rockabilly style fun, but in reality its just an expensive home movie that wouldnt even make the cut as a saturday night movie on syfy. the whole thing just reeks of amateurishness. the acting is high school play level, and the effects are something that can be bested by anyone with an editing program on their home computer. it actually looks like they spent more making this poster (which by the way, looks infinitely better than anything on the screen during the actual film) than they did on the entire film! the story (if you can call it that) follows a boy who's country singing father died in a crash a decade earlier. well, it just so happens that his guitar was fashioned out of a magical spear needed to kill an evil chinese spirit who has recently returned to arizona (really? why would the spear be found in arizona when the last battle that put the spirit away for 600 years took place in china?!?). poor acting, if you can even call it acting, poor writing, if you can call it writing, make this little movie, if you can even call it a movie, absolutely terrible.