Movie Reviews (Not from a plane!)

I actually don't go too far off-topic this time around.

Two sentence and partial phrase review of About a Boy and Crash:

Part-way through one made me disappointed in myself.
Part-way through one made me disappointed in others.
Fuck nuts.

About a Boy (thumbs up)
Yes, I can see the parallels. It's scary. But it's not always that way. I don't have the English accent or the barrels full of money to fall back on.

I think Rachel Weisz played her part well. It was just a bit part, but very complementary to the plot, characterization, and film overall. Although I think it would have been better had she been left out of the resolution. But I guess they wanted to end on a happy-fun-joy-joy note.

I dunno though... the kid seemed like a total dweeb to me. Sweet kid. But a total dweeb.

Crash (thumbs up)
Racism is a central theme, but the message seems to be condemn the act, not the people.

The main characters are complex: the ones introduced with racial beliefs and acts end up showing redeeming qualities or moments, and even the ones who appear to have the strongest moral compasses will end up make compromises or poor judgement calls.

It's one of those movies that tries to make you think, but doesn't go to lengths to cram its own moral lesson down your throat.

The dialog was well written as well, I thought.

Brokeback Mountain (meh)
Pacing I thought could have used some help. Run time is 2h 14m. Most every scene could have been shortened by 2 to 4 seconds... the movie seemed to drag on.

Also, I really didn't like Jack. I could appreciate the character, just didn't like him. (Yes, I can see the parallels there as well. Shut up.)

I liked the movie a lot more after they left Brokeback mountain the first time. Up to that point it was a nice-ish

The love story itself I don't think was that well developed. Hard to understand how such deep emotional attachments could survived after 4 years of separation and no contact whatsoever.

Or wait... maybe I can. No... no... I really can't. It's the continual contact that makes it hard. If I could just go cold turkey for 4 years...

Napoleon Dynamite (meh)
I was told by multiple people that this would be a movie I would love. That this just screamed "Bruce's sense of humour".

I don't really like this movie.

It's not that I dislike it, I just don't think it's that good. A lot of the humour seemed forced and as like it's making fun of the pathetic and socially inept. I can see why people would think I would love this movie.

Napoleon's dance scene, however, was 4 different kinds of awesome!

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Darn it, I need to watch a testosterone filled flick (no, I don't mean Brokeback Mountain again).