Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Spacey-a-thon Post #4: Some More Reviews

Beyond the Sea:
This is a really cool movie. it got some mixed reviews, but I think a lot f that is due to the fact that it doesn't work like a normal music bio-pic. The flashbacks & dream sequences work nicely to give it a strange mythic feel. It does some nice stuff w/ Bobby Darin's political life during the late '60s. I had no idea he became some sort of anti-war/pro-civil rights hippie. Maybe that's common knowledge, but I didn't know it. I also didn't know he was married to Sandra Dee... but then again, all I knew about Sandra Dee I earned in Greece.
Shackleon's Antarctic Adventure:
I wrote the Wikipedia page about this movie for my ENGL 121 class in May. I wish we'd seen it in the IMAX theater when it was new. The cinematography is amazing. As is the life of Shackleton. Although, he may also have been bat-shit crazy. I wish it went into his relationship to the time period. It seems like that crazy drive to conquer stuff should be put into the context of the early 20th Century British ego 7 the fall of the British Empire.
Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil:
This movie is about 10 minutes too long. It's good, but a bt more editing would have helped the pace. It's a pretty crazy story based on a true murder in Savannah. I almost considered picking up the book, but true-crime isn't really my thing. Spacey plays the Southern gentleman/murderer & does a great job. It left me wondering if people down there really wander the streets w/ open booze @ all hours of the day & night. And if so, why don't we do that up here?
A Time to Kill:
Again w/ the open intoxicants. Them there down in Dixie are some rascally varmints. It's a good movie, but it plays on too many stereotypes. It's really predictable. Also, Ashley Judd is a shit actress. Her boob-sweat in every scene makes no sense either. Matthew McConaughey, on the other hand, was really good. What ever happened to that dude? He was so promising & then he went to shit.
The Usual Suspects:
Awesome. I hadn't seen it in about 10 years. But you all know it, so there's not much to say other that the usual "It's an awesome post-modern story about story-telling & the construction of reality."
Outbreak:
I saw this when it was 1st released on video & stayed clear of it ever since. And rightly so. It's a shit movie. spacey is good as the friend who dies. When his character contracts the disease & dies rather quickly, it's left unexplained how Renee Russo can then survive much longer & remain pretty hot until she is saved.
Se7en:
I'd never seen this. It's almost as cool as its reputation suggests, but like w/ A Time to Kill, the relationship between the main character & his wife is done 1/2-assed. When she dies in the end, I just didn't care.
See No Evil, Hear No Evil:
An offensive, ridiculous, shameless, funny as hell movie. Pryor & Wilder were never afraid to take the blind/deaf jokes a little further than I expected. Spacey as the bad guy w/ the generic European bad guy accent is silly. I saw it in the theater when I was in middle school & I think it holds up pretty well. I was surprisingly entertained by this chimilicious piece of shit.

1 comment:

cmadler said...

1. Yes, in parts of the South, people really do wander around with open booze.
2. Yes, Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure was freaking awesome in IMAX. Saw it at the Henry Ford Museum.
3. I recall seeing Seven in the theater as a first-run movie and a good portion of the audience just cheered when the wife was killed. Other than that it was an awesome movie, and I'm glad they didn't wimp out at the end.