Category: Three Sentence Movie Reviews

I’m sorry, fans of Annie Hall, but I got so bored during this movie I read the IMDB trivia on my computer while the movie was still happening on the TV.  I can appreciate the unique cinema techniques deployed and there were parts of this movie that were amusing, but Woody Allen’s schtick makes me feel trapped and unable to breathe and then very bored.  However, Diane Keaton was wonderful and I also had no idea that Woody Allen was a stand-up comedian before he was a writer/director.*

Cost: free from library.
Where watched: at home.

*This is kind of bizarre to me, as I feel I have a good handle on popular culture of the 60s & 70s even though I was too young/not born to experience it first hand.  But if you had asked me the day before I had watched this movie if Woody Allen was a stand up comic I would have insisted that no, he writes and directs movies.

Sort of Winter’s Bone, but with a boy instead of a girl, urban Scotland instead of the Ozarks.    The accent was thick enough that I had to read the subtitles–how can the word “can” be two syllables?–but that added to the charm.  It’s an interesting slice of life-type movie.

Cost:  free from library
Where watched: at home.

This movie had what is usually the kiss of death for me:  the snotty kid.  But the acting was fabulous (Michelle Monaghan brought her usual A game, Nathan Fillion was a likable companion and Jimmy Bennett straddled the “angry kid” role) and the plot was not only about a woman, but the kind of working class woman we rarely see on the screen.  This was 90 minutes of perfect movie, as far as I’m concerned and you should go and watch it today.

It turns out that having Darth Vader  Billy Elliott and Nick Fury in the same movie doesn’t mean that it will be a good movie.  The reason to watch this is because Jamie Bell (the aforementioned Billy Elliott) is quite fun in his slightly unhinged character.  Samuel Jackson is good too, but that Hayden Christensen,  he’s too pretty and he knows it.

Here also is a second three-sentence review from my usually squelched feminist movie critic who just couldn’t lay dormant.  This review contains SPOILERS but the movie isn’t very good and you aren’t going to watch it, so read on.
Can we just say, “Totally lame abusive relationship?”  Guy shows up after seven years, guy whisks girl away to Rome with absolutely no explanation, then guy starts ordering girl to do things without explaining the situation to her AND SHE DOES?  And then at the end, despite the fact that the Paladins are going to go after her family and kill all of them, she stays with him?

Cost:  Free from library
Where watched:  At home.

The acting was quite good by two of the three main characters and there were some quite delightful scenes in this movie.  However, when it all was finished and done, it just didn’t hold together very well, to my disappointment.  Also, I get annoyed at movies where people are supposedly “uncool” and then their high school existence is about 400 times cooler than mine leaving me to feel incredibly lame.*

Cost:  Would have been $8.50 but someone gave me passes to Regal so it was FREE
Where watched:  Fox Tower.

*I will say that this movie has me rolling ideas of what does it really mean to be “popular” and “cool” and my annoyance may get spit out as an essay in the future.

The previews before the movie began were so horrendous I got gun-shy and turned off the movie before it started.  However, I eventually recovered and can report that the movie itself was one of the more delightful films I’ve seen this year.  Beginning with two characters, the movie builds and builds on itself, spreading witticisms here and there, until it vaults into a giddily funny climax which once again had me thinking, “That Jennifer Westfeldt is so SMART.”

Cost:  free from library
Where watched: at home.