In case you are wondering how I can afford to see so many movies, I’d better explain that I have a UGC Cinema Unlimited Card. It’s great. I pay ?9.99 per Month and get to see as many movies as I like. This week I’ll have used it 6 times, and once I’ve used it twice in a month it has more than paid for itself! It ROCKS!
Animal Factory stars Willem Dafoe and Edward Furlong. It’s the stor of a young man and the relatioship that grows up between him and a long-time convict.
There’s nothing wrong twith this film, but I didn’t htink it was great either. The story’s interesting, and the actors do well (although it took me a few minutes to get over Furlong’s squeaky performance in T2). It’s not a film about the grimness of life in Jail. It’s not great, but it didn’t “depress” me as much as the portrayal in the Shawshank Redemption, The ending is interesting, and leaves you with something to think about, but there seemed to be something missing.
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Double Whammy stars Denis Leary and Elizabeth Hurley. It’s about a New York cop who investigates the stabbing of a friend. Except that it’s not. It’s kind of hard to say what it’s about. It’s mainly a comedy, but not always. It’s just really confused (at least I was.) I mean it’s linear and all, and it all makes sense, but it wasn’t that great.
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Hoover Street Revival is a documentary about a church in south central LA, lead by Bishop Noel Jones. I should point out first that I’m a christian, so you should read any review in that light. I thought that this was a really interesting documentary, but not ver coherent. It showed some interedting things, but left too much unsaid. There was no commentary. The church scenes, both the preaching and the singing, spoke for themselves, but the background – what life is like in south Central LA – was too vague. We knew nobody by name, followed no stories, just saw parts of their lives without really showing how the people are by the situations in which they live.
I enjoyed the preaching parts, and some of the singing was amazing, but the whole thing seemed a bit uneven
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Hulk (2003) stars Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott and Nick Nolte. If you don’t know the plot already, it’d take too long to explain.
I really Enjoyed this film. Think Hulk comic not Hulk TV Series. As happened with Spiderman recently, the “hoew it came about” story has been messed with a bit, but in a quite satisfactory way. There’s not too much monster. A lot of time is spent in set-up, and there are some interesting editing techniques, harking back to the comic heritage of the movie (and not just rip-offs of “24” as I thought to begin with).
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Whale Rider stars Keisha Castle-Hughes Rawiri Paratene and Cliff Curtis. It’s the story of a young Maori girl growing up in a male dominated society. It’s superb! It’s beautifully shot, tells the story really well and keeps you going all the way through
Keisha Castle-Hughes, as the main actor, competely carries you along. It’s a very strong performance for an actor of any age.
I know next to nothing about Maori culture, but this film gave me a real insight into the proud traditions over there. I loved it. Not everyone I went with liked as much, but I think it’s well worth seeing – my first 5/5
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The In-Laws stars Mr Zeta Jones and Albert Brooks. They play the fathers of a young coupel a week away from getting married. They’ve never met, but Michael Douglas’ CIA agent gets Albert Brooks uptight Podiatrist (foot doctor) involved in some international shenannigans. It’s apparently a remake of this movie and has had some flak because of it. I’ve never seen the original one, but I did enjoy this one. It’s not deep, but it is fun!
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Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle stars Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu. It’s not as bad as they say, but it could have been a lot better. I liked the first movie a lot, and had high hopes of this one. McG said that the first one was supposed to be a comic book feel, with bright scene changes and strong colours. I can kind of see where he was coming from, but if that’s true, this one was more of a saturday morning cartoon. Some of it’s inspired, some of it is jut so bizzarre and plotless that I was plain confused. The plot, such as it is, is not even always clear. Important linking points fly by without you noticing them (or at least me).
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p.s. Having seen this again I was even more disturbed by some of the scenes. For the audience it is aimed at (it was a 12A in the UK) some of the fight scenes are really violent. And, you can call me a prude, but the scene where they were all dancing in the bar was too much for me. OK, part of it was integral to the story, but some of it was just voyeuristic and, sitting with my Mum, Sister and close to some young girls, I felt distinctly uncomfortable. I certainly would rather this was a 15 than a 12A
Dark Blue stars Ving Rhames and Kurt Russell. I’m not going to give this film a rating because I was so bored I walked out after 45 minutes. Bits of it were interesting, buts of it were really brutal, and they did a good job of making you dislike most of the pople in the film. So much so that I didn’t really care what happened to them.
Identity stars John Cusack, Ray Liotta and Amanda Peet. It is the story of what happens to five strangers stuck in Motel in the middle of nowhere on a rainy night.
I REALLY ejoyed this film. I don’t really go in for horror films, but this was great. It’s not too Horrory, in the way I dislike, but it certainly had some people nervous. Some people in my showing had to leave the cinema. I was worried half way through that I was going to get a really terrible explanation and roundup, but it actually made the whole story much more interesting.
It’s one of those filmswhere you come out counting your fingers and trying to work out the whole deal. very good.
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