The American

Released: 2010
Drama
Director: Anton Corbijn
Starring: George Clooney, Violante Placido
Running Time: 105 minutes
Rated: R



The breakdown: An American assassin hides out in Italy after his last assignment ended badly.  Based on the book by Martin Booth titled A Very Private Gentleman.

So I get to the end of this film and I really loved it.  I checked out the reviews and see that they are really lopsided with lots of critics and viewers complaining it was boring.
Well, it's not boring for the intelligent, patient viewer who is interested in a CHARACTER STUDY more than someone looking for an action flick where there's a big body count and no intelligent dialogue.

With me writing a book, it's easy for me to see how hard it is to write a good story.  This is a good story, it's gripping, and even though it's slow paced, it's engaging.

An assassin hides out in an Italian town after his last job went sideways.  Despite him trying to blend in, he's very lonely and seeks out a friendship with a local priest and a relationship with a prostitute who he develops feelings for.  I don't want to say too much so as to not ruin the story, but know this...This is not an action spy film like James Bond.  There's not a ton of eye candy and explosions and shoot outs.  This is a character study and a brilliant one at that.

4 and 1/2 out of 5 for a brilliant clean and simple film.

Dogma

Released: 1999
Comedy
Director: Kevin Smith
Starring: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck
Running Time: 130 minutes
Rated: R

The breakdown: A seemingly average woman is called upon by God to save humanity from two fallen angels who are trying to get back into Heaven.

I don't know how to feel about this movie.  I did chuckle a couple times, but it wasn't super funny.  It's definitely full of crass humor, sex and drug references, lots of violence, and some interesting ideas about religion and God.

The main plot is that this abortion clinic worker has lost her faith and is recovering from a divorce when she is approached by the voice of god, played by Alan Rickman, to help save humanity.  At first she doesn't believe she's the chosen one, but events that unfurl soon after change her mind.  She has to stop two fallen angels from getting back into Heaven and she needs to find two prophets to help her along the way.

Obviously this is a controversial movie since it has anything to do with religion (which is such a ridiculous taboo in this country) but anyway, I know anyone who wants to see it has to be open minded to fully ingest all of it.
I'd say see it unless you're a religious nut, and then I'd probably say skip because it'll probably make your head explode.
3 out of 5 for being full of interesting ideas about God, but I wish it had been a bit more mature and little less crass.

Twilight - the book

Released: 2008
Author: St Meyer
Pages: 544 agonizingly stupid pages
Teenage

The breakdown: The phenomena that is a teenage girl falls in love with an old vampire.

So, the real reason I read this (well, half of it was as far as I got) was to see what made it so popular and how good or bad the writing was.  I did not surprise myself.
Regardless of how many people tell me the book is so much better than the movies, it's not the truth.  This book is just as bad as the movie.
The first time author has her own agenda to keep girls away from having sex before they are married.  She warns of all the bad things that might happen to the female lead if she continues to hang around and/or make out with this vampire.
Later on in the series we find that even after you get married, sex is still dangerous creating a child that almost eats it's way out of the mother, plus abortion is not an option, no matter what the circumstance.
There's too many direct moral messages the author is trying to hit you over the head with, for this to still remain a novel.  She should've just written a non-fiction book on how to raise your teenage daughter.

Anyway, the plot, teenage girl moves from Phoenix to Washington state in a dreary little town named Forks that almost never sees warm temperatures or sunlight.  She's the new girl in a very small town.  She's hit on by several boys at once, but is interested in none of them.  She does like the vampire pretending to be a boy who just smelled something bad and who looks at her as though he wants to eat her, literally, for dinner.

They start a relationship that sets the town ablaze with gossip and makes the vampire a bit of an outcast within his own "family."

The characters are always angry or filled with sarcasm, but beyond that, you don't really get to know them on a deep level.  It's all surface and the author goes on and on about how perfect and gorgeous the boy vampire is.  It's quite annoying and distracting to the reader's enjoyment.

The characters are also not allowed to talk without a lot of different versions of she said, he said surrounding the dialogue, so that's what not to do for writing 101.

