NonnaYobidness Reviews

Disturbia (2007)

There was a boom mic in EVERY SINGLE SHOT

[6/10 · 29 March 2007]

I have to get that (see title) out of the way up front. I have never seen such an incredible proliferation of visible boom microphones in any other movie. Seriously, there was a microphone visible somewhere at the top of the screen for almost the entire length of the film. At some points in the movie, more than one microphone could be seen at a time. I understand that things slip through the editing process but this was just ridiculous.

The movie itself was not too bad. I was a little put off about twenty minutes into the movie when it suddenly dawned on me that I was basically watching a reworking of Rear Window but who really expects anything original from a movie, these days?. As far as teen idol vehicles go, I think Disturbia was slightly better than most. The beginning of the movie was beautifully shot and paced with a very convincing father-son dynamic. I actually felt the bond between the characters. Shia LaBeouf seems to be a decent actor and Carrie-Anne Moss's mother character was one of the most realistic I've ever seen in this type of movie; she was neither an overbearing troll nor a doormat for her son. Aaron Yoo's Ronnie was great comic relief and the kind of friend a lot of us have had (or have ourselves been to others). All in all, I think the casting was done well and the actors all turned in decent performances, with David Morse's Turner standing out the most.

Unlike the other review I just read, I don't think the pacing in this movie was all that good. There were huge blocks of what I like to call "nothing". I guess if you're a seventeen year old male, you'll enjoy the 65% of the movie that is spent watching Kale's new female neighbor through binoculars, but to me it just seemed to slow down the film. There was a little action in the beginning, a huge stretch of watching a girl swim, then a massive rush of violence at the end of the flick. I think Disturbia would benefit from a few less minutes of swimming neighbors and Hostess products towers (you'll see what I mean when you watch the movie).

I gave this movie a six because, despite what I said above and the constant presence of boom mics, this movie actually got my heart racing once or twice and the acting was quite good. If you like murder mysteries and/or teen-oriented movies, this one is worth a watch on some Sunday afternoon.

Seriously, though, there's a microphone in nearly every shot.

Monster (2003)

A charming love story

[8/10 · 22 February 2004]

I am of course lying. This movie is about as charming as a cockroach in your pudding cup. Monster is a tale of abuse, addiction, murder and codependent lesbian love. I don't think your mother would approve of this movie.

So, what does Mom know? Monster is not a happy movie; there is no uplifting message buried in this screenplay. In Monster, the downtrodden stay down, the villains don't always get their comeuppance and innocence is no protection against evil. You won't leave the theater with a warm glow or a spring in your step but you won't leave feeling like you wasted $9, either. Monster tells a gritty, harsh, depressing and dark story. Monster also happens to be a very good movie.

Monster's central character is both hero and villain. Into her life comes the one thing that can make it worth living, again: love. Sadly, our hero-villain's life has already twisted her beyond repair and she chooses some rather unorthodox methods of keeping her new affair from falling apart. I won't waste many more words describing this movie's content. Suffice it to say that love really can make people do strange things.

I found Monster to be deeply moving. Most screenplays that involve homosexuality tend to caricature either the relationship or its participants. I think that Monster handled the issue very well with both Aileen and Selby displaying real human emotions and reactions. In the early stages of Aileen's relationship with Selby, the passion is intense and easily felt by the audience. Charlize Theron delivers an astounding performance that leaves no room for doubt about her skill as an actress and Christina Ricci's Selby is very believable as the selfish insecure center of Aileen's new life. Both performances are suitably powerful. As with other films of its type, I do think Monster falls into the trap of trying to make the main character more sympathetic than she deserves but it's nearly impossible to not feel empathy for Aileen.

If for no other reason, I recommend Monster because it is unlike most other movies you will see. The movie industry cranks out a lot of raw footage of film every year but most of it falls easily into one of the handful of formulae we are used to seeing. Monster is not entirely immune to this formulaic style of moviemaking but enough of it is uniquely Monster that you won't find yourself thinking, "I've seen this movie a dozen times already." I think that's a Very Good Thing.

