karate kid

i didnt really have much interest in seeing this one, but i am a sucker for anything with jackie chan in it. i remember the old karate kid movies from back in the day and found this one to be a very worthy update of those old movies. in fact, this one almost seemed better than the 80's movies! the story follows jaden smith who plays a boy who's mother gets a job that takes her to china. he must go along with her and tries hard to adapt to the different environment and culture around him. of course there is a love story, which is appropriately chaste considering both of them are only about 11 years old! smith keeps getting bullied by the chinese kids and seeks help to try and stand up to them. hopeless janitor jackie chan reluctantly agrees to train him. following the karate kid tradition of mr. miyagi, chan uses very a unconventional approach to his training which confuses smith to no end! the story ark of jackie chan and the developed friendship between he and smith are the real heart of this film. chan gives a moving performance as a man trying to come to terms with his past so that he can finally accept that he has a future worth living for. in a just world there would have been oscar talk last year for his amazingly raw performance- he really is a good actor! the final match between smith and the bully is fairly predictable, but the film leading up to it has been so unpredictably great that it is easy to over look such a small problem.

michael collins

now, i dont know much about the history of ireland so maybe this movie isnt for me. but i do love liam neeson, so i wanted to give it a try. the story follows michael collins (thats where the name of the movie comes from, in case you were wondering...) as he works with the people trying to get ireland's freedom from england. he first tries the violent approach, and gets englands attention, which is not always a good thing... he soon becomes a hero of the people of ireland and begins negotiating with the english leaders to find a peaceful solution. the people arent as excited about the peaceful option though, and he looses some support. the british leaders offer a deal, which collins accepts on behalf of the irish people, but then the british back out and are generally jerks about it all. the film itself is, i'm sure, an interesting study of great britain's political landscape during this time, but i must admit i wasnt drawn in by it. it was awfully talky, and the talking didnt always make sense. the people often times didnt act in very logical ways and the movie ends up with nothing to show for all the hard work, and julia roberts, mrs. collins, is left a widow. i know its historically accurate, but it just wasnt very compelling.

croupier

this is one of the first movies to put clive owen on the map. its not a big movie, in fact its scale is very very small. it follows owen, a struggling writer, as he gets a job at a small casino in england as an operator of a roulette wheel. there are many rules for working in a casino, the film shows us, they must not fraternize with the customers or fellow workers, they must keep to themselves, they must be trustworthy. all of these things seem to fit the loner perfectly. or at least thats the way it seems at first. owen meets a customer who makes an impression and when he stumbles into her while out on a day off she strikes up a conversation which quickly leads to a relationship. this is not on accident. turns out she wants him to break his trustworthy code and play an important role in a planned casino heist. could this turn into a story for a book? his decision to find out takes him on a path he would have never thought that he would go on and leads him to make some bold choices in his life.

the film is very interesting as it is narrated by owen and we get to hear his inner monologue. he shares with the audience the structure and rules of the casino and his own life, but then talks of wanting to be a character in his own book and making decisions that he wouldnt make, but that his character might.

life as a house

the film follows chris kline, who plays an architect model builder, as he gets let go from his job and at the same time comes to find out that he has terminal cancer. now with his priorities back in line, he decides to finally build that house on the ocean that he has always put off. he forces his estranged teenage son to join him in building the house. as the movie progresses he begins to build his relationship with his son as the house is getting built. oh what a clever metaphor, huh? everything in this movie is about as heavy handed. kline does a great job and is very interesting as a man who has lost so much as he tries to rebuild himself with what time is left. here's the big problem with the movie though: the son is played by hayden christensen. he must have graduated from the ryan phillipie school of acting because he is about as natural an actor as a piece of plywood! what could have been a decent movie, if cliched, instead turns into a 'worlds worst actor' display of destruction that leaves every positive aspect of the movie destroyed because of christensen. i almost feel sorry now for george lucas who seemed to have gotten suckered into hiring this worthless actor to ruin star wars episodes 2 and 3!

modigliani

andy garcia plays the 1920's artist modigiani and his chaotic life and death. we join modigiani as he is a member of what seems to be an artistic community just jam packed with other famous artists. among them is pablo picasso, a man modigiani sees as a rival. as these artists try to out do each other, modigliani meets the girl of his dreams and starts a love affair with her. this go great at the beginning, but then alcohol gets the better of him. but by this time she is pregnant and he must make the right choices if he is to keep her. she also is facing the pressure from her family who hate him because he is jewish. the rivalry between the artists heats up as an art competition takes place pitting all of them against each other. who will win, picasso or modigliani? all of which leads to modigliani making some wrong decisions and a return to the bottle. the movie is pretty good, capturing the care free attitude of being an artist and the chaos of these men during this time period. garcia is perfect as modigliani, though he seems a bit old for the part. i did not care for the actor who played picasso, but that could be because i have always thought of picasso as being played by anthony hopkins. anyway, the movie brings an interesting view of the challenge of the artists' lifestyle compared to the responsibility of being a family man.

