All reviews - Movies (88) - TV Shows (1) - Books (29)

Long, But Powerful

Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago on 14 June 2008 11:31 (A review of Nobody Knows)

The story starts out with a mother and son moving into a new apartment, and all seems normal. The mother is cute and funny, and the son is smart and helpful. But as the story unfolds, you learn that there are two younger children safely hiding in suitcases. And yet later, an older daughter waiting at the train station until after dark to sneak in. Not having read anything about this movie before, I loved the way things came to light slowly, naturally without it being served to us on a platter. And the movie has much more to give, and the watcher much more to learn. Later in the movie, however, things begin to drag. The movie does do an excellent job of creating a mood, and for those who have never been to Japan it does an excellent job of showing a real Japanese neighborhood. But prepared to have these things done slowly and without rhythm.

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Beware of Quick Friends

Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago on 14 June 2008 11:00 (A review of The Last King of Scotland)

I moved around a lot as a child, and something I learned along the way was to be wary of people who wanted to become friends quickly. Obviously the main character in this movie never learned that lesson, and quickly became trapped as confidant to a capricious despot. If someone likes you that quickly, they will probably hate you that quickly as well. Although the acting is great, and the locations are fascinating, I really never found the characters to be interesting and found myself watching the clock, never really wrapped up in the story. A good movie for the historical and cultural aspects, but missing something in the all-around.

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Get the big baggie

Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago on 14 June 2008 07:44 (A review of The Ruling Class)

This black comedy needs to be seen in the right state of mind. And that state of mind is high. And you'll need more than one joint, it's a long movie. Unfortunately I wasn't on any mind altering drugs when I watched the movie (the box really should come with a warning). It was made in the early 70's, in that experimental phase, where pushing the boundaries was the most important thing. The plot, if there is one, is that the 13th Earl of something or other has died and the heir returns to the fold, from his 7 year vacation in the nuthouse. From there you will see an hour or so of very dry but absurd humor making fun of the English aristocratic way of life, with a few songs thrown in. Then it will take a turn for a half an hour in another direction, and then plummet you into a darkness not hinted at in the first half of the movie. It's probably hysterical when seen in the right mood, and maybe better even on repeated watchings in that state. What the movie does have going for it whether high or straight, is Peter O'Toole. He is mesmerizing, you just can't look away. And then there is the butler, who is funny in the usual funny way. He inherits enough money from the the Earl's death to leave this annoying family, but stays out of affection for the nutty heir, and because nobody else would come work for these jerks. So, he has the freedom to do and say what he wants, and helps make the movie bearable. Rent this movie at your own peril, you have been warned.

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Nothing New, but Takes A New Path Getting There

Posted : 2 months, 1 week ago on 14 June 2008 07:06 (A review of Reign Over Me)

The scene stealer of this film are the scenes themselves. The cinematography is so lovely, without hindering the movie in anyway. The actors aren't bad either. The story revolves around two college roommates who haven't seen each other in years and how they ended up where they are. One has everything, and one has had everything important taken from him. One of the films great attributes is how it takes you down a path where you think you know your going, but doesn't quite go there after all. It's pretty intricate in its emotional content, and is a thinking persons' movie. It frequently skips scenes other movies would have walked you through. If the scene didn't have interesting emotional content, it wasn't there. It doesn't always keep an even keel, but then neither does life. I felt a few characters were too shallow, and the mix of absurd and sad doesn't always mix well, but overall a nice melancholy movie.

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Poorly Structured, Brilliantly Peopled

Posted : 2 months, 2 weeks ago on 3 June 2008 07:19 (A review of The Yokota Officers Club: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle))

The Yokota Officer's Club is a book about one family moving around the world with the USAF and how it affects them. The main character is the oldest daughter and the book starts with her flying from college to her families newest posting in Okinawa. But there seems to be one of those family secrets that no one ever talks about, that starts us going to flashbacks of a previous posting on mainland Japan and why the family never discusses the Japanese maid they had for those four years and was practically family. The overall structure of the book is pretty poor, with sidelines that are dead ends and segments that jump around. But the author does have a gift for creating interesting characters, most of which are complicated and well fleshed out. And the bond between the mother and oldest daughter is wonderful to read. The locations and the time periods are brought to life marvelously and truly gives the reader a look into something most people know nothing about. There is something here that reminds me of the best parts of "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood". Despite it's many flaws I enjoyed reading this book and miss the characters now that it is over.

