(5-31-08)

Ratings are from zero to five sporks with zero meaning the movie was probably so bad that I didn't even finish watching it, and five being a movie I would easily recommend to anyone to watch.

The Latest Reviews

Seabiscuit - (2003, PG-13): This movie got good reviews, but I never really read any of them other than to see that it was a movie about horse racing or something. Well as it turns out, it's apparently a pretty accurate telling of the history of a real, actual racehorse that captured the hearts and imagination of our country in the gloomy days of the depression. I thought the telling of the story, touching on the lives of all the people, not so much the horse, and covering the bad, but how you can rise up and overcome even great adversity was executed flawlessly. The extra features on the DVD are well worth watching also. There's not a thing I would do differently with this film. With that, I crown Seabiscuit the SporkSports Best Movie of 2003!

The In-Laws - (2003, PG-13): This is a bizarre comedy about a guy who is getting married, and his fiancee's parents have never met his dad, played by Michael Douglass. The girl's father is very suspicious of the guy's father, and thinks that maybe the other is a secret agent, or worse yet, an enemy agent. Then the girl's father gets mixed up with the guy's father with some other guys who claim to be agents too. Comedy ensues. Kind of a weird movie, but still ok.

Out for a Kill - (2003, R): There weren't many good movies out at the time I rented this, especially action movies. I wanted an action movie. Starring Steven Seagal, whom I previously thought was a good actor, this movie turned out to be one of the cheesiest, most lame movies I've seen in a while. I think it was made on about a $50,000 budget, not including whatever Seagal was paid to put him in it. If you love cheesy 80's movies that can put you to sleep, this should be right up your alley.

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde - (2003, PG-13): I liked the original film, Legally Blonde, so I was hoping this would be at least nearly as good as the original. Instead this movie turned out to be one of those fantasy world films, apparently produced by PETA. I like Reese Witherspoon and most all of the other actors in this movie, so that much was good, but it was really just a 94 minute political advertisement. Boring.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines - (2003, R): I liked the first film, thought the second was even better, and already knew from skimming other reviews that this movie wasn't as good as either. I watched it with a friend and both of us agreed that the ending kind of ruined it. Just as directors can take creative liberty with books and real events and change them around in to whatever they want in a movie, I decided to take creative liberty in my viewing experience and declare the last 5 minutes or so to be incorrect. The correct ending was for it to turn out that Skynet was running on Solaris using Veritas filesystem manager, which crashed and corrupted all of Skynet's data, thus halting the destruction of the Earth. The end.

Matrix 2 & Matrix 3 - (2003, R): I've seen the first Matrix film many times, and even watched the Animatrix twice. I realize that Matrix: Revolutions (the third movie) hasn't actually come out on video yet, but since Reloaded (the second one) has, and I already saw 3 in the theater, I would combine them for the purpose of the review. Really, if you haven't seen them yet and want to see them, watch part 2 and 3 back to back. They are really only one movie, there was just a 6 month intermission between them in the theaters. If you loved the original and were intrigued by the Animatrix, you've gotta see part 2 & 3. Otherwise.. maybe watch them when you're in the mood for a neat action movie. I don't really think they tied up the storyline as well as they could have, and the effects and plot twists were getting a bit tired and predictable by the end, but it's still cool.

Formula 51 - (2002, R): Again, the lack of good movies coming out on video is responsible for me renting this total waste of my time movie. Starring Samuel L. Jackson, this is a movie about him being a supergenious chemist who gets busted for drug use and can no longer legally be a chemist or whatever. He then works for some bad guy making super drugs to get kids high, although he hasn't actually turned over this superdrug yet. Then he runs away so he can sell it to a competitor for more money or something. Some people shoot at each other and get blown up. This is a really dumb movie.