I got as far as about 260-something pages before I quit.  The part where he's standing in the sun in a sleeveless button down shirt?  Why would he be wearing this?  But anyway, and he's sparkling, was just too much ridiculous crap for me to continue on.

1 out of 5 for showing me how not to write a novel.

Here's the review from my amazon.com account:

I saw the movie first and hated it. My best friend tried to persuade me that the book was better. I resisted. I am now in the process of writing my own novel and wanted to try to understand why this story, despite it's utter lack of good story line or characters, was so immensely popular. I rented it from the library and could only make it halfway through the book before giving up in disgust.
The female lead is good at hating things, complaining, and being obsessed with a "boy" who's over a hundred years old pretending to be a teenager.
The male lead is good at inappropriate emotional reactions to simple things the whiny girl says, and being moody or strange.
There is no chemistry between them. There is weak writing followed by a boring story line. I gave up at the point where the vampire shows his sparkles to her in the forest wearing a button down sleeveless shirt.
What I learned from reading half of this rubbish is how not to write a love story, which in a way is valuable, but for the understanding why it's popular....I'm still at a loss.
This book and movie was utter crap with no worth or entertainment value.
I would've given it a zero but the lowest I could go was 1.

Hanna

Released: 2011
Action, Drama
Director: Joe Wright
Starring: Eric Bana, Saoirse Ronan
Running Time: 111 minutes
Rated: PG-13

The breakdown: A teenage assassin trained by her father is being tracked down by the government for elimination.

I thought this might be a crappy movie, but watched it anyways.
It's definitely weird.  I mean, there's a lot of stuff that is kinda' strange visually and I think the filmmaker though they were being quirky or artsy, but it just came off as weird instead.
This 16 year old lives in the frozen wilderness with her father and one day pushes a button that releases the government hounds on her.  Yes, they do it on purpose knowing they are being hunted anyway.
She and her father agree to meet up somewhere in Germany and they separate.  She gets caught and he almost does.  She breaks loose and kills a lot of people all while trying to get back to her dad.
I suppose the base story was interesting, but some of the weird stuff really gets in the way of this being a better movie.

2 out of 5 for me.
I say, skip it.

Cold Mountain

Released: 2003
Drama, Romance
Director: Anthony Minghella
Starring: Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger
Running Time: 154 minutes
Rated: R

The breakdown:  During the Civil War, a deserter tries desperately to get back to the love of his life.

This was based on the book of the same name by Charles Frazier, which I totally want to read now that I've seen the movie.  Where as in The Notebook, I had heard great things and it was a total flop, this one I had heard nothing about and it was a great success.
A young couple meets and like each other, but then the Civil War breaks out and they are torn apart without being able to say more than a few paragraphs to each other.
He hates the war and leaves, a deserter, who is hunted down by many people for rewards and such.
She meanwhile, stays on her fathers farm and tries to cope with not knowing whether he's alive or not or getting her letters or not.
He's been injured during battle and finds many obstacles to getting back to her, and even though the film's almost 3 hours long, it never feels long.
All the main cast, and the supporting cast are very well known and strong actors and I enjoyed this dramatic romance immensely.
SEE IT!

4 and 1/2 out of 5 for being damn near perfect.  Sure to go down as one of my favorite romantic films of all time.

Behind the Candelabra

Released: 2013 on HBO
Biography
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Michael Douglas
Running Time: 118 minutes
Rated: TV MA or R in other words

The breakdown:  This is the story based on the autobiographical novel of Liberace and his much younger lover, Scott Thorson.

So Liberace apparently seduced this young L.A. guy who worked with animals for stage and screen.  They start a love affair and the young lover moves in almost right away.  Liberace tells him he wants to adopt him so that if anything happens his young lover will be taken care of.  Soon, Liberace has eyes for a new younger lover and Scott Thorson is kicked out.
A downer of a movie, but there wasn't anything else to watch, which is why I sat through an anal sex scene between Damon and Douglas.

Um, I don't know how to rate this one.  I guess if you liked Liberace it's worth your time, if not, maybe not then.

If I had to put a number to it - 3 out of 5 for being well done, just not super great.

Dark Shadows

Released: 2012
Comedy, fantasy
Director: Tim Burton
Starring: Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter
Running Time: 113 minutes
Rated: PG-13

The breakdown: This is a spin on the classic old television show of the same name.

