In light of it having been so long since I posted that my homepage was empty when I loaded up tannock.net, here’s a couple of quick summaries of movies that I’ve seen recently:
Click: A wretched piece of crap that should never, ever have been greenlighted. The first 10 minutes made a vaguely funny sketch, but after that, it deteriorates into schmalzty pap made worse only by an “aging” Adam Sandler getting pointlessly angry at himself.
Le Samourai: mixing American Noir with French New Wave Pop-Culture cool, this film is a masterpiece, pure and simple. If you love cinema, particularly crime drama, you owe it to yourself to see this film. You can see its influence on nearly every lone-wolf crime movie since.
A Prairie Home Companion: Like so many of Altman’s later movies, not so much a story as an extended scene, it is again filled with strong acting and a sense of actors having fun together. While I never bought the “world” portrayed within (being too aware at all times of the actors themselves), I enjoyed this one. Not his strongest, but if you’re an Altman fan, you’ll like it. If you don’t like Altman at the best of times, run screaming from this one.
L’Enfer: This film is perhaps more famous for how hard it was to finish (it took 30 years to make) that for the story. Depending on your point-of-view, it’s either an insufferably slow and over-dramatic French Film about nothing (Leah’s take), or a beautiful, haunting meditation on the destructive power of Jealousy (my take).
The Pursuit of Happyness: A strong performance by Will Smith in an otherwise fairly weak, predictable movie. I get that it’s based on a true-story but that doesn’t excuse the over-the-top manipulativeness of the direction. A subtler hand could have made an even more powerful film about the importance of vision, staying true to oneself, family, etc..
: A wretched piece of crap that should never, ever have been greenlighted. The first 10 minutes made a vaguely funny sketch, but after that, it deteriorates into schmalzty pap made worse only by an “aging” Adam Sandler getting pointlessly angry at himself.