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days - (2003, PG-13): Weird movie where two people end up dating, but the guy is trying to win a bet by making the girl fall in love with him, and the girl is trying to prove a point by making the guy break up with her, each doing this without the other knowing their true intentions. They fall in love anyway, but have a falling out when they each realize the other started with ulterior motives. Painful to watch because the girl is such an unbelievable embarrassment when they are in public together.

Bruce Almighty - (2003, PG-13): Jim Carrey movie that got pretty lackluster reviews with Jim Carrey playing a rather selfish guy who gets the power of God because he's really mad and whines about it a lot. I wasn't so sure it was going to be a very good movie at first, but any movie where the main character drives a 240Z is bound to be good. Sure enough, it was actually a pretty neat movie, and I really liked it. They could have improved it, and there were a lot of deleted scenes on the DVD, most of which really just weren't any good, but they served to kind of say that even they knew it could have been better if they'd spent more time on it. Still good though.

Bad Boys II - (2003, R): I never saw the original, so I don't know how it was that Will Smith's character is a cop yet drives a $225,000 Ferrari and Martin Lawrence is his partner, but has a huge Florida house on the water, but whatever. There are tons of car chases, including one with the Ferrari, lots of shooting, lots of people running around and yelling at each other, and so on. This movie has no storyline. It pretends to, but it doesn't. It's a pure action movie, so just enjoy it for that.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - (2003, PG-13): Set in 1899, this movie has the very interesting plot of a criminal mastermind bizarrely possessing 1940's German WWII military hardware and trying to take over the world. Or maybe just start a world war several years early. No, actually he just wants to be an arms dealer. But wait, there's more! The League (which includes one woman actually) is made up of characters from novels of that time like Allan Quatermain, Dorian Gray, Captain Nemo, etc. In reality, there is a plot twist that seems even more weird and unexplainable. I think this was a good movie, but I'd probably have to watch it again to try to understand exactly what happened.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl - (2003, PG-13): I wasn't sure if this was supposed to be a kids movie, or a hip action movie, or what, but I actually went in to this with pretty low expectations. I am not really a big Johnny Depp fan, but he played his character as a legendary pirate fantastically. The other characters were pretty good too, but they were all normal people, so you kind of expect them to be able to play their characters well. One surprise was Keira Knightley, who was the blonde girl in Bend it Like Beckham (also an awesome film) who I think actually did a much better job acting in this film than Beckham. Overall a pretty cool film.

X-Men 2 - (2003, PG-13): I liked the original X-Men movie and was a little worried that this film would develop a bad case of Sequalitis Suckalotus, which is a condition where the follow-up movie to a good movie just can't compare to the original and ends up making you disrespect it even more because not only was it not that great, it looks even worse compared directly against the first movie. Well I'm pleased to say it's at least as good as the first X-Men movie. Once again, they spend hardly any time doing real character development or coming up with an unpredictable plotline, but at least you get to watch Wolverine go on a rampage, and that's always fun. All the adult characters are pretty entertaining, and they kept the lame teenager actors subdued, possibly because they realized they all suck.

Tomb Raider 2: The Cradle of Life - (2003, PG-13): This movie was so dumb that I almost didn't even want to write a review for it and admit that I enjoyed watching it in spite of how annoying it is in so many ways. It's a great action movie made slightly less appealing by the fact they couldn't quite get the story or accessory characters right. It's hard to explain, so I'm not even going to bother. It was maybe 87% as good as the first one in coherence, and about 17% better in special effects, so it's kind of a wash. If you liked the first one, this one's ok too. I just wish more of it took place in the jungle settings and whatever. She looks really out of place in a Die-Hard style breaking glass office shootout.

The Road to Perdition - (2002, R): Tom Hanks is probably one of my favorite actors so when I heard about this movie when it came out in the theater last summer it was one of the few movies that I was tempted to go see in the theater. Of course, I never got around to it and ended up waiting for it on DVD. Hanks plays a mafia hitman who for some reason his boss puts out a contract on. That is the basis of all that puts the movie's plot in motion, and unfortunately it's the one thing that I didn't quite understand the reasoning behind. As much as I wanted to say this was a totally awesome film and give it 5 sporks, it just seemed to fall short somehow, but only barely. I'd give it 4.5 sporks if I wasn't too lazy to make a half spork picture, but I guess it just barely could earn five sporks.