Monster: 8/10

Commando (1985)

Arnold kicks _ALL KINDS_ of ass.

[7/10 · 8 April 2003]

What more do you want? If you rented this film hoping to see Austria's bulkiest son delivering a Laurence Olivier-caliber performance, you'll be just a touch disappointed. Arnold carries a log, jumps off a moving airplane and drops someone in a canyon. Good times!

Monsters, Inc. (2001)

Extra! Extra! Scream all about it!

[11 November 2002]

Monsters, Inc. is a great movie. It has cute characters, a fun story and fantastic visuals. This is definitely a movie you can watch with the kids. You won't be bored and the kids won't pick up any nasty new words.

The story of Monsters, Inc. revolves around Mike and Sully, the best scarers on the payroll at the Monsteropolis power plant. One day a human child is accidentally brought into the monster world and the race to find her and get her out of Monsteropolis is on. Mike and Sully are on the case but the somewhat shifty Randall is also showing undue interest in the child. Without giving away too much, let's just say that Randall is involved in an insidious plot to get more screams out of the kiddies while Mike and Sully just want to get her out of town so they can go back to work.

Of course, these little problems always seem to get worse before they get better. The power plant is crawling with CDA (Child Detection Agency) agents making it tough for Mike and Sully to sneak the kid back through the door into her bedroom, not to mention keeping her out of Randall's clutches. Their efforts to send the tyke home culminate in a chase in and out of doors leading to exotic locals all over the human world. How does it end? Go see the movie.

The best part of this movie is the imagination. The complex industrial environment of Monsters, Inc., the great details on the characters, the smooth colors and various cool visual effects. The casting of Billy Crystal and John Goodman in the lead roles works quite nicely, with Crystal's Mike Wazowski stealing the show. The ending chase through the power plant and in and out of the doors is fast-paced and exciting, with lots of action and great eye candy.

The only thing I didn't like about this movie were Randall's blatant attempts to kill off Sully. I thought this was just a little to violent; it doesn't quite fit the rest of the movie.

Overall, I give Monsters, INC. a score of 7/10. It is definitely worth watching and if you're still a kid at heart, it's worth owning.

Frontier House (2002– )

Man, I love PBS

[10/10 · 6 November 2002]

NOVA, National Geographic, The Antiques Roadshow, Frontline, Scientific American Frontiers and, now, Frontier House. PBS just keeps raising the bar. If only mainstream media would catch on.

Frontier House is really a fantastic show. Three modern families are plopped down in 1880's Montana and left to fend for themselves. From the beginning, it is clear that Frontier House is not just another lame "reality" show. The participants and the organizers obviously take the project seriously. There are no silly games or idiotic "challenges" for the families to participate in because life on the frontier is challenging enough. What happens when you buy thirty chickens who won't produce any eggs? How do you reap (by hand) four tons of hay for your livestock to eat during the coming winter? How do you keep healthy, clean and sane when you are locked in a 24-hour-a-day struggle with the world at large? Frontier House explores these questions and many more.

Meet the Clunes: An extremely wealthy family used to only the best of everything. The husband is a chubby, pampered man with a family business to run. The wife actually has a degree in culinary arts and the daughter and her cousin miss their TV. How does a family like this survive as 1880's frontier settlers? They become a family of moonshining egg-and-baked-goods barons.

Meet the Glenns: Karen and Mark: a most unpleasant pair. Always with something nasty to say about the Clunes and constantly at each other's throats. Clearly, they see this as an exercise in "us against them". Think these show are a joke? The Glenns' marriage may just disintegrate before the show is over. How does Karen feed her family? Country-style thriftiness and severe rationing supplemented by income from a laundry-washing job.

