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Movies I have recently seen!

More movies on the way!

Palookaville

**1/2 Three guys, out of work and becoming increasingly desparate try to make a go of a life in crime. But they are a little inept. To complicate matters, one of them has a brother in law who is a police officer. I liked this movie. It did a decent job of creating believable characters. And there was a nicely done tension. See it. see review by Roger Ebert

Telling Lies in America

*** This movie survived a strangely flat performance by Calista Flockheart. A son of an immigrant becomes enamored with a sleazy disc jockey and by cheating on a contest manages to become his personal helper. This adolescent is caught in a pull between living a truthful and ethical life and a flashy and popular unethical one. I liked this movie. Kevin Bacon was good as the DJ and the story unfolded in an interesting way. Lots of good music. Good moral tension. I recommend this one! see review by Roger Ebert

I"ll Take You There

**1/2 Quirky little movie. A man despondent and obsessed with his wife who has just left him gets set up on a blind date. The woman in the date turns out to be apparently psychotic and takes him at gunpoint to meet her sick grandmother. This movie was interesting. The characters had enough depth to make it so. Interesting story line. Not a great movie, but entertaining. See it. see review by Shaun Sages

Permanent Midnight

**1/2 A talented writer gets hooked on heroin and rock cocaine. Told in flashback, this movie chronicles addiction in a fairly realistic way. I developed an empathy with the main character. Though the story is a bit cliche'd, it kept my interest. I would recommend it. Not exactly light fare, but worth a look. see review by Roger Ebert

Shanghai Noon

**1/2 I have to start this by saying that I like Jackie Chan Movies. I like the humore in them and the good natured way in which they poke fun at themselves. Shanghai Noon was no exception. The only problem with the movie was the crap out ending. Man, I have seen more movies hurt ny their endings than I like to remember. Hollywood has a neurotic need to leave audiences with sap. But aside from that, this was a fun movie. It is good to just sit back and be entertained. This movie does that. A Chinese guard makes his way to America's wild west and hooks up with a maverick cowboy. The guard wants to rescue a kidnapped princess and the cowboy wants the gold. Lots of misadventure, lush cinematography, humor, and typical Jackie Chan grandiose stunts. Recommended. see review by Roger Ebert

Chilly Scenes of Winter

*1/2 This was a dreary movie. I believe that it was billed as a comedy, but I found very little to smile at, let alone laugh at. John Heard plays a man with a dreary job and a psychotic mother who falls in love with a woman. His love turns to obsession when she returns to her husband after a brief separation. Sound like the stuff of a rip roaring comedy? Obviously not. I find nothing in this movie to recommend it. That is, unless you take enjoyment at seeing obsessive and narcissistic behavior. This could have been a decent movie had there been some sort of explanation of the obsession, or some sort of ironic humor. But there was none of that. It was based on the novel of the same name by Anne Beattie. Avoid it. see review by Marjorie Baumgarten

The Inkwell

**1/2 As I watched this movie I kept getting the nagging feeling feeling that it should have been better than it was. A coming of age story, it tells the story of an awkward aldolescent boy with latent emotional problems. His family (father an ex black panther) takes a trip to Martha's vineyard to visit the mother's sister's family in the middle 70's. The boy takes his first foray into boy-meets-girl land. The acting and characterization in this movie were oddly exagerated and quirky. I am not sure wether this was done intentionally. I found it distracting. Still, the actor who played the boy did so in an affecting way and made the story compelling. This movie has large flaws. In spite of them it maintained my interest to the end. see review by Roger Ebert

Red Rock West

Dennis Hopper, Nicholas Cage. *** A well intentioned oil worker, out of work, stumbles into a little Wyoming town. He makes a small mistke, one that any of us might make, and ends up paying for it in an increasingly complex way.
What I liked about this movie was its intricate plot. It just kept unfolding and unfolding. It kept getting more and more complictaed and yet it remained interesting. Good movie. Recommended! see review by Roger Ebert