Last Man Standing - (1996, R): If there's anything that Bruce Willis seems to be pertty good at, it's roles where he's hopelessly outnumbered by a bunch of hardcore criminals who he must outsmart and outgun in order to win. Set in 1920's Texas just north of the Mexico border, this film is a classic "B" movie, right down to the cliche voice-overs of such lines such as one right after witnessing a slaughter of some ambushed gangsters: "I can't say I felt sorry for them, but it was a pretty rough way to check out." Christopher Walken delivers a fantastic performance in this film which makes no apologies for being a cheesy-plot action movie. I feel bad giving this film a score that's only one notch away from Perdition, but I think Last Man really delivered the amusing fun of watching an action movie that Perdition seemed to somehow lack.

Serving Sara - (2002, R): A comedy about the unlikely exciting life of a process server who's specialty is serving papers to people who don't want to be found. The story really starts when he's assigned to serve divorce papers to Elizabeth Hurley's character. He ends up changing his mind after having his car stolen, getting beat up, and ending up on the same bus to the airport with her. There he finds out she could end up losing out on her half of the 20 million dollar fortune her husband has built up and she offers him a million to help her out instead. Predictable, but still amusing and funny.

Posession - (2002, R): Ok, so I mainly rented this movie because it has Gwenyth Paltrow in it and I've seen her in a lot of pretty good movies. It's about Gwenyth being some British poetry expert or something meeting some American guy who is investigating the past of some poet. It's supposedly based on some major award-winning book, which I am going to speculate is a lot better than the movie. The storyline seems somewhat disjointed and choppy, especially as it jumps back and forth between the past and the present and especially confusing when it jumps back and forth between different parts of the past. Overall pretty decent, but not much more than that.

The Bourne Identity - (2002, R): I've seen Matt Damon in a number of movies where I didn't think he was very believable in his role. This was not one of them. It's quite easy to accept him as a confused assassin who isn't quite there in the head. Damon actually played his character well enough to be something of a reminder of the classic James Bond: a trained killer who can seek out and destroy his target with the cold precision of a programmed machine, a great stunt driver, and a hit with the ladies too. Good action movie with a decent storyline too as long as you overlook the unlikely decision of his female friend to actually hang around him after he starts killing people.

Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course - (2002, PG): Although I don't have cable, I've seen Crocodile Hunter on TV a number of times and for the most part, the movie is kind of a long version of the TV show with an interesting spy story thrown in. Certainly a bizzare twist, but it was an interesting story that didn't distract too much from the real show, which is simply watching Steve Irwin nearly getting his arms bitten off by various creatures of the Australian outback.

The Devil's Advocate - (1997, R): Once I heard about this movie from a friend, the premise really intrigued me. Picture this: Satan is walking the Earth corrupting and destroying humanity by using his powerful law firm to do his evil work. Heck, with big name actors like Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves, how could they possibly screw it up? Well, by being too dark and nasty really. If the point of the movie is to turn your stomach over and convince you that lawyers, er, I mean evil is really, really bad, then I guess they were successful. If you asked me, they took a compelling storyline and screwed it up by spending too much time on special effects of demons and Keanu's wife killing herself. Too dark for my taste, but not completely horrible.

About a Boy - (2002, R): Any movie with "The Best Comedy of the Year" label on the box cover is just begging to get rented so I can see how wrong it really is. While it may or may not really quite live up to the claim, it does a good job of being amusing and entertaining even for guys. While the main characters are guys, make no mistake, this movie is clearly targeted at those of the female persuasion. Probably the best part is when Hugh, the main charater, is describing his life which essentially consists of doing nothing and trying to make it seem like he's a busy person when in reality he's living retired off the royalties of a song his deceased father wrote.

