I loved this quote from the seattle weekly review of Charlie, about cute kid Charlie Freddie Highmore:
"Highmore could basically spend his remaining preadolescent career, before becoming Christian Bale, in the Dickens "Please, sir, may I have some more?" school of drama."
Gladiator 2: Don't Worry, Phones Haven't Been Invented Yet
I'm really hoping that Howl's Moving castle is still playing in Memphis when I get back this weekend... my car troubles have deep-sixed plans to see lots of evening movies on the weeknights.
I mentioned this in Literary, but now that I've finished the movie, I'd like to recommend Quality Street to fans of Jane Austen.
In a provincial town in immediately-post-Napoleon England, Katharine Hepburn plays a woman who's snubbed by the man (played by Franchot Tone) who kept her company (but never proposed) before he joined the Army 10 years earlier. To get revenge, she pretends to be her niece. Matters are complicated by the neighborhood busybodies.
Not quite Austen-level, but handles many of the same themes with a generous dose of social satire.
The Chicago Tribune gives Charlie and the Chocolate Factory four stars!
So, I just saw
The Wild Bunch.
And maybe it's cause I'm not really into Westerns, but I found it kind of...boring. Sure, there were a couple of the bloodiest, most violent shootouts I've ever seen, a train robbery, and a bridge blowing up, but for the most part, I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on and I couldn't tell half the characters apart. I didn't find an engaging narrative or interesting characters to care about. They must be there, obviously, since it's so well regarded, but I couldn't get into it.
I also saw
An American Werewolf in London,
which I liked more, what with a werewolf tearing people apart, a progressively decaying talking corpse, and a hot British chick.
what with a werewolf tearing people apart, a progressively decaying talking corpse, and a hot British chick.
*queued*
What more do you really need?
ION, I just watched
I, Robot.
No matter how I try, I just cannot hear Sonny and Wash as coming from the same actor.
Heh. I found The Wild Bunch hard to sit through the first time, because it is slow, and it's kind of deliberately perverse -- every time you think you know where it's headed, it swerves. The whole movie is setting you up for a conflict that never happens. But I watched it again a week or two later, and then I dug it.
But I like it the way I like Kubrick movies. I don't think you're supposed to care about the characters -- or, at least, you're not supposed to like them.