The Nephew

***1/2 A small town in Ireland. A man's nephew is coming for a visit. No one knows anything about him. When he arrives, they are suprised to see that he is black.
Kind of a cliche? Well, not in this movie. The race card is wonderfully underplayed. A compelling story emerges; one of repressed family dynamics, teen angst and social alienation. This is a wonderful movie. Great cinematography, acting and plot. While I usually strongly dislike Pierce Brosnan, he was good in this one. Very highly recommended. see review by John Smythe

The Uninvited

*1/2 Vintage 1940's era ghost story. Cliche'd storyline. Stilted characters. Poor acting. Still, if you like the old Ghost movies, this one is worth wasting an hour and a half on. Don't expect anything novel in it.

Love and Basketball

*** I believe I saw Spike Lee's name on this one. What I liked best about this move was the basketball. It was real. More often than not, sports movies are made by people who know more about moviemaking than the sport they are portraying. The result is usully a hackneyed portrayal of the game. Not so in this movie.
The love story contains a few interesting moments. A decent tension develops in it. However, it ends with a typical Hollywood crapout. Still, I liked this movie. See it.

Mission to Mars

***This is a good movie. Good effects and a believable storyline. Realistic enough to be possible. A crew is sent to Mars to explore the surface but meet unexpected obstacles. The only reason I didn't rate it higher was because of the typical Hollywood "troubled crew member saves the day" scenario. I do get tired of Hollywood movies. Fresh plot ideas seem to be hard to come by and this movie suffers a bit because of that. Still its a movie well worth seeing.

Blair Witch Project

**Well, months and months of hype and I finally got to see this movie. Don't really know what all the hype was about. This could have been a good movie, but I think it suffered from a camera's inability to catch the inherent spookiness and claustrophobia of the woods. Interesting storyline, a trio attempting to do a documentary film about Maryland's Blair Witch gets lost in the woods and has an encounter with its subject. I did like the way the movie remained open ended. And parts of it were actually spooky. See it, but ignore all the hype.

Man in the Moon

***1/2 Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jim Carrey did a great job portaying Andy Kauffman. I liked this movie a lot. Not because of Carrey's acting, but rather because of the story that unfolded.
My memories of Kauffman are sparse. I did not like him in Taxi. I remember the Jerry Lawlor wrestling incident. Back then I figured Kauffman must have had mental problems.
But this movie was a revelation to me. I had no idea of the quality of his comedy. His life, if accurately presented here, was a fascinating one. His humor was both intricate and shocking. See this movie. I found it thought provoking. And it brought back a whole lot of memories for me from the seventies. Highly recommended!

Rocket Gibraltar

rated stinker-no stars. Man, I hated this movie. In fact I cannot believe that I sat up on a rainy night just to watch the stupid thing. It had everything I hate to see in a movie; plastic sentimentality, contrived tearjerks, horrid acting, and MAUDLIN, MAUDLIN MAUDLIN!. It is amazing just how low movies can go. And this one lies at the bottom of the heap. Don't see it! EVER!

Life is Beautiful

*1/2 I don't know what it is about me and hyped movies. Perhaps I go into viewing them with expectations so high that they just never live up to it all. I don't know. I was expecting a lot from this movie based on the reviews I had read. I didn't really work all that much for me. Maybe it was that I watched the translated version. The humor was not the type I enjoy. It was forced and did not fit with the movie's plot. I would think some dark humor and irony may have worked better. This movie had none of that. 1930's Germany. A happy go lucky man has just met and married the woman of his dreams. They have a son. And they are carted off to the concentration camps. The man's quirky humor allows his son to survive. I won't say more for fear of giving away much of the tension in the movie. My recommendation-see it but don't expect a whole lot. Be patient with some very tedious attempts at humor. This movie should have been much more thought provoking than it turned out to be.

Finding North

*1/2 A suicidal gay man meets up with a misdirected young woman who is overly concerned about his death wish. His lover has just died of aids and the two go on a cross country trip trying to solve a puzzle the dead lover has left on a tape recorder. Sound stupid? It is. Don't bother.