We Were Soldiers - (2002, R): I probably walked by this movie a dozen times never wanting to rent it because I usually don't enjoy war movies very much. The December/January timeframe was kind of slow as far as good movies goes however, so I ended renting this film with pretty low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised. According to the "about the movie" extra on the DVD, this film is based on a book by Lt. Gen. Hal Moore (Lt. Col. at the time), the real guy in charge of the unit involved in the first full-scale military battle in Vietnam. If it's as true to the real battle as the claims make it out to be, then I'd have to say I'm quite impressed with it for that fact alone. It's a story not about the politics of war, and not about how evil and awful America is, or reall about the reasons for the war at all. What Moore says is the feeling that the viewer gets; it's a movie about a specific battle and about the incredible ability of the American soldier and the dedication they give to their fellow soldiers.

Reign of Fire - (2002, PG-13): Set 20 or 30 years in the future, dragons now rule the Earth and have nearly killed off all the humans left. There's a few pockets of resistance however, surviving mainly just by not being discovered, but one group is a hardcore gang of dragonslayers intent to get to the bottom of how the dragons came to be and how they can be stopped once and for all. This film has "B movie" written all over it, but there wasn't a whole lot else to rent at the time. It's a decent action movie and the effects are good but there's not a whole lot else to it.

Signs - (2002, PG-13): Ok, so I saw all the previews and movie trailers for this film and thought for a while that the big mystery was going to be about what was creating all the crop circles and if there really were going to be aliens in this film. In fact, up until about half-way through, they still had the viewer guessing about if the aliens were real, or if it was all hype and nonsense. I'm not really shy about spoiling a few surprises in these reviews however, so I'll just tell you right now, that's not the big surprise in this film. The surprise is finding out at the end that it's not about aliens or crop circles or anything at all, it's about one man's journey to self-discovery. Honestly, I think it was a far, far better movie because of it. Not many movies can pull off a final scene that makes the whole movie better, but this one does. My only complaint is that it took so darn long to reach that point. This movie would have been better as a 45-60 minute short film.

XXX - (2002, PG-13): If there's anything that this movie proved to me and the rest of the world, it's that there is a good reason why Paul Walker gets lead roles in films and Vin Diesel typically plays supporting actor roles. Vin Diesel is good, but he's not lead actor good. Directed by Rob Cohen, the same director as The Fast and the Furious (which starred both Walker and Diesel), this film spends way too much time at the impossible task of portraying Diesel as not just a tough guy, but a deep thinker who can strategize and plot out complex plans. Thankfully, the rest of the time is spent with fast cut scenes of shootouts, chases, terrific stunts and hillarious dialoge that's impossible to take seriously. This movie should be offered in a condensed version of only the action scenes. If you rent this movie, don't be afraid to give the fast farward button a workout.

The Bachelor - (1999, PG-13): This is one of those movies that I think is so great and most other people probably can't quite figure out why. As far as romantic comedies go, this one serves as something of a benchmark. It simply gets all the elements just right. My only complaint really is that for the first 20 minutes or so, the main character plays a role as narrator too, which works great, except you end up feeling like something is curiously absent when you realize that it was never used again for the rest of the movie. Terrific performances by Chris O'Donnell and Renee Zellweger as the movie keeps up a fast pace that takes on some adventure movie qualities. I never get tired of watching this movie.

Minority Report - (2002, PG-13): Much like Vanilla Sky, this Tom Cruise movie is a Sci-Fi thriller that does a good job of sending it's message rather than becoming pre-occupied with trying to keep the movie interesting by being all futuristic and mysterious. It integrates these elements pretty seamlessly so that they aid the story rather than distracting it. Well, for the most part. Hollywood always has a pretty funny idea of exactly what the future is going to be like, but with Steven Spielberg directing it, it stays within the bounds of believability. The story itself is about a future where there is a group of individuals "employed" by the government to use their psychic powers to predict when a murder is going to happen so the cops can arrest the perp before they actually get to commit the crime. The "Minority Report" turns out to be a fault in the program that has been covered up by the people who felt that the benefit justified potentially nabbing innocent people.