Meet the Brooks: The show starts with Nate Brooks and his father Rudy sharing a log cabin. Nate and Rudy are by far the nicest, most helpful and least competitive people on the show. A pair of intelligent and capable men, they are the only black people on the show. Whether this is to reflect the racial mix of American frontier settlers or it just worked out that way, I don't know and it isn't really important. Rudy leaves early in the show and is replaced by Nate's fiancee, Kristen and the two are married in a Frontier ceremony. Nate and Kristen are my favorite people on Frontier House. They go about their business and do their best to make a life in the harsh conditions that confront them.

Even from my living room couch, the challenges faced by these three families seem insurmountable. The law of open range threatens to destroy all their hard work as cattle are driven across their land. The families face famine without enough provisions. Sickness, desperation, the weather and each other are just a few of the hundreds of daily challenges we see on Frontier House. How much wood do you need to chop to make it through a plains winter? What if animals get into your garden? What's it like to till the soil using a sled and a mule?

This show has an amazing amount of charm and appeal. We've all dreamed of "simpler" times without the hustle and bustle of modern life, but our idea of a simpler world usually has a refrigerator in it, somewhere. Unfortunately for the Clunes, the Brooks and the Glenns, that just isn't the case.

If you are looking for a fascinating show with really great characters (because they are real people!), then Frontier House is for you.

As I write this, I am watching "1940's House" where they have taken a British family and planted them in war-time London. I didn't like the first 5 minutes, but it's already growing on me. I can't wait to see the next episode.

Frontier House: 10/10 and only because there is no such thing as 11/10.

I Spy (2002)

Much better than I expected

[7/10 · 4 November 2002]

I enjoy the original "I Spy" television show as much because Bill Cosby is in it as for any other reason. It's an entertaining show with a nice touch of 60's cheesiness. Robert Culp and Bill Cosby travel the world posing as a professional tennis player and his trainer. Crime fighting tennis players. Good stuff.

Anyway, being a fan of the television series, I naturally expected the movie to suck. My biggest fear was Eddie Murphy being in the movie. Eddie Murphy, in my opinion, is one of the most genuinely talented comedians the modern world has seen. Unfortunately, his movies can also be some of the most genuinely lame schlock that moviegoers have ever seen. Another concern was that the commercials made it clear that this movie was more of a b***ard child of the original series than a remake; obviously geared more for comedy then mystery, action or suspense. Between the hit-and-miss quality of Eddie Murphy's movies and the seemingly drastic departure from the original series, I was apprehensive.

I am glad to say that my fears were unfounded. Eddie Murphy was brilliant as Kelly Robinson and the movie was pretty darn funny. There's one scene in a sewer that drags on a bit and let's Eddie Murphy get a little too silly, but other than that the movie clips right along with steady laughs and good action. Owen Wilson is great in his role as a lovestruck secret agent with Carlos-envy. There is a fair amount of on-screen chemistry between Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson. They're not quite Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, but they're off to a good start.

Also worth mentioning is Gary Cole as Carlos the super-spy. You may remember Gary Cole as the passive-aggressive Bill Lumberg from Office Space (Haven't seen it? Go rent it immediately!) or, more recently, as Bill Owens in One Hour Photo. Carlos has a smallish part in I Spy, but it is deftly and amusingly executed. I hope to see more of Gary Cole in comedic roles in the near future.

On the whole, I think this movie is well worth going to see. I don't expect it to bring home as many awards as the television show did, but I do expect to see an "I Spy 2". If you're looking for some good laughs and cool gadgets, I Spy is a great way to spend an evening. Just don't go expecting to see Robert Culp and Bill Cosby.

An interesting side note: while the movie keeps some of the same basic elements as the TV series (two male leads, one black, one white, one a professional athlete) and the characters keep the same names they had in the TV show, their names and roles are reversed. In the television series, Robert Culp played Kelly Robinson and Bill Cosby played Alexander Scott. In this movie, Eddie Murphy plays Kelly Robinson to Owen Wilson's Alexander Scott.

I Spy: 7/10 + a few bonus points for the cool gadgets.

