Movie Reviews – December 2007

Here is what we saw:

Here are my reviews:

Letters From Iwo Jima

This movie is a companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers which I reviewed last month. It is the story of the battle for Iwo Jima from the Japanese point of view and is told by the soldiers in their letters home. There are specific scenes in this movie that correspond to ones in Flags of Our Fathers. Sometimes the connection is subtle so you have to watch carefully. I would recommend that the two movies be seen back to back, like I did. What a dismal place for these people, both our side and theirs.

Netflix – 3 stars

Beowulf 3D

This is the second Beowulf movie I have seen in 2 weeks. I may try to see others. In between these movies I read the Seamus Heaney translation of the epic poem so I was pretty well up on the story line. Both of them followed the story pretty well but took a lot of liberties in the interpretation. This movie was animated and in 3D. The technology just gets better and better but it is still not completely lifelike. It was kind of a cross between a video game and Shrek. One thing the animation allowed was scenes that simply could not be filmed. On the journey to the land of the Danes the ship rides up and crashes down in the swells of the stormy seas in 3D. And of course, how could you do live action of monsters and dragons. I don’t know why they think they need to fiddle with the story line. In this movie they made Beowulf king of the Danes instead of king of the Geats. Why? I suppose it was so they could keep certain characters, Angelina Jolie’s for instance. The look of this movie was pretty good. Authentic. There were some slips like stone castles. Both of these movies had scenes where epic poems were being recited in the mead hall. I think they may have actually been the old English poem being recited. I might have given this a 4 if they hadn’t fiddled the plot as much as they did.

Theater – 3 stars

The Painted Veil

Set in 1925, a spoiled society girl marries a doctor who does bacteriology research. Not long after, she enters into an affair with a womanizer which the husband discovers. The husband says he is going to China to help with a cholera epidemic and she can come too or he will divorce her and name the womanizer as her lover. She says she will not go but when she talks to her lover she discovers she means nothing to him and he has no intention of leaving his wife. She goes to China and is leading a miserable life until she starts working at the convent hospital where her husband is doing his research. They eventually fall in love again but tragedy strikes at the end. The scenery in China is just beautiful and being set in 1925 makes the look of the movie interesting, but I didn’t feel any attachment to any of the characters. This is a low 3.

Netflix – 3 stars

The Last King of Scotland

A fun loving young Scottish doctor is out for adventure and escape from home after he graduates in the early 1970’s. He arbitrarily picks Uganda as a destination. Working in a remote clinic where his help is very valuable he runs into the new president, Idi Amin. Amin invites him to the capitol and makes him his personal physician. His behavior is fairly reckless and you know bad things are coming. [spoiler] As Amin becomes more and more despotic, the doctor’s personal situation becomes more and more grave. Finally, Amin turns on him and in the confusion of the Entebbe hostage situation our hero barely escapes. I don’t particulary care for movies like this. The tension drives me nuts. You say to yourself about the characters, “How can you be so stupid?” Low 3.

Netflix – 3 stars

Arthur and the Invisibles

This animated/live action movie is about a boy who lives with his grandma. His parents are in the city looking for work. The mortgage is due. If only they could find the missing rubies hidden somewhere on the property. His grandpa disappeared a while back to go look for them. The boy discovers his grandpa’s journals and learns the back yard is populated by teeny tiny people 1/4 inch tall, the Invisibles. The boy learns the secret of shrinking himself and goes to the miniature world in search of his grandpa and the rubies. On his quest he runs into the princess and her younger brother and has many adventures with oversized everything, ants, caterpillers, flowers and amazingly, soda straws. He ends up at the evil king of the seventh kingdom’s place just in time to save the day, find the hiding place of the rubies and rescure his grandpa. This movie couldn’t hold Karen’s interest but I thought it was OK. The animation had an appealing style and the story line was ok in a fairytale sort of way.

Netflix – 3 stars

Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxons / Rocketbook: Beowulf

Once I got on the Beowulf kick, I couldn’t help myself. I checked out all things Beowulf except the Christopher Lambert version. Someone told me it was good, by the way. Well I got these two and a mistake it was. They are extremely boring. They are meant to be documentary type films that give the student a deeper understanding of the poems and the times the characters lived in. The first one, Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxons, was a little better. It had a group of reenactors who populate an Anglo-Saxon village. Informative, but a snooze. The second one, Rocketbook: Beowulf, is like a video Cliff Notes. For each of the 6 or 7 sections of the poem they give a plot summary, an analysis, and a quiz. The summary is ok. The analysis was not particularly good or accurate and the quiz was so easy it was a laugh. The illustrations were cartoons of the characters and not even animated.

Netflix – 2 stars

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

What a muddled mess. The plot is a movie within a movie. The production company is shooting Tristram Shandy. The action switches back and forth between the story line of the movie and the antics on the set. It’s a lot like the French Lieutenant’s Woman but about 5% as good. By the end you are completely confused and wonder why anyone even bothered to make this film. Gillian Anderson and David Frye should be ashamed they even participated in this clunker.

Netflix – 2 stars

Bridge to Terabithia

I will review this one next month. I checked out two versions of the movie and will compare them when I have seen them both.

Netflix – 3 stars

The Water Horse

A lonely boy, Angus MacMorrow, finds an egg which hatches and turns out to be a water horse. This being the Loch Ness Monster. Set in WWII, the father has been lost at sea for over a year and a British army unit is billeted at the estate where Angus’s mother is the head housekeeper. Also showing up at the same time as the troops is the new handiman. Efforts to hide the creature that is hiding in the bathtub and toilet are to no avail and they have to release it into the loch. The army captain who has taken a shine to the mother starts making life hell for Angus by giving him jobs to instill some discipline when Angus needs every spare moment to deal with the water horse. The soldiers start some heavy artillary practice which maddens the monster and when he is mistaken for a German submarine, the fun really begins. The movie couldn’t have anything but a happy ending, but you are left wondering about the biology of the whole business; see the movie to understand what I mean.

Theater – 3 stars

Ushpizin

Moshe and Mila are an orthodox Jewish couple living in Jerusalem. He’s a poor rabbi and they can barely make ends meet. The Succoth holiday is upon them and they can’t build their shelter or stock it. The miracle they are desparately praying for arrives in the form of $1000 gift and a shelter their friend has stolen unbeknownst to them. But some of Moshe’s old friends arrive and serve as the ushpizins, honored guests. Only problem, they are escaped convicts that Moshe knows from his less law abiding early days. The friends turn the whole business up side down and make trouble for Moshe. This is a movie you just won’t see every day. I’m sure it was shot in Jerusalem and when do you see orthodox Jews unless they are diamond merchants in a caper flick? This is a small, light hearted movie with subtitles but you will be happy you’ve seen it by the end.

Netflix – 3 stars