to walk with lions

this movie follows the real life story of george adamson, a man who went to live in africa and set up a lion reserve for lions that were to be set free from captivity. i guess there was already another movie about him called 'born free' and this is a sequel to that initial setting up of the reserve. in this film richard harris plays george and we join him as he has been living on the reserve taking care of dozens of different lions, trying to keep them safe from potential hunters and the like. at the beginning of the film we join a new recruit who has just arrived to be an assistant to adamson. as he begins to learn about the place adamson has set up, they begin to have a conflict with the local government who says they can no longer give him protection or grant him the land he has been using for all these years. the assistant tries to find an alternate place to keep the lions safe, but adamson is not interested. he has supported them here for this long and is not going to give up on this place now. the film, though it has admirable intentions, is not very good as a movie. the story of adamson is very compelling, but they obviously did not have much of a production budget. almost any time there is a lion on the screen it is stock footage cut to make it look like the lions are there with the actors. this becomes especially troublesome when they are supposed to be interacting in any way. also, we never really understand why adamson isnt willing to move the lions. it is apparent that the lions are in eminent danger by staying where they are, but adamson's bull headedness makes any other opportunities for their continued freedom impossible. its a great story, but the obvious budget problems along with the unexplained character motivations make this one a pass.

botched

yikes, what a crap fest. the story of this one is that a thief has been hired to go in to a wealthy man's penthouse loft and steal a valuable ancient cross. the heist goes as planned until they get to the elevator of the building. on the way down all hell breaks loose and the thiefs are stuck with a bunch of other people on one of the floors. i'm not entirely sure what happens next (and to be honest, i dont think the film makers do either...) because then there seems to be a seven foot tall vikking welding a broadsword that shows up and starts killing the different people on that floor of the building. there are traps set up and human sacrifices and arguing and heads being exploded by a mace. make sense? sure doesnt. and to top off all that unrelated nonsense, the whole thing looks like it costed about 40 bucks. with the music and opening credits, it looks like this is supposed to be a comedy, but i get the feeling that it wasnt originally, but due to such a crappy product, they changed it in the editing process from a bad movie to a bad movie thats trying to be funny. this one just looks like a poorly shot tv show from the 80's. avoid at all costs.

robinson crusoe

when i read this book in junior high i thought it would make such a cool movie! it would, but this one isnt it. the story is a familiar one, robinson crusoe finds himself shipwrecked and the only survivor on a desolate island. he recovers as much as he can from the ship and tries to do his best to stay alive. as the years go by he finds a local inhabitant who he calls friday. this particular adaptation of the book glosses over many of the parts of crusoe's story that i always found the most interesting: how did he manage those first days and months? this moive skips past much of that first inner turmoil of realizing that he is alone and must fend for himself. instead this film focuses on the religious aspect of crusoe and friday as they try to come to terms with their differing beliefs. crusoe is adamant that catholicism is the only way, but friday sticks by his local indigenous faith. the whole thing falls apart into the 'white man savior' idea very quickly as the two of them are attacked by a bunch of natives. the movie never quite recovers and just kind of peters out at the end. i will give them respect for one thing in the movie: they dont shy away from showing brosnan's magnificent chest hair!

true romance

this movie seems to hold a high place in cinema because it is written by quinten tarentino. that may be, but it is written poorly! the story starts with christian slater's character working at a comic book store. a woman comes in and hits it off with him and they have a whirlwind romance. we soon find out that the woman is actually a prostitute paid for by slater's boss because he thinks slater needs to get out more. the two of them are in love none the less, and now they need to find a way to get her away from her pimp. poor decisions are made by everyone in the movie, and theres a huge gunfight that ends with slater and his girl on the run. by the end of the film there are a bunch of different sides, the mob, the police, the pimp, and slater who have a grand showdown. since its tarentino, it must of course end in a blood bath. yes, tarentino does a great job with the interesting conversations his characters have along the way. but the big problem for me is that no one acts in a way that would be even remotely interpreted as rational. everyone in this thing does the exact opposite of what a logical human would do. because of that i did not care at all what happened to these people and when so many were left dead it was of no consequence.

chances are

this one is definitely from the 80's back when everyone was trying to make robert downey jr. 'happen'. it didnt quite work until about 25 years later, but you can see in this movie why he was given so many second chances. the film is pretty ridiculous, its about a happily married guy who dies and in heaven is sent back to earth (that whole reincarnation thing was big in movies back then i guess...) but they forgot to wipe his memories. twenty years later the reborn guy goes to meet the family of a girl he likes and just met. it turns out that the girl's mom is his wife from his last life! (kinda creepy that he made out with his own daughter, huh?) the wife, played by sybil shepherd has never moved on from her husband's death and now this kid is claiming to be him! she has a really hard time with it, as one would expect, and the family tries to deal with where to go from there. downey is good as the boy torn between what he knows and what he seems to remember, and they do a pretty good job of showing that conflict in both he and shepherd. there are a few funny bits to it and at times its even a little touching as we see the hope of a woman who never let go of the love she had that was taken away so suddenly.

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.