Bicentennial Man (1999)

It's not so bad, but you really should read the story

[6/10 · 4 November 2002]

I went into this movie with low expectations. I knew before I ever bought the ticket that no movie could do justice to one of the most amazing short stories of all time. Frankly, they probably shouldn't have tried.

Still, this movie has it's good points. Oliver Platt is an ever-dependable actor and Robin Williams does a good job as Andrew Martin. Sam Neill starts off a little wooden but develops well as the Martin Patriarch. Unfortunately, the story was Disneyized a bit and lost much of its raw emotional potential in translation from print to wide screen.

I hope this movie will spark the interest of a new generation and encourage them to read the great science fiction stories, among which Bicentennial Man is surely one of the best. It is a story of unusual power and depth that deserved better treatment on the big screen. If you have read and been touched by Asimov's Pinocchio story, you will want to see this simply because of the story it is based on. Don't expect magic, though.

Ghost Ship (2002)

Ghost ship is an OK flick with some annoying problems.

[1 November 2002]

Smallish spoilers inside, but nothing that will ruin the movie.

The basic plot is amusing enough: some people wander onto a ship full of ghosts and spend 90 minutes trying not to die. It's been done before, but so what?

The biggest flaw, in my opinion, is that it seems like the film makers didn't even try to check their facts or make the movie believable. Obviously, I don't go to a movie like Ghost Ship looking for a physics or theological lesson, but pieces of this movie were almost insulting in their lack of continuity and believability. During the flashback scene which explains all the dead people, we see how everyone is killed and we know why, but it still doesn't make sense. The back-plot is nonsensical and convoluted. The salvage vessel gets blown to smithereens as they are preparing to leave but somehow every piece of gear they could conceivably need has conveniently made its way onto the ghost ship. Everyone ends up in the water but somehow they all get back on the ghost ship despite the fact that 40 years of floating around must surely have rusted away any ladders. One ghost can't hold a locket because it passes through her hand but another ghost has no trouble making out with one of the characters. My favorite, though, is the gold. These guys are tossing around gold bars like they weigh nothing. You see one of the characters run his finger down a row of gold bars and they all wiggle and move. Gold is heavy. Near the end of the movie we see the characters wandering around with crates full of gold that must be a minimum of a ton or more each.

OK, so I've prattled on about some things that bothered me. Now for the good: The movie does have one or two suspenseful moments and the little girl does a great job as the "friendly" ghost. Some of the scenery and effects are pretty cool, too.

Overall, I give Ghost Ship a 5/10. I wouldn't wait in a long line to see it, but if you have a little time to kill and catch this at a matinee, you shouldn't regret it too much.

The Glow (2002 TV Movie)

Surprisingly entertaining

[7/10 · 30 August 2002]

Usually these TV movies are pretty lame. I was surprised to find myself thoroughly interested in this one from the first scene. The first hour is quite good, filled with spooky innuendo and little clues as to what these kindly old folks are really up to. You know there's something not quite right about them, but what is it?

After the first hour, the story drags a little bit because they just keep heaping more and more of the same clues on the watcher, but it never gets bad enough to ruin the movie. The final twenty minutes or so has one or two cliched camera tricks and plot devices but that can be excused in a made-for-TV movie.

There are no really big surprises in this movie. The viewer has a fair idea of what's really going down pretty early in the movie, but it's fun to watch it all unfold. The cast (especially the old folks) do a great job with their roles and it's interesting to see Hal Linden playing such a two-faced shady character.

All in all, I give this movie a 7/10. The first hour is the best part because of the creepy atmosphere but it's worth watching to the end if you don't want to watch another lame game show or Friends re-run.

The Tuskegee Airmen (1995 TV Movie)

A powerful movie with a realistic balance of good and bad

[19 July 2002]

7/17/2002: Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., leader of the Tuskegee Airmen and the Air Force's first black general, was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.

