Films: Laurel Canyon; What A Girl Wants; Bringing Down the House

[chicken]

Three recent rentals.

Laurel Canyon

Kind of boring, could have been so much better. But Frances McDormand is wonderful as always. Her scenes were always the most interesting. I usually love Christian Bale's work, but not as much here. Kate Beckinsale did nothing for me. Still, the best of the three.

What A Girl Wants

Probably one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I'm prepared quite often to sit down with a teenage girl comedy flick and take it for what it is and enjoy it without too much embarrassment. Usually. But not this one. Colin Firth is a wonderful actor completely wasted on this part. The script, direction, and editing, and soundtrack were absolutely abysmal. The editing was particularly non-existent, leaving in scads of scenes that were redundant and laid everything on too thick while not being funny. The soundtrack was so heavy-handed I could feel the weight of the dead horse. The saddest thing was that I sat through the whole thing. NEVER see this movie. Run away.

Bringing Down the House

Tried too hard to be funny and so wasn't. Tried to satirize racism and failed to the point of being racist. Queen Latifah is fun and I find her sexy, but what a stupid movie. Eugene Levy was a bright spot, always manages to be funny. Plus, well, this:

Comments

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Wilde is good indeed. Depressing, but very well done.

And Jude also played gay in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil with Kevin Spacey.

[the-automatik.livejournal.com]

Yes. I cried so much in Wilde. I cannot even believe that that actually happened. It makes me so furious. ARGH!

I forgot about Midnight...I actually liked that although it was a bit campy.

I just remembered today about The Talented Mr. Ripley. Damn, that movie was good. I actually LIKE Matt Damon and I think he's quite talented when he's actually in a good movie. Have you read the Highsmith novels? I would love to read them one day.

I saw Sidney Pollack on TV the other day doing a promo for TCM's "The Essentials" film series and raving about Hitchcock's genius in coming up with the film "Strangers on a Train" and I wanted to scream. He didn't come up with it! It was Patricia Highsmith! Her book "Ten Little Tales of Misogyny" was never so true.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Yes, but it was supposed to be campy. I really liked it. But the book is better, you should read the book.

Damon is horrible when paired with Affleck, cuz, duh. But in Ripley he was good. Jude brought his acting up a notch. Haven't read those novels.

[the-automatik.livejournal.com]

Strangers...is the only novel of hers I've read. It's really good, but disturbing the same way Nabokov's "Despair" is disturbing, i.e., the whole time you're reading it you're cringing.

Ten Little Tales...is a collection of short stories. If you like Margaret Atwood, you'll like those short stories. They are very unsettling as well. The one about the cyst is bizarre (if memory serves...I could be thinking of another author).