Five Movies I've Seen Recently
May. 20th, 2002 10:45 am- Spider-Man. Four stars. Fun actiony-adventury goodness.
- Mexico City. Three stars. Interesting story, but wooden acting and, at times, hackneyed. There was a whole sub-arc about faith that just never gelled. The story seemed to avoid a lot of the clichés of the genre, though. No finding Twue Wuv. No ridiculous plot twists.
- Wonder Boys. One star. Hated it.
- The Deep End. Three stars. I've had a soft-spot for Tilda Swinton since Orlando. An interesting exercise in how things just get worse.
- Monsoon Wedding. Four stars. I liked it, but I had heard really good things about it beforehand so it felt like it didn't live up to its reputation. Colourful. Surprising. Good use of subtlety.
Re: Wonder Boys
Date: 2002-05-20 04:00 pm (UTC)Why did you hate Wonder Boys so much?
What did I hate about it? Hmmmm... I don't feel like I ever cared about any of the characters, except perhaps Frances McDormand's character. (The Katie Holmes character was probably the most interesting character, but underused). The Toby Maguire character was Really Annoying (what the hell was going on in his head, anyway?) I had no idea what they were trying to do with the Robert Downey Jr. character, and most of the movie was about Michael Douglas stumbling around screwing up his life (you think in one of those conversations with Sara he could'a gotten around to talking about the dog?).
I did think that they an interesting job with the theme about Michael Douglas not making any choices (which was why both his life and his book were in a shambles), and it is hard to write a story about characters who aren't engaged in the events... which I think is why it failed for me.