I haven't seen any original HBO programming in a few years, but it sounds like it may have gone a bit downhill. The Tuskegee Airmen, though, is a prime example of the kind of great movie HBO is capable of producing.

The Tuskegee Airmen tells that story of the first black American fighter pilots. The movie is packed with everything you would expect from a World War Two movie about black pilots: racism, failure, triumph, death, fear, courage, joy, grief and a fair amount of aerial combat. Many movies lean too far to one side or the other of the joy/depression spectrum. The Tuskegee Airmen does a great job of bringing realistic balance to real-life experience. The characters experiences are neither completely wonderful nor completely awful. Bad experiences are tempered by good and vice-versa.

If you watch this movie with no preconceived notions about the content and no agenda, you will likely come away with a new appreciation for the struggles faced by those who, through design or by accident, become the first to break through an established barrier. Even if you take away the actual premise of the movie and forget that it is about black or white and forget that it is a war movie, it still stands strong on the quality of the acting and the great story telling. We've all succeeded and we've all failed and, like it or not, you share that with every person on this planet regardless of their skin color, religion, sex or nationality. It is very easy to put yourself in the place of any character in this movie because they are all so nakedly human, and that's what makes it great to watch.

Finally, this film is based on a true story and that always adds a little something to a movie.

Insomnia (2002)

A good movie but who wrote that lousy ending?

[8/10 · 1 June 2002]

Make no mistake, Insomnia is a pretty good movie. It has a good story and a nice pace. Al Pacino, of course, is one of the greatest actors of all time and can always be counted on for an enjoyable performance. Just as pleasing is Robin Williams who absolutely holds his own opposite Pacino. I have always liked Robin Williams as a comedian and his more recent roles in movies such as Good Will Hunting, What Dreams May Come and Bicentennial Man are quickly establishing him as a talented dramatic actor, as well. One of the things that made this movie a treat was the great chemistry between Williams's Walter Finch and Pacino's Will Dormer. Both characters are utterly believable in their roles and they play off one another quite well.

The other performances range from passable to quite good. Hillary Swank gave a decent performance as Ellie Burr, a stars-in-her-eyes admirer of Pacino's character and Jonathan Jackson gave a surprisingly good if somewhat under-written performance as Randy Stetz.

The main plot is entertaining and interesting and is helped along by the "did Will Dormer murder his partner" sub-plot.

No movie is perfect and Insomnia has its flaws. One is the use of the "spinning moving camera" that seems to be gaining popularity in modern film. I have a strong suspicion that this is used to avoid having to pay people to choreograph the action scenes. The camera gets right in on where the action is happening and then moves around wildly while the characters on screen grunt and jump about. Very annoying. If you want a fight or a foot chase, please let us see what is going on. Fortunately, Insomnia makes sparing use of this technique but it is present. Also, the film spends a little too much time convincing us of how tired Dormer is. The show him tossing and turning in bed, hallucinating and sweating but it isn't very believable. He has supposedly been awake for six days straight but the only real effect on his actions is that he goes around looking sleepy all the time.



** Warning: Minor spoiler(s) ahead **

Sadly, the single worst thing about this movie is the ending. It's as if the producers decided at the last minute to fire the writing staff and hire a graduate from the Hollywood School of Schmaltzy and Nonsensical Endings. Ellie is supposed to visit the bad guy (who she does not know is the bad guy) to pick up some letters from the deceased girl. So far so good. However, when she gets there, the bad guy clocks her on her dome and drags her to the back room. Where he leaves her. Alone. And not very well secured.

This entire plot development is lame and unnecessary. the protagonist (Pacino) already has PLENTY of motivation to go back to the killer's cabin and this twist does nothing to further the story. The bad guy has spent an entire movie craftily manipulating the police and casting suspicion on someone else. The police have totally bought it and have the person they think is guilty under lock and key at the jail. The bad guy is in the clear, so what does he do? He attacks a cop who everyone in the entire police department know has gone to see him. The excuse for this idiotic behavior? She saw the dead girl's dress in his cabin. However, the only reason she saw the dress was because the bad guy opened the drawer right in front of her and then left it open while he wandered around the room.

