Tuesday, March 25, 2008

More movies - some good ones this time!

The Pursuit of Happyness: Will Smith is a down-on-his-luck father trying to become a stock-broker, while pretty much everything goes wrong. This is a very good film, but almost painful to watch at times.

The Last King of Scotland: A film mostly about Idi Amin, named for his obsession with Scotland and all things Scottish. Another very good film, and again one that isn't an easy film to watch. By far the best thing about the film is Forest Whitaker as the man himself. Scarily, he portrays him in such a manner that most of the time you can't help but like the guy, only to be really really scared and horrified by his later actions. As I said, a strong film indeed.

Gridiron Gang: Take "Coach Carter" (great film, by the way), and replace basketball with American football, and replace Samuel L. Jackson with the Rock, and this is what you get. It's an okay film, but just not as good as the other. However, like "Coach Carter", it does prompt some difficult questions about the state of certain parts of American culture, and is worth having made just for that purpose.

Notes on a Scandal: A teacher, played by Kate Blanchett, has an affair with a pupil, while another teacher, played by Judi Dench, nurtures an unhealthy obsession about the former. Judi Dench is great in her role. The rest of the film is barely passable.

Deja Vu: At first glance, this is a really clever time-travel film wherein Denzel Washington attempts to prevent a terrorist attack that has already happened and, not incidentally, save the life of the love interest after she has been killed. Unfortunately, if you scratch the surface just slightly, the whole thing falls apart. With time travel, there are two possible interpretations: either you can change the past or you can't. If you can change the past, then Marty McFly can get his father to beat up Biff Tannen, and everything works out for the best. In the latter, it turns out that the efforts of the time traveller are actually the very thing that caused the problems in the first place; he just didn't know it.

"Deja Vu" applies the first premise most of the time, except where the second is more convenient. The result is a film where the sequence of events doesn't work if the time traveller doesn't go back... but we're supposed to be watching from a universe in which he hasn't gone back. As such, it is broken. Oops.

The Fountain: This was billed as a complex tale of love and morality about two lovers whose lives are entwined over a thousand years. Well, it turns out that their lives don't quite entwine over so long, it just feels like it. Avoid.

And that's your lot for now.

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