Posted by barb on May 28, 2003 in
Movies 4/5 stars
This was the story of a society house wife in 1956 whose life, from the outside, looks picture perfect. Her husband makes a good living, and she has two beautiful children. Of course, life is not what it seems from the outside, and she finds that she has no one to talk to about her marital problems. She befriends a black gardener, who helps her to forget her troubles for an afternoon (not like that!), which puts her on the edge of a scandal.
Posted by barb on May 27, 2003 in
Movies 4/5 stars
Not too much to say about this one. I’m a sucker for romantic comedies, so this one pulled me right in. I quite like Reese Witherspoon as a romantic lead, so look forward to more of her movies. In this one, she is torn between her new fiance in New York, where she is an up-and-coming fashion designer and the husband she’s been separated from for several years who is a small-town boy.
Posted by barb on May 27, 2003 in
Movies 4/5 stars
This was an animated story of a wild stallion in the “Old West” at a time when Americans were just beginning their migration west. Spirit is separated from his herd, and American soldiers attempt to break him. The story follows his adventures with a Native American who befriends him and helps free him from the American’s Fort.
A pretty good movie. I’d certainly watch it again, though I don’t think I need to own it.
Posted by barb on May 26, 2003 in
Movies 2/5 stars
Not much to say. The effects aren’t bad, but the science, of course is horrible. That’s okay; it was a decent forget-about-life-for-a-couple-hours kind of movie.
Posted by barb on May 18, 2003 in
Movies 2/5 stars
Ugh! I did it again. I’ve already seen this one. I have no idea when, but within about 10 minutes, I had remembered most of the plot. It’s a fun movie, though not one I think I’ll see a third time.
Archeologists Rick O’Connell (Fraser) and his wife Evy (Weisz) accidentally awaken the mummy again. This time their kid (Boath) is involved.
Posted by barb on May 18, 2003 in
Movies 3.5/5 stars
Marnie (Hedren) is a pathological thief — she runs from city to city taking jobs which afford her the opportunity to eventually run off with the contents of the company safe. Mark Rutland (Connery), despite having an inkling that she was the woman who cleaned the safe of a business associate, hires her at his publishing house. At her first opportunity, she runs off with the money, but this time is tracked down by Rutland. Instead of turning her over to the police, he marries her!
Andrew and I were a bit confused by Rutland (Connery’s character). We don’t really know what possesses him to marry marnie — he seems to have a bit of an illness himself in taking her on. However, this is the first Hitchcock in a while that we have both liked…perhaps we need to stick with the later rather than earlier Hitchcock.
Posted by barb on May 17, 2003 in
Movies 4/5 stars
What a fun, fun movie. I wasn’t around to enjoy the 60s sex romps, but that didn’t matter!
Barbara Novak (Zellweger) has just written a book to help women everywhere “have sex like men do” — without the need, or encumbrance, of love. Catcher Block (McGregor) is the worst sort of playboy — the exact type of man Novak despises. Yet, they start to fall in love….
Posted by barb on May 16, 2003 in
Movies 3/5 stars
Andrew rented this from netflix, and originally I told him that I wasn’t interested. However, I caught a couple minutes, and it didn’t look like a typical cheesy 50s horror flick, so I told him to hold off on sending it back.
The basic story is that Professor Harrington is killed after incurring the wrath of Dr. Karswell, a cult leader who uses witchcraft. Professor Harrington was to participate in a conference in London debunking paranormal activities. Dr. Holden, an American collegue of Harrington, arrives in London shortly after Harrington’s death. And finds that Karswell is now after him to stop is expose. Holden starts to experience weird things after an encounter with Karswell at the museum…
This is definitely more psychological that I thought it would be. At times, it was almost reminiscent of a Hitchcock film.
Posted by barb on May 11, 2003 in
Movies 2/5 stars
Hmmm….
Not sure what to say about this. I had high hopes, and was looking forward to seeing Wil Wheaton in something recent. However, I just didn’t see the humor in most of it. Colin Mockery had some funny bits, as did Wheaton, but overall I kept wondering when it was going to get funny. There were plenty of good comedy actors (like Brad Sherwood and Debra Wilson), but it just didn’t come together for me.
The basic story is that Jane White wants to see her Dad, a talk show host based on Jerry Springer, in Chicago, since he left her family 15 years earlier. She tries to get on the show by being whatever freak the talk show is looking for (the first one is Closet Transvestite Prostitute).
Posted by barb on May 10, 2003 in
Movies 4.5/5 stars
I agree with everyone who’s been saying that they enjoyed this second installment better than the first. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the first one, and since I haven’t read any of the comics or watched the cartoon, I probably needed much of the background presented in the first movie. X2, though, had a lot more plot and did not even feel like a two-and-a-half hour movie.
The film starts with an assassination attempt on the president by a teleporting mutant named Nightcrawler. Since the world already mistrusts mutants, this attack sparks a retaliation by the president, led by his mutant advisor, Stryker. The best target they have is Xavier’s school, which they know about from interrogations of Magneto.