I like the movie, so I didn't go out of my way to make that last bit sound too bad, but it is. However, it pales in comparison to the weak and contemptible way in which this movie's writers resolve all the sub-plots and issues revolving around Al Pacino's character. They spend a whole movie building intrigue around Will Dormer; his past cases, his problems with Internal Affairs and whether or not he murdered his partner. Then, in the last two minutes of the movie they dispose of all those problems in the most pathetically convenient way imaginable. I cannot begin to tell you how unsatisfying the ending of this movie is. It almost ruins an otherwise very enjoyable film.

All in all, I am not sad that I spent time and money to see this film, but I am almost angry at the filmmakers for the disrespect they show for the viewer in the film's resolution.

6/10 because of the lame last five minutes of the movie. 8/10 if the ending doesn't bother you.

Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)

This movie was still sucking ten minutes after it ended (or: Intergalactic Harlequin)

[3/10 · 19 May 2002]

I have just returned from watching Attack of the Clones and, as I implied in my summary, I did not care for it.

Lord, I don't even know where to start. The plot was thin (one might even say nonexistent), the casting was almost all wrong, the action was not at all believable and the acting was sub-sub-par. The entire movie revolved around Anakin trying to suck face with Queen (excuse me, Senator) Amidala. And who can blame him? The one-time leader of Naboo spent the entire movie running around in outfits that prostitutes wouldn't be caught dead in. Oh, and as for Anakin Skywalker, he wore too much pink lipstick. Between Amidala's midriffs and Anakin's pouty pink lips, I kept thinking I was watching a Calvin Klein perfume commercial.

I like the original Star Wars movies, even Return of the Jedi. I was not overly thrilled with Episode I and I was hoping that Episode II would return us to the chemistry and story-telling that IV, V and VI had. Unfortunately, Episode II makes Episode I look like Masterpiece Theater. This film is bogged down with excessively sappy and contrived dialog, less than spectacular acting and every cliché they could cram into 142 minutes of movie. Any action movie requires the moviegoer to suspend a certain amount of disbelief but Attack of the Clones outright abuses our intelligence with unrealistic bunk. Not just in the action (which is baldly unbelievable in many places) but also in story development and plot devices (wait for the scene with Anakin's mother).

Basically, this movie had only two bright spots: they gave Ewan McGregor a beard and made him more believable as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda actually does some fighting in this episode.

142 minutes. That's the length of this movie, but I will give you some advice. Skip the first 132 minutes, show up just in time to see Yoda do his Jackie Chan impersonation and then leave immediately to beat the crowd.

As far as I am concerned, George Lucas owes me 2 1/2 hours and eight bucks.

Here's a little treat for those of you who appreciated my attempts at humor in this review; Alternative Summaries:

"He had 25 years to make this movie, so why does it suck so bad?"

"Shh... if you're very quiet you can hear the sound of George Lucas laughing all the way to the bank."

"Apparently all they produce on the Lucas ranch these days is manure."

"Rent something more watchable, like Ishtar."

My rating: 3/10

Heist (2001)

Intensely disappointing

[5/10 · 18 March 2002]

From the time I first saw a commercial for The Heist, I knew I wanted to see it. The plot was unclear from the advertisements but I like outlaw movies and the cast looked fantastic.

Now that I have seen it, I can honestly say it was everything I hoped it wouldn't be, and more.

Warning: I am about to give the kind of pompous, self-important, wordy criticisms that I have always hated and never imagined I would use.

It's hard for me to envision a script that makes Gene Hackman's acting seem stilted and off-tempo, but this one did it. The rest of the cast also seemed to be laboring under cut-and-paste dialog, jagged scene transitions, lack of smooth story flow and nonsensical plotting. The characters portrayed by Sam Rockwell and Rebecca Pidgeon were just lame. Dead, emotionless characters with absolutely no ability to evoke any kind of response from the audience (which was myself and my girlfriend). I couldn't even bring myself to dislike Rockwell's obviously made-to-hate character.

