Miscellaneous Movie Musings

[Snowflake]

This weekend's fare (besides UP) was Ne le dis à personne (Tell No One) and The Reader.

Tell No One stretched plausibility a good deal, but it was not a bad film. I especially liked the character Bruno.

The Reader was, well, meh. Beautifully filmed okay performances, but can any explain to me why Kate Winslet won every award imaginable for this? Do not get me wrong, I like her, but she's done other work that more richly deserved, say, an Oscar nod than this (Eternal Sunshine).

UP was totally the highlight and I think I must go see in 3D very soon.

[Betty]

Saw Angels and Demons. I enjoyed the book a few years back. It was a fun Saturday morning diversion. I don't remember if it follows the book exactly or not.

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

I recently watched My Man Godfrey. I loved the writing for the most part, the set-up and William Powell. But I found myself liking Carole Lombard's character less and less as the film progressed. Despite her being Lombard, I was hoping her character was a foil and the real romance was going to develop between Godfrey and the maid, whose character was more interesting. I may have been more fond of Irene Bullock if there was more to her than bliss ignorance and kindness (though I loved that about her at the beginning). I don't know. The film ended and I felt like she got more than she deserved. Namely, William Powell. Heh.

[Gemini Cricket]

Is it just me or does Land of the Lost look really, really bad?
I have no desire to see it.
Only 6 reviews in at rottentomatoes.com... These 6 critics give it a 00%. But it's early.

[Andrew]

It does look not-so-good BUT they did not seize the opportunity to do a slick digital monster update on the Sleestaks; they look just as cheesy as the 70s TV series, so I will give the movie a chance.

[LSPoorEeyorick]

I don't personally trust rottentomatoes - it's like they assign a pass or a fail to each critic's review. Clearly nothing is that black and white.

I find that metacritic.com is a much better resource for a movie's full potential. Each critic's review is assigned a number that reflects how good they thought the movie was. So when a critic doesn't think a movie is all that great but it's better than, say, The Love Guru, it can get a 52%. But when a movie is super-brilliant, it can get a 98%, reflecting that a critic thought it was wonderful but, say, had a small problem with the ending. If you average all of those scores, you get a much better idea of how good the movie may be. If you average the rotten tomato ratings, you're just averaging whether the critics thought it was good or bad - no matter if good is 52% and bad is 48%.

For instance, a movie like Up might have a 98% on metacritic (based on the average of the critics' reviews) and it might have a 98% on rottentomatoes (based on how many of the critics gave it a fresh tomato instead of a rotten tomato.) But then a movie like The Brothers Bloom might have a 49% on average on metacritic, but they'd have a 61% on rotten tomatoes because many more critics felt moderately positive about the film, despite having problems with it. rottentomatoes is telling you it's fresh, when the majority of the critics think it's not actually a good film.

But, no, I don't expect Land of the Lost to be very good, no matter how much I love Anna Friel.

[Alex]

Watched Sex and Breakfast yesterday. Mostly because I was curious to see Macauley Culkin as an adult. This kid is 28 years old! That means I'm old! It is bad enough that I'm starting to see baseball players born when I was in high school.

Anyway, it is a horribly boring movie. A movie 98% about sex and it has almost no sex. A movie with Eliza Dushku and Alexis Dziena and it tries to impress us with their acting rather than their bodies (and the acting thing certainly isn't their strong suit).

A big part of the problem is their apparent age. This movie is about two young couples having sex issues so they seek out sex therapy. Group sex therapy (though there isn't really ever any group sex, just swapping partners). The big problem is that they seem way too young for this (not just for the having problems part but for the seeking therapy part).

The four young uns are Culkin, Dziena, Dushku, and Kuno Becker. In real life they were 27, 23, 27, and 29. On screen they looked 19, 15, 20, and 22. Just didn't work. And was boring.

So, I strongly recommend that you rush out and see this so that I am not alone in having experienced this clunker.

[Alex]

And of course the problem with combining the ratings is that not everybody is working from the same standards.

Some critics review every movie against Citizen Kane, while another will review it against the genre or against what it is trying to be (Ebert claims to do this, thus what some people consider overly generous reviews; Crank may not be a good movie on the full spectrum of all movies but it could be a well above average action movie).

So I find RT and Metacritic interesting (I find all statistics interesting) but not necessarily useful. It is of know use to me to know that the critic for the Podunk Advertiser-Gazette didn't like X without the context of knowing how he approaches movie criticism.

[Morrigoon]

Just watched Jodhaa Akbar. It's a Bollywood film starring Aishwarya Rai (available for instant viewing on Netflix!)

Enjoyed it a lot. Sort of a medieval middle eastern tale. Work checking out.

[Alex]

Watched Starman, it's been quite a while but I still like it for its relative simplicity if not completely confusing purpose of them being here.

Anyway, it's been about 24 years, so the baby should be fully into his knowledge. Wouldn't mind seeing what that means if Hollywood is looking for retread ideas. Sadly the last Indy movie showed that it might not be a good idea to have Karen Allen back.