The Royal Tenenbaums - (2001, R): I guess I don't have much to say about this movie other than to say that I just plain didn't understand it. It felt most like a strange reality TV show where you're following these people around and seeing their daily lives and all, but the key elements of a plot were absent. I talked to one friend of mine who absolutely loved this movie and she said that it makes more sense if you'd seen some other movie that was written by the same guy. I'll just have to take her word for it. It didn't really do anything for me.

K-19: The Widowmaker - (2002, PG-13): A good action movie that would be impossible not to compare to the ultimate of all modern Cold-War submarine movies, The Hunt for Red October. As good as K-19 is, it's no Red October. The story is about one of the most advanced submarines of the Soviet fleet being dispatched to conduct test manouvers in the Atlantic and then the sub has problems which could kill everyone on board and potentially cause an international crisis if it's interpreted as a first strike against the US. Really all this movie did for me was remind me how good Red October is and how much the Soviets sucked.

And now, for an extra special collection of Movies that Really Sucked. Consider all of the following as having one or two sporks, but probably only one.

Hard Cash - (2001, R): Val Kilmer, Christian Slater, and Daryl Hannah were the main stars of this movie. None of them has had a hit in the last 10 years or so. This movie is supposed to be about a bank robbery gone bad, and I don't even remember how it ended. Ugh.

Insomnia - (2002, R): Has Al Pacino ever been in a cop movie where his partner doesn't get killed? Give me a break, this is getting old now.

Mercury Rising - (1998, R): This movie would be a lot better if Alec Baldwin didn't play such a convincing psychopathic killer, to be perfectly honest. That and if there was a lot less yelling and screeming from the retarded kid. I hate screaming kids.

Big Fat Liar - (2002, PG): More like, you write a book about come-back jokes, NERD!. Big fat kids movie with little to no value for anyone over the age of 16. There needs to be more Toy Story movies instead of this garbage.

Frank McKlusky, C.I. - (2002, PG-13): Stupid is, as stupid does and silly costumes do not make a movie.

Extra Butter Popcorn - (2003, G): One of the many things I paid for at blockbuster that are better than the movies listed above. Okay! Enough of that, let's finish it with a decent movie.

An Ideal Husband - (1999, PG-13): Any movie with Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, and Minnie Driver is no doubt worth renting, regardless of what the plot is. In fact, I actually rented this about 3 months ago and don't really remember what it was about anyway, but I know it was pretty good. I think. Probably.

Joe Somebody - (2001, PG): Tim Allen movie about an unlikely scenario where this guy, Joe, gets beat up in his company parking lot in front of his kid. He then sets out to redeem himself by challenging the guy to a rematch. Weird, mildly entertaining, not real big on plausibility. Not really a hit, but totally watchable. Still I'd rate it 3 out of 5 sporks.

National Lampoon's Van Wilder - (2002, R): Comedy about a guy who's in his seventh year at college and his unloving father decides to stop paying his tuition. Wildly popular on campus, the main character uses his reputation and party clout to manage to continue to raise money to pay his tuition. He then finds deeper meaning to his life, faces his fears, gets the girl, saves his family, and so on. Not real great, but also has the quality of being equally entertaining even if you don't really pay any attention or walk out of the room and miss scenes.

Orange County - (2002, PG-13): Big Hollywood movie with an indie feel to it. About a smart kid who grows up as a carefree surfer in Orange County, California who in his senior year of high school decides to become a writer and get serious about his education. He applies at Stanford and is expected to get in but his high school sends the transcripts for the wrong student and his application is rejected. He then sets out on an adventure to somehow get accepted in time for the fall semester. In this adventure he finds deeper meaning to his life, faces his fears, keeps the girl, saves his family, and so on. I don't really like any of the supporting actors, but it was decent, had an almost original feel to it, and at only 81 minutes long, it avoids dragging the somewhat thin story too long.