Something else that crippled this movie was the undeveloped relationship between Hackman And Pidgeon. It's almost as if they threw the love interest part of the movie in as an afterthought. Compounding this problem is the total inappropriateness of the matchup. This is a problem that is currently running wild in American cinema (DeNiro and Melina Kanakaredes in 15 minutes, DeNiro and Bassett in The Score, Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment, etc). The movie tried to build suspense around the three-way relationship between Pidgeon, Hackman and Rockwell but it is poorly executed and we all know where she'll end up well before the movie ends.

The single biggest problem in this movie is the incomprehensible story. For a good 80% of the movie, you simply have NO idea what the hell is going on. One minute the cast is here doing one thing, all of a sudden they are elsewhere doing something unrelated then BAM, they're back to the first place doing something unrelated to what they were doing there the first time around, all the while babbling incessantly about things that seem to have little or nothing to do with advancing the story.

Gene Hackman is a fantastic actor, Danny DeVito is very good (quite underrated, I think), Ricky jay is always a great character and Sam Rockwell and Delroy Lindo can usually be counted on for solid, enjoyable performances. I shudder to think how this movie might have turned out with a less accomplished cast.

As I stated earlier, I love outlaw movies but in this case I really didn't care at all whether or not they got away with it. I just wanted the movie to be over and hopefully have the ending explain things to me. It did not end soon enough and the ending was very weak, explaining nothing.

For better examples of Mamet's work check out Glengarry Glen Ross, The Spanish Prisoner, Ronin or State and Main. The Heist is likely to leave you confused and unsatisfied.

Rush Hour 2 (2001)

Funny and actually a pretty good movie

[9/10 · 11 November 2001]

I didn't see the first Rush Hour movie until my girlfriend brought it home on video tape. I thought it was only OK and I wasn't that enthusiastic about going to see part 2. I was pleasantly surprised, though, to find that Rush Hour 2 was not only funny (thanks to an odd kind of chemistry between Chan and Tucker) but also a pretty good movie. The buddy-cop movie has been done a million times but thanks to Jackie Chan's awesome acrobatics and Chris Tucker's, well... Tuckerishness, Rush Hour 2 felt pretty fresh to me and gave me and my friends a ton of great laughs.

I don't expect this movie to garner too many Academy Award nominations but it is definitely worth a few bucks to go have a few laughs and marvel at the action.

Shrek (2001)

A wonderful adventure!

[9/10 · 26 May 2001]

This is a great movie for anyone. It's a story of adventure, danger, love, hate, evil, good, heroes, cowards, ogres and donkeys. All the things that make a fairy tale great! From beginning to end Shrek is packed with great storytelling, humor and beautiful visuals. The voice casting for the characters is absolutely perfect. John Lithgow makes a fantastic villain to Mike Myers' reluctant hero Shrek, Eddie Murphy is predictably hilarious and Cameron Diaz does a superb job giving voice to Princess Fiona. So perfect are the characters and story that within minutes of the movie beginning you will forget that the movie is animated. From the way they walk to their facial expressions, the characters are human (or ogre or talking donkey or gingerbread man).

Moms, dads, aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpas, godfathers, legal guardians, foster parents... take the kids to see this one! This movie will make them laugh. Even better, this movie will make YOU laugh. In fact, you have to be a grownup to catch all the jokes. Keep an eye out for spoofs of The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon plus cameo appearances by basically every fairy tale character ever created.

If you like a well-told story, great laughs and lots of plot subtleties then don't miss this one. It just won't be the same on your little TV screen if you wait for the home video.

In my opinion this movie is very close to perfect. 9/10.

Go see this one even if you don't have kids! I personally went to see this movie with two other adults and we all had a fantastic time!