Starsky & Hutch

3/5 stars

While I remember that I did watch Starsky and Hutch when I was a kid, I don’t actually remember anything about it. Since I’m not burdoned with any recollection of the show itself, I was able to just sit back and enjoy the remake.

A Mighty Wind

4/5 stars

This is a fun mockumentary about three folk bands that come together for a concert honoring a recently deceased concert promoter. We watch The Folksmen reunite, while the reunion of Mitch and Mickey is not quite so easy, though Eugene Levy seemed to have a lot of fun with Mitch (he’s not entirely in this world anymore, as it were). Then there are The New Main Street Singers, a revamped version of the older Main Street Singers.

Fun movie with a lot of fun music.

De-Lovely

3/5 stars

This was a fun movie, with lots of great music (of course). It follows the life of Cole Porter from his days of obscurity in Paris to his time in Hollywood as a famous, well-loved creator of musicals to his riding accident that nearly lost him his legs.

The one main problem with the film is that I am never convinced by the “older” characters. Kevin Kline and Ashely Judd sport a lot of make-up to make themselves look old, and while they look convincing, the acting never quite matches the age. This is true of any other movie I’ve seen where an actor plays a significantly older person. Perhaps it’s because I know better…perhpas it’s because the make-up never quite comes out right (in this case, it seemed too “hard”)…perhaps it’s because actors just aren’t comfortable in roles that require them to play someone so much closer to the end of their lives.

K-PAX

3/5 stars

This movie reminded me a bit of Phenomenon, in which John Travolta’s character gains super-intelligence and telekinesis. In both, we are given enough time and intruduction to the main character to believe that they are truly what they seem to be. In K-PAX, Kevin Spacey plays Prot, a man institutionalized when he tells a police officer that he is from another planet. Over the next hour, we watch him interact with the psychiatrist and other patients and begin to believe that he just might be from outer space. I won’t give away the ending, but I was definately satisfied by it.

Spiderman 2

4/5 stars

This second Spiderman movie is one of those rare examples of a sequel being just as good (and possibly better) than the original. The story was strong, the villian was fun, and the direction and acting quite good. The effects were better than the first movie, with a more seamless blend between the CGI spiderman and the background scenery.

It struck me how frequently the prideful scientist becomes the villian in comic book movies. I suppose I knew it prior to this movie, but the movie served as a reminder. I don’t actually know very many scientists who are that arrogant, and very few work comepletely alone as Octavius, so it’s a bit unbelievable that someone like him would be permitted to conduct his experiments without extensive checks from other scientists. But, this is not real life, and I was more than able to push my “I believe” button, and get caught up in the story.

Cabaret

2.5/5 stars

I didn’t actually know much about this film when we rented it, though I did know it was set in Berlin in the 30s and that it was a musical (originally a play, I assumed). Sally is a performer at the Kit Kat Club in Berlin — an American with dreams of becoming a famous actress. Brian is an English student in persuit of his PhD from Cambridge, in Berlin as part of his research. They meet when he rents a room at the same boarding house as Sally.

Ostensibly, this is a love story, with oddly placed comments about the Nazis. Frankly, it was just plain weird. I’m ready to rent a few “normal” movies for a change….I need a break from all the weirdness we’ve been renting (i.e. The Great Escape, James and the Giant Peach, and now this).

James and the Giant Peach

2/5 stars

Hmmm….this is not at all what I was expecting. Rather than coming across as a fanciful, fun children’s movie, it was creepy and nightmarish. I confess that I haven’t read the book, so perhaps I could have been more prepared, but still, the previews did not prepare me for what I saw.

Fahrenheit 9/11

4/5 stars

This movie just made me mad. Not at Moore (though I was quite pissed at him after his little tirade at the Academy Awards in 2003), but at our government. I’ve already been mad at the government for allowing Bush to bully his way into Iraq, and then for not admitting that they made a mistake and that they have not planned far enough in advance to have enough troops to take care of Iraq with a minimum of lives lost. I’m still mad that they keep telling us that Iraq is better off today than before they ousted Hussein. That’s just not true, and anyone who believes it does not have their eyes open to what’s going on over there.

But the movie made me even more angry that Bush is able to get away with all of this all for the purpose of lining not only his friends’ pockets, but his family’s as well. I don’t understand why Clinton was impeached for lying about an affair, but Bush is able to get away with high level corruption and murder of our troops for the love of money. I can only hope that after the next election we will have a strongly Democratic governement that will not be afraid to prosecute Bush for his crimes.

It’s hard to say that I “enjoyed” the film, but it was well done. There are some complaints that it sprinkles scenes that are too light-hearted in amongst the carnage. I almost think that it was necessary, though, because I certainly couldn’t have sat through scene after scene of mamed and destroyed people. I’m not going to write a full review of the film — others have done that, and better than I could do: Pharyngula, Preposterous Universe, Scaryduck, Salon.com, “pro” review, Salon.com, “con” review, Salon.com, G.I. perspective.

The Terminal

4/5 stars

This was a fun movie, and probably the best fictional movie Andrew and I have seen in a while. The first several minutes are very frustrating, as Viktor Navorski (Hanks) lands in New York and is taken into custody in customs. His country has undergone a civil revolution, and all travel permits have been suspended for its citizens. Navorski’s passport is no good. But the frustrating part is that Navorski doesn’t speak much English (only what he has in a traveller’s cheat sheet in front of him), so he doesn’t know what’s going on. The movie picks up, after he starts living in the terminal, learning English and interacting with the terminal’s regular employees.

Side note: I think I really embarrassed Andrew. There was a guy two rows back from us that was talking on his cell phone. Andrew looked back, and then I looked back, made direct eye contact (or so I thought), and gave him a dirty look. He continued talking. I turned around again, and said fairly quietly, “Get off your phone.” Apparently it was too quiet to break through his more-interesting-than-the-movie conversation. So, I turned around again, and said again, “Get off your phone.” This time, though, I’m pretty sure that at least half the theater could hear me. Believe it or not, the message got through to him this time. He got off his ^%$#@ phone. What an ass.

The Great Escape

3/5 stars

We’ve had this movie in the house for almost two months. It’s three hours long, and really more of a committment that either of us has had time for lately. We rented it because it’s one of those films that it seems everyone should see. It’s about an attempted escape of 250 prisoners from a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany during WWII.

The tone of the movie really reminded me of Hogan’s Heroes, and I suspect that the movie was an inspiration for the show. The problem, though, was that the movie really took the subject matter too lightly. I wonder if they thought that it was the only way to ensure an audience, but I just found it disconcerting. Especially when the chipper music started just after we saw one of the men killed on the prison camp barbed-wire fence.