Movie Reviews – September 2008

Here is what we saw:

Here are my reviews:

Crossworlds

Our hero has a crystal pendant that his mother gave him. He finds that someone is desparate to get it. Even to the point that they will kill him for it. A beautiful girl is involved and when all hell breaks loose, she takes him to meet her friend. Together they have many adventures in many dimensions. Their efforts to keep the pendant and a scepter that holds the pendant have more or less luck throughout the movie but they get it in the end and defeat the evil wizard. This looked like a setup for a sequel which hopefully never comes. This movie wasn’t really bad, just a little bad. A high 2.
Netflix – 2 stars

Nim’s Island

Nim and her father live on a deserted South Seas island. They think of it as their own island. He is a scientist and she’s lived all her life with him there. Her mother was also a scientist, an oceanographer, but died sometime before the movie begins. Nim has some sketchy memories surrounding her mother’s death. They involve a cruise ship named The Buccaneer. One day her father goes out in his boat to collect some specimens of plankton and gets caught in a storm. His boat gets wrecked and he can’t get home. Before he leaves he tells Nim he loves her and that he’ll be home soon, and only lets her stay by herself under protest. He of course is trying everything he can to get back. During his absence the cruise ship returns with a boatload of passengers who think it’s just great to party on this deserted island. Nim thinks she is being invaded. In the meantime an author living in San Francisco who writes adventure novels needs to get some information from Nim’s father about the volcano on the island. She discovers that Nim is all alone and despite being an agoraphobic makes her way halfway around the world to save Nim. She is accompanied by her fictitious adventure hero. In the end the hero tells her that he’s not going to prop her up anymore. Nim succeeds in scaring the passengers of the cruise ship away. The father makes his way home and the author arrives safely. It’s implied that the father and the author fall in love. The movie seemed a little wooden to me and you have to ask yourself why Jodie Foster who plays the author would allow herself to be in a movie like this. Not the greatest movie but nothing really wrong with it either. A low three.
Netflix – 3 stars

Fly Me To The Moon 3D

We saw this when we were in California. It was animated and 3D. Three young flies dream of having an adventure inspired by the grandfather of one of them. Set in 1969, they decide they are going to try and get on the Apollo moon landing mission. They succeed and return home safely but have a couple of close calls. Simple plot. I didn’t care much for the animation. I didn’t like the looks of the flies and the people were just terrible, first generation CG. But the 3D was “knock your socks off” and the story was ok. Every scene in the movie was done in hyper stereo which provided ultimate depth. Usually this results in the character looking like they have long thin faces but I just learned that with digital animation they can flatten the characters and they get restored to normal when the hyper is introduced. There is lots of fun when they do “fly throughs”; in amongst the grass on their way home and into the electronics on the Apollo spacecraft. This was an ok movie but not great.
Theater – 3 stars

Smoke

This is an older movie and one I meant to see when it was in the theaters. I just never got around to it. I like Harvey Keitel and William Hurt. The plot is a series of short, interwoven stories that revolve around a tobacco shop in Brooklyn. Keitel plays the owner, Hurt is a customer who is a writer who has been unproductive since his wife was murdered. A young black man saves his life when he is crossing the street and not paying attention. That guy is in trouble with local criminals. Keitel’s exgirlfriend shows up with news that she needs help with the daughter that Keitel never knew he had. The black kid finds his father and goes to work for him. The threads are woven tighter than a rope. Everything turns out pretty much ok and it was fairly fun to watch.
Netflix – 3 stars