Category: Movie "Review"

127 Hours

A ad for the movie 127 Hours just ran on the tele­vi­sion. I was aware that a movie had been made of the sub­ject but I was unaware of the title. I have heard of the title on a few occa­sions and, based on the title alone, I was not all that inter­est­ed. Lis­ten­ing to that ad just now, I think I fig­ured out why.

127 Hours sounds like a long, long movie in a way that 48 Hours, 28 Days and Nine Months do not. Maybe because when I hear 48 hours I imme­di­ate­ly trans­late that into two days.

No major release movie is going to be of a length mea­sured in days or months. But movies mea­sured in hours are rou­tine. 127 hours is too many.

Sense of Humor

Deb­by and I watched Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristi­na Barcelona the oth­er day. Good film. Here and there dur­ing the movie I had to remind myself that it is prob­a­bly fun­ny. And as soon as I thought that, I found it to be fun­ny! Even to the point that I laughed out loud.

But I could have eas­i­ly sat through the whole movie with­out real­iz­ing it was sup­posed to be fun­ny. I would wager that I have done that at least once in my life: watch a movie that is sup­posed to be fun­ny with­out ever real­iz­ing that was the case. And then think­ing “strange movie.”

On the oth­er hand, I find Craig Fer­gu­son to be very fun­ny. I actu­al­ly find him to be fun­ny even when he is being juvenile.

But Conan O’ Bri­an isn’t fun­ny at all.

By the way, Vicky Cristi­na Barcelona is real­ly good. Filmed in ter­rif­ic set­tings, very good act­ing, and a decent script. And Allen is not in it (a big plus in my book).

Last Chance Harvey

Deb­by and I rent­ed Last Chance Har­vey this evening. The movie is about two peo­ple who share the abil­i­ty to be in a room full of peo­ple and still be alone.

Har­vey, well played by Dustin Hoff­man, finds him­self with noth­ing to lose and finds in that cir­cum­stance the con­fi­dence to pur­sue a beau­ti­ful woman.

Emma Thomp­son is won­der­ful as Kate Walk­er, the object of Har­vey’s pur­suit. This is the first time I’ve real­ly seen Thomp­son (I’ve seen bits and pieces of Pri­ma­ry Col­ors, but noth­ing else with her in it).

Gen­er­al­ly well put togeth­er movie. I noticed a cou­ple of unusal shots, one of which I don’t think worked all that well (at the first kiss). Now and then the sound­track was ter­rif­ic and at one point I thought the theme was get­ting over­played a bit. There is a nice sub­plot with Kate’s moth­er con­cerned about her new neigh­bor, a Pole who “bar-b-ques” a lot.

A sweet movie that keeps its feet on the ground. There is no sex. There is no implied sex. There are no soar­ing vio­lins as the two peo­ple final­ly know they are in love and man­age to get togeth­er despite all the odds. There is just two peo­ple who decide to give it go and spend some time together.

My enjoy­ment of this movie was enhanced by my iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with Hoff­man’s char­ac­ter. I have always had the tal­ent of being able to be alone in a room full of peo­ple. And I man­aged to woo Deb­by (my wife) because I was at a point where there was lit­tle left to lose. It is a lot eas­i­er to be con­fi­dent in such a situation.

Quantum of Solace

I rarely see movies in the the­ater and I rarely rent them until they are avail­able for five days (so I can rent it on Fri­day and not return it until Mon­day). So most of the “movie reviews” I post will not be of much use to many readers.

But I do not see that as a rea­son to not post them!

I watched Quan­tum of Solace last night. I had rent­ed Casi­no Royale a while back and I enjoyed it a lot. It was a bit long and felt like watch­ing two movies back to back, but I thought it the best Bond film ever. I looked for­ward to sequels.

Quan­tum of Solace came out to such bad reviews that I was in no hur­ry to rent it. I believe I was mis­led. This was a fun movie to watch. It may not quite be up to the stan­dard of Casi­no Royale, but it is close.

More impor­tant­ly, plot wise it is the end­ing of Casi­no Royale. Both of these movies are too long and have plen­ty of exces­sive action that could be edit­ed out with lit­tle dam­age (and maybe improve­ment!) to the films. Maybe it is my imag­i­na­tion, but it seems like some of the back and forth between M and Bond that was cov­ered in the first film was done again in the second.

There are two good movies here with more edit­ing. As it is, there are two movies worth watch­ing which are cer­tain­ly the best of the most­ly dread­ful Bond series.