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Sex, New York and Shoes

Posted : 2 months, 2 weeks ago on 31 May 2008 08:44 (A review of Sex and the City: The Movie)

I've seen the odd episode here and there, but am in no way a fan. I'll watch it only if there is nothing else on. But I've seen enough to know who the major characters are. So when a friend asked me to go with her I said sure. I ended up liking the movie, if indeed it is a movie. Actually, the best thing about it was how un-movie-like it was. In a movie they spend some time on letting you get to know the characters, slow build up to some drama and then wrap it all up with a nice little ending. Well, these guys didn't really play by those rules. It was more like a mini-season of television (runs almost two and half hours). The ups and downs, and then some downs and some shoes and sex, and ups and and more shoes, all with New York as the background (most of the time). I don't quite get shoe-love, but I'm the only women in the world who doesn't (I own five pairs, and hate shopping for shoes), but even with some of those things that I don't relate to, overall I found the experience enjoyable. I wouldn't see it twice, but once was not a bad way to spend a muggy summer afternoon.

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Getting clean is not easy, or that interesting

Posted : 2 months, 4 weeks ago on 24 May 2008 07:42 (A review of Clean)

"Clean" is the story of a woman trying to get her life back after her husband-in-all-but-name dies of an overdose, and she serves time in a Canadian jail for possession. Nick Nolte plays her father-in-law, who is raising her son. I don't require the movies I watch to have the quickest of plots, and some meandering scenes can add flavor to a movie. But this movie was just a little too "arty" for me, and maybe a little too distant. I thought Maggie Cheung was mesmerizing, and if not for her I probably would have given up on the movie. Nick Nolte was okay, and and does a good job of looking haggard, but had such an odd cadence in his voice I found him irritating. I'm not sure what could have saved this movie (and I usually have some opinion), editing it down might leave out too much of the trials and tribulations of how hard it is to go clean - especially in the music industry. But in the end I just can't recommend this movie, too slow and too plodding.

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Martha Stuart Goes to Italy

Posted : 3 months ago on 21 May 2008 06:56 (A review of Under the Tuscan Sun)

I have to be honest, that I'm so jealous of the woman my teeth are turning green. But besides that I found the book quite tedious. I knew going in that this was nothing like the movie. But that could only be a good thing, as the movie was trite and mediocre. In the book (and therefor real life) she buys the house with her boyfriend, and they only use it as a summer house. However, the book could have been a lot better. It felt more like a series of Martha Stuart magazine articles. Two chapters are completely devoted to recipes for meals she's learned to cook using Italian ingredients. And the rest is mainly about how they renovated the house, and what curtains they put where. There are a few cute anecdotes about the people and nearby places, and those I enjoyed tremendously. But generally it was pretty annoying and a very over-rated book.

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I Never Promised You a Good Book

Posted : 3 months, 3 weeks ago on 24 April 2008 03:36 (A review of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (Signet))

It is the story of a young woman and her time in a mental institution in the early 60's. The writing is pretty simplistic, and although this has become a young adult book, the author's style is very old fashioned and unlikely to keep a young adults attention. Then, there are the scenes in which Deborah retreats into her fantasy world which reads like a bad science fiction novel, with unexplained names and words that has the reader skipping over them, not because it's too complicated, but just uninteresting. It might have been interesting and somewhat informative in it's day, but in this day and age most 12 years olds can discuss the difference between schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder (and probably tell you what meds they are personally on for their own problems). There are much better books out there since this was written on mental illnesses, so I'd recommend skipping this one.

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Interesting topic, poorly executed

Posted : 4 months, 1 week ago on 11 April 2008 09:51 (A review of The Sixteen Pleasures: A Novel)

Sixteen Pleasures is the story of one American woman, who like many others across the world, picked up and went to Florence after the devastating flood of 1966 to help save the masterpieces in so many of the museums and churches there. Our heroine is a book restorer, who will probably lose her job at home for going on this adventure, but decides that is all she has to lose. The title of the book comes from an erotic manuscript banned by a long ago pope that the nuns find amongst their library. But although she becomes obsessed with saving this book, and therefor the nunnery, the story is more about her love affair with a married Italian man, with long descriptive pieces about how she painstakingly rebinds the book. I found myself skipping the parts about her work even though I thought I would enjoy learning about it. The book went by quickly, but something was missing, and the plot was overly predictable and the foreshadowing outright blatant. I admit that I rarely think men write well from a woman's perspective, but the first half of the book rang true. However, when she gets more confident, that voice loses itself, and the author even goes back and forth from first person to omniscient narrator. Such an interesting topic, so sadly executed.

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