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Reviews
Love Liza (2002)
Mediocrity comes to life!
The packaging describes Love Liza as a "comic tragedy" and apparently some people feel that the movie is meant to be funny. Personally, I don't see whats funny about destroying yourself in a very anti-social fashion out of a pure self-pity but that didn't bother me so much.
What did bother me were the things this movie lacked. I had no sense of who the wife was or the relationship between her and husband and what factors may have driven her to commit suicide. Kathy Bates character (the dead wife's mother) is completely irrelevant as a result of this.
The romanticizing of Hoffman's gas huffing is little over the top. Okay, so his wife stuffed a rag in her exhaust pipe and killed herself. I don't see how that would drive a person to be obsessed with soaking rags in gasoline and inhaling the fumes as a form of escapism. Heroin addiction seems more commonplace than gas huffing.
To sum things up: Philip Seymour Hoffman is a great actor and delivers a strong performance. It's apparent that the director of this movie was much more concerned with artsy shots of freeways, Hoffman occupying his empty house and his run ins at gas stations and hobbyshops than developing the storyline. Plus, the run-ins with his brother-in-law (a token indy film weirdo) were completely unnecessary.
Bruce Almighty (2003)
JESUS SAVES BUT THIS MOVIE SUCKS!!!
I was excited to go see this film. It had been a long time since I went to see a Jim Carrey movie and I was definitely up for a good comedy. So why not go see Bruce Almighty? I loved the Cable Guy and Carrey's had a few other shining moments despite some of his recent films looking pretty bad. This film seemed to have potential...
MAN! WAS I EVER WRONG!!! I COULDN'T HAVE BEEN MORE WRONG!!!
Now don't get me wrong. Little kids will love it and the religious right will embrace this movie as an undeniably factual document proving the existence of a higher power, but there isn't much here for the movie-goer who's looking for something genuinely funny.
Most of the humor boils down to Carrey enunciating a certain word, people falling down or getting hurt, and a "zany" catch phrase delivered by Bruce at the end of his newscasts. There's not much else except for a few very random yet mildly clever moments. Oh yeah...Carrey curses God excessively throughout the first half of the film to the point where it completely obnoxious and unnecessary. (I don't even believe in God and it got on my nerves.)
This movie is disappointing and weak on many levels. Don't believe me? Go see for yourself.
The Italian Job (2003)
It doesn't have to be Shakespeare to be worth seeing
I'm not an authority when it comes to the Michael Caine movie this was based BUT I will say that I enjoyed this movie. It was great seeing Edward Norton as a bad guy. Seth Green was funny and Mark Wahlberg was on point as usual.
This movie is nothing ground breaking as far as dramatic performances go, but it does follow in the tradition of fun caper movies like Soderbergh's remake of Ocean's Eleven.
In a nutshell, it's just an easy to follow, fun action movie. Lighten up and give it a chance.
Identity (2003)
All downhill after "big" surprise...
Identity starts out exciting and the suspense keeps building through out the picture. After the big surprise twist is unleashed the movie loses all of its impact. However, most of the cast does a great job and the movie did keep me on the edge of my seat for the first three quarters of the film. See for yourself.
The Shining (1997)
This mini-series further proves that Stanley Kubrick was a genius
Everyone always complained that Kubrick left soooo much stuff out of the movie that was in the book. This mini series was supposed to clear everything up. While it does offer more explanation of things it lacks one very important detail: IT ISN'T SCARY AT ALL. Die hard Stephen King fans will be pleased that everything from the book is handed to them on a plate in a rated PG, ABC mini-series manner but the Kubrick film has this outclassed on every level. The cast, art direction, acting, music, shots is far better in the original movie. Besides, what's up with showing Tony? He totally looked like a dork -once again NOT SCARY!!!