So I've never really like Tim Burton, so, in the end, I'm not surprised I didn't like this movie.

Depp plays Barnabas Collins who was cursed back in the late 1700's and became a vampire.  His scorned love interest, who's a powerful witch, created a trap for him in which he got buried (alive kinda) for 200 years.  Meanwhile, she took over the town that he lived in and was fine until Depp got released from his trap by accident.
He goes back to his home where he finds new relatives of his living there and they work together to try and get his town back from the witch.
Now the first half of the film was doing good, but the last half ruined everything that started off right.  The ending was really silly and a bit of a rip off of another movie, which, I can't name or else you'll know how this movie ends.
Anyway, it ended up being just a little below average from me, even though I chuckled a couple times.

2 out of 5 for some laughs.

The Amazing Spider-man

Released: 2012
Action, Adventure
Director: Marc Webb
Starring: Martin Sheen, Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone
Running Time: 136 long minutes
Rated: PG-13

The breakdown: A totally unnecessary reboot on the Spiderman franchise.

I say unnecessary because this movie was poorly done.
Here's the plot:
Peter Parker who is a photographer but doesn't have anything to do with the paper, still loses his parents mysteriously and wonders what really happened to them.
He's left with Uncle Ben and Aunt May of course, but he takes up an interest in science after he's bitten by a spider.
There's no Mary Jane, instead we have some science major named Gwen.  She's super smart and an intern at Oscorp.
Uncle Ben still gets killed by a robbery gone wrong after Peter lets him (the robber) go, leading him to an interest in chasing down bad guys.

So they've totally messed up the iconic story, and to boot they got a lame awkward actor to play Spiderman.  He cannot do the role justice and a lot of scenes make him look to be a kid dressing up like Spiderman for Halloween.

The romance is terribly boring and lacks any spark, even though those two are dating in real life.

The special effects take the main stage and storyline and character development are on the back burner in this one.  Plus, the soundtrack is painfully bad and stands out so that it takes away from the movie instead of adding to it.
The whole project reeks of bad script writing and becomes a melodrama for superhero stories.

Skip it!
2 out of 5 for Emma Stone.

Sideways

Released: 2004
Comedy, Drama
Director: Alexander Payne
Starring: Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen
Running Time: 126 minutes
Rated: R

The breakdown: Two friends go on a trip to the California wine country for a week before one of the men gets married the following Saturday.  Based on a novel by the same name.

So this is a character study movie.  One man is an aspiring writer who is an English teacher Monday-Friday. He's responsible, a little up-tight, emotional, and caring.
The other is an actor who is immature and irresponsible and just wants to get laid one more time, or two, before he gets married at the end of the week.
The two disembark on an adventure up north to the wine country of California.  You can certainly feel the dread coming off both of these characters.
They talk about their lives and relationships and somehow at the end of the week, they are still friends, even though the irresponsible one has repeatedly messed up and left his friend in the dust for a woman who he thinks he's in love with.

I don't know, this was a solid movie, but it just didn't do it for me.  Ended up being just okay for me.
3 out of 5 for solid acting and script, but something about it just wasn't spectacular for me.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

Released: 2011
Romance, Comedy
Director: Lasse Hallstrom
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt, Amr Waked
Running Time: 107 minutes
Rated: PG-13

The breakdown: A scientist and a business consultant work together with a middle-eastern sheik to create a stream where fly fishermen can come to catch salmon in Yemen.

This was based on a book by the same name.  I'm not sure if the book is any better, but this movie was kind of boring for me.  The scientist loves fly fishing and he works for a fishing magazine.  The consultant works for some firm where I assume she makes things possible or finds a way to do impossible things.  He's married and unhappy, she's in a new relationship with a guy who after 3 weeks of them dating gets sent off to  war and asks her to wait for him.
The scientist and the consultant meet up to see how this plan is going to work and then fly to Yemen to do on site research with the sheik.  Of course they fall in love, even though, it seems the romance is kind of the subplot to this "Romantic" movie.  It's more about the fish I think.

Kinda boring, but well done.
2 out of 5 for moving slow sometimes and just being ok.
Skip it, even if you like romances.