Change Your Image
PirateGirl
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
I Capture the Castle (2003)
Young Love Gone Horribly Wrong
Ah, yes. Young love. Let's meet two impoverished sisters. Now let's meet the new neighbors: two rich brothers who live in the castle next door. Bet you can't guess what's going to happen next...
Yep. The plot's fairly transparent from the outset. The only question that remains is which brother will fall in love with which sister, and vice-versa. Unfortunately, all four of them seem to fall in deep, abiding, heartbreaking, world-ending love after one line of poetry, one shaken pitchfork, or just generally at the drop of a feather. More unfortunately, the director chooses to present this as deep, weighty drama.
I would have liked to have been able to say that the actors and director did the best they could with the material they had to work with. But the film is acted with an it-must-be-almost-lunchtime languor, and edited to take forty-five minutes of story and fit in on nearly two hours of film.
Perhaps if I'd been able to have one ounce of sympathy for the "tragic" plight of any of the silly, one-dimensional characters, the film wouldn't have dragged the way it did. But as it was, the costumes and scenery stole the show.
At the end, as Cassandra, the film's heroine, stands on the tower of her crumbling castle and declares "I have loved, I love,"--long, dramatic pause, as though the audience hasn't figured out what the last line will be--" I will love," I could only find myself hoping that the tales of her future loves did not make their way into the hands of a film producer.
Out Cold (2001)
Break out the Kegs...
You know how Homer Simpson is always watching those movies where the bad frat boys are trying to fight the mean old dean for control of the college campus, and fart jokes, keggers, and our heroes spending endless hours trying to get lucky just add to the "hilarity"? Those clones of Porky's, but with poorer production values?
If that's your type of movie, then you'll love this one. It's just like that, but with snow. The frat boys are now ski bums, and the dean is a big, bad, two-dimensional corporate J.R. Ewing-type with no redeeming qualities, and a cornball cowboy hat, trying to ruin their beloved ski town. Unfortunately, there aren't even enough snowboarding scenes to make it fun to watch for the love of the sport.