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Take a break from work: watch a movie trailer… This is gonna be an interesting test for me. The American remake and truncation of the British miniseries of the same name looks rather intriguing from the trailer. Certainly, I’m a big fan of Russell Crowe, always love the intensity he brings to a role. I’m … more…
How do you win a war you can’t win? The short answer is probably: You don’t. You don’t win it. You just go on losing it for a long, long time.
Take a break from work: watch a movie trailer… Huh. I was more excited for this flick before I saw the trailer. Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio in a Ridley Scott film? That sounds like a killer prospect. And then I watched the trailer just now, and it looks rather similar to Traitor, which I … more…
My picks for the best and worst movies of the year are no secret to anyone who follows my annual ranking of every new theatrical release I see. The ranking is a work-in-progress throughout the year. It begins when I see the first movie slated for release within a calendar year — for 2007, that … more…
This is inventive and exciting, a grip-the-armrests, hold-your-breath reinvigorating of the Western movie…
This isn’t what I was expecting. I figured on clanging swords and thundering cannons and lots of swashbuckling, but this buckles far less swash than I imagined it would. I was expecting pulpy action adventure that was a whole lot of movie fun — I wasn’t expecting pulpy action adventure with real smarts and genuine heart and a grounding in reality.
So whaddaya know? Ron Howard and Russell Crowe rode the short bus all to the way to the Oscars by playing the ‘we made a sensitive film about the mentally ill’ card. Which is complete crap, of course. *A Beautiful Mind* is pure made-for-Hollywood pap about the mentally ill in which schizophrenia is treated by Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman the way doctors used to treat it in the bad old days before we (some of us, anyway) were enlightened about diseases of the brain: Hey, snap out of it! Get over it! It’s all in your head!
Toss a coin: Which do you prefer: A Heartwarming(TM) tale of one man’s triumph over mental illness? Or one director’s biting off more than he can chew and falling rather flat on his face? Or one more mostly terrific performance from Crowe? No need to look for a three-sided coin — you get all three in A Beautiful Mind.
I’ve seen Gladiator half a dozen times now — thrice on a big screen and thrice on DVD — and it gets me deeper in the gut every time: By the time Maximus whispers his final words, assuring Lucilla that “Lucius is safe,” I’m starting to sniffle. By the time Juba is reverently burying Maximus’s totems of his wife and son, I’m bawling.
I guess it’s officially tradition now: I can’t narrow the best films of the year down to only 10, so, like Nigel Tufnel’s amp, this one again goes to 11. Film critics and fans alike have been heard to complain that 2000 was an awful year for film, but I’m not sure that that is … more…
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