Being John Malkovich - (1999, R): John Cusack plays a puppeteer who discovers a doorway that leads inside the mind of actor John Malkovich. This turns in to a very strange love square (four people in this mess) between John Malkovich, the puppeteer, and the puppeteer's wife as well as one of his co-workers. I should have known better than to think that a film starring Cameron Diaz was going to be good but the movie got 3 Academy Award nominations so I thought it was going to be good. Well it wasn't. I did manage to get through the whole movie without falling asleep, but it really just wasn't entertaining, thought provoking, or redeeming in any particular way.

The Shipping News - (2001, R): Kevin Spacey and Julianne Moore star in this off-beat movie about a man who finds deeper meaning in life, faces his fears.. oh, you get the idea. Reminded me a lot of the movie Deeply, possibly because they're both set on small fishing islands in the cold Atlantic and involve a strange curse of some sort. The movie sort of starts out as something of a mess but is quickly rescued by the change of venue to the island. Overall a pretty good movie about being able to become something more than you thought you were.

Collateral Damage - (2001, R): The latest Schwarzenegger action movie. This movie managed to have the exact same feel as every other Arnold action movie ever made. It's really weird because I've seen plenty of action movies over the years and somehow every one that Arnold does seems exactly the same. Some just do a better job at it than others. Collateral Damage is just another example of the same old formula which isn't really novel anymore. There's nothing wrong with the movie really, but it still just seems unsatisfying.

Amelie - (2001, R): The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain; this film is entirely in French and at times felt like you were missing out on the true meaning of certain parts in the translation to English subtitles, but overall this is a great movie. The picture at the top of this month's update is actually an image from Amelie. Needless to say, I really enjoyed this movie. It's about an introverted woman in her 20's who longs to live an exciting and fulfilling life. When she gets a special chance to do exactly that, she struggles between her fears of rejection and failure and the chance of making a difference and finding true love. A very fun movie and has excellent camerawork and use of color and visuals. The woman who plays Amelie gives an unusual and thoroughly enjoyable performance and captures the idea of a sky adventurist perfectly.

The Accidental Spy - (2001, PG-13): Another installment in the long line of enjoyable Jackie Chan movies. Starting to suffer from the Arnie syndrome, Jackie's latest movie is quite good, but quite unremarkable at the same time. If you like Jackie Chan movies, it's certainly worth watching. The fact that I had to read the review online just to remember any details of the plot at all only serves to solidify my impression of it being a forgettable movie.

Little Man Tate - (1991, PG): Jodie Foster's directorial debut film about a waitress single mother raising a child prodigy. She reluctantly agrees to permit her son to go to a summer camp for gifted children where the camp director attempts to make the boy, Fred Tate, act like a grown-up in pursuit of intellectual greatness. Although excited at first, Fred becomes overwhelmed and longs to just be a normal boy. A very good movie and has some funny moments inside the imagination of Fred.

Sleepless in Seattle - (1993, PG): Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan star in this film that was supposedly really good. I've heard all about it for I don't even know how many years and sadly it failed to live up to my expectations. It's supposed to be something of a love story, but the two people don't even meet until the last scene of the movie. To me, that's the movie equivalent of having 3 hours of pre-game talk before the Superbowl and then deciding to only have the superbowl game itself last 2 minutes. The movie created the sensation of stalling out every time it started to get going.

Blade II - (2002, R): Wesley Snipes is back for the sequel to the 1998 action flick Blade. The setup is that Blade is a man born as a half-vampire who is actually trying to seek and destroy as many vampires as possible. Quite surprisingly, Blade II seemed less graphically violent than the original, and thus the action scenes don't seem quite so tainted by the wildly excessive blood and gore of the original. The storyline was pretty simplistic, but it never tried to head off in too many directions at once. Most noteworthy in my mind was the fact that when you fast forward and back on the DVD, it actually displays the subtitles automatically! Although such a feature is largely wasted in an action movie, I've never seen any other DVD's with this feature and think it ought to be standard.

