We've been watching quite a few movies lately, but I've been slacking off when it comes to writing about them. So, to play catch-up, here are brief comments about some of the movies we've seen.
INSIDE MAN -- A nice twisty bank robbery yarn, with a lot of moral ambiguity. You really don't know who to root for most of the time. I liked it quite a bit.
THE SHAGGY DOG -- I thought this remake of the Disney classic (I remember seeing the original when it was new) was extremely predictable and really not very well-written. And I laughed all the way through it anyway. There's just something about a man acting like a dog that's funny to me.
ROB ROY -- Somehow we missed this swashbuckler when it came out back in the Nineties. I've written so many historically-based, soap-opera-like novels that sometimes when I'm watching a movie like this, I get a definite feeling of "been there, wrote that". I liked it anyway. Good scenery, good photography, and some fine sword fights. Between the poor sound recording and the Scottish accents, we had to turn the captions on to keep up with the dialogue, though.
FIREWALL -- Another bank robbery movie, although a very different one. It's hard not to like Harrison Ford, and Paul Bettany makes a good villain in this one.
ASK THE DUST -- A major disappointment. I'd heard enough good things about this one that I wanted to like it. But there's almost no plot and the whole movie is glacially paced. The photography is great, Salma Hayek goes skinny-dipping, and there's a nice quote from H.L. Mencken about writing. Those are about the only positive things I can say about this one.
RAY -- Pretty grim, but I liked it. Jamie Foxx deserved his Oscar. But when it comes to musical biopics, I think I liked WALK THE LINE and BEYOND THE SEA better, probably because I like the music of Johnny Cash and Bobby Darin more than I do that of Ray Charles.
YOU KNOW MY NAME -- Made for cable Western with Sam Elliott as Marshal Bill Tilghman. You gotta love Elliott for his voice and that craggy face, and the movie was pretty accurate historically. A little too bleak for my taste, but what are you gonna do? Rewrite history? Oh, yeah, there's also a brief appearance by James Gammon, one of my favorite character actors, as an outlaw named Arkansas Tom. Good stuff.
Comic Cuts — 22 November 2024
3 hours ago
5 comments:
Even though I didn't think very highly of it, I regarded ROB ROY a better film than Gibson's BRAVEHEART. They came out pretty much at the same time - in Finland, at least.
ROB ROY was the only one of these movies I saw, and I liked it pretty well. I've been thinking that the real life Rob Roy might have been a model for Robert E. Howard's Bran Mak Morn.
Just wanted to say I agree with you about Ray .. it was great, and Mr. Foxx was fantastic in it, but something about Walk the Line just touched me on a much deeper level
With me its been TV, TV, TV. I picked up a bunch of season sets, so each night I've passed forty or fifty minutes watching either The Rockford Files, The X-Files, or Walker, Texas Ranger. Not a bad thing, once the commercials are removed.
Yeah, watching TV on DVD has sort of spoiled me, too. There are some series we've deliberately avoided watching when they were broadcast so we could watch them on DVD later, and series we never watched when they were on for one reason or another that we've come to like when we picked up the boxed sets later on.
Post a Comment