Judge Dredd - (1995, R): One of my all time favorite action movies. Stars Sylvester Stallone in a futuristic movie about what the world could be like if governments and the traditional justice system could not react to crime fast enough to protect the citizenry. An excellent action movie on all counts and Rob Schneider acts as comic relief in just the right times. In my mind, this movie stands out not only for being a good action film, but for really making you think that this future where street cops are the judge, jury, and executioner could actually have some potential.

Max Keeble's Big Move - (2001, PG): Typical of a sucky Disney movie, the film contains all of the following elements: A neurotic mother, a weak and bumbling father, kids who are way smarter than anyone I knew in junior high, an evil plotting principal, a staff of teachers made up entirely of 30-something women, bullies that never get in trouble but are eventually beat up by the student body, and an animal shelter at risk of being bulldozed (literally, there is a bulldozer scene in the movie) down by an evil white guy wearing a suit and tie. Worst of all, this "kids movie" included scenes of kids using bad language to talk back to adults. Not really appropriate for young kids and too dumb to be entertaining to adults, this movie has a narrow target audience of angsty 12-15 year olds.

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - (2001, PG-13): This really long movie is an expensive and elaborate adaptation of the series of books of the same name. This probably appeals a lot more to the people who've read the book and wanted to see a movie version of it so they could say "Oh, I know this part!" the whole way through or something. To me, the best part of the movie was when Hugo Weaving, who plays some elf king addresses everyone and lapses into an Agent Smith tone of voice. That would be Agent Smith from The Matrix of course. Ok, I've run out of things to say about this movie. I'll no doubt rent the sequel when it comes out, but mainly just because this movie, even in 165 minutes, fails to feel like a complete movie on it's own. They ought to just put "To Be Continued" at the end right before it starts playing a really pleasant Enya song.

The Business of Strangers - (2001, R): This movie is a rare piece. It's the first movie since I don't know when that was so incredibly bad that by about 15 minutes in to the movie I had hit fast forward to see if it ever started going anywhere. Then I started jumping ahead to the next scene on the DVD. Then fast forwarding through it too. Every scene seemed to start either in a hotel room, a hotel hallway, the elevator, the gym, or the airport. For the 15 minutes that I did watch, it felt as though I was watching some sort of bizarre and angry movie running on the Lifetime channel. The only happy moment was knowing that I only wasted 15 or 20 minutes of my life on this horrible movie instead of the full running time. That and the fact that I didn't actually have to pay anything to rent it.

A Beautiful Mind - (2001, PG-13): This movie won 4 academy awards, including Best Picture. Lots of people have said it was a really great movie. Hmm.. sound familiar? Actually unlike Being John Malkovich which was a horrible movie, Beautiful Mind turned out to be a pretty interesting film. Although it was sort of about this math scholar's life, it was really just a movie about a smart person who goes crazy and attempts to regain control of his life after totally losing it. That wasn't really what I was expecting, but it did a real good job of it. Although quite well done, the subject matter wasn't really interesting to me and felt like it lacked a real plot. It was more of an episode of Biography than something with a real storyline.

     So.. as you can probably tell, I have been making the most of my movie membership card. Anyone who actually read every one of the reviews above also probably enjoys movies or else they have just waaaaaay too much time on their hands. Also noteworthy is the fact that rumors continue to fly about my sector of my company being outsouced to another company. This would mean I'd no longer be working for my current company, but I'd be doing the same work and just being paid by someone else. The downside is that I'd no longer have the benefits and everything of my current company and could end up in a dead-end job working for some minimum service, cheapest price possible type of place. That's not really what I'd like to be doing, so I'll just have to continue to hope for the best.