blog.wddjr.com

Archive for April, 2008

This movie has hints of Malice and Flatliners. Unfortunately, Hayden Christensen again demonstrates his inability to act even in this one hour and 18 minutes movie. Much less tedious than his roles in Starwars I and II, but then again this movie was half as long. It was still boring. The primise evolves around the fact that some people remain consciously awake during anesthesia eventhough they are incapable of moving or talking. Thus we have the young, rich budding tycoon with a heart condition. He first falls in love with his Mother’s secretary, who in actuality was a nurse who had been involved with a cardiac surgeon with 4 malpractice suits against him. Well, you can figure it out from there. Marriage and inheritance. Murder during a needed heart transplant. Mother doesn’t like son marrying beneath his station. Mother wanted another surgeon than the one who had treated him and befriended him and who encouraged his marriage to … you guessed it. Well, things get a little mixed up with the murder plot, mother commits suicide, her blood type matches, of course, son gets second transplant before he was taken off heart-lung machine, all the bad guys get caught. I guess the socially redeeming aspect of the movie is supposed to be is reconcilliation of son and mother in the “after-life” before revived from the second heart transplant. I am sure this was a tax write off for the movie company and even the producer and director probably had a hard time stretching the movie out to an hour and 18 minutes once they saw how really horrible it was. I am even surprised this movie got to the big screen and didn’t go directly to DVD. Save your money and watch reruns on TV.

Grey’s Anatomy meets Snow White and Prince Charming sans the dwarfs in New York. This movie is an interesting 1 hour and 47 minute mix of animation, fantasy, and musical. Patrick Dempsey brings to this movie the angst and misdirected love interest theme to this movie as the divorced single parent with a girlfriend. All of a sudden the soon to be princess, banished from her animatino land to real world NY by the jealous stepmother of the doltish Prince Charming played by a gaunt James Marsden who soon also makes the transformation from animation to real world. It is quite an interesting romp with one of the highlights being the princess to be cleaning up McDreamy’s apartment with the local animals which happen to be rats, mice, pigeons, and the leftover cast of singing roaches from Joe’s Apartment. The movie is good entertainment for all ages and has something for everybody, including a King Kong type finish for the evil Queen. Who would have thought that Patrick Dempsey could sing or ballroom dance or that Jame Marsden could play a comic role compared to his role in the X-Men trilogy or some of the more dramatic roles such as 10th and Wolf or Gossip or his teen thrillers such as Disturbing Behavior and Campfire Tales. Even EW gave it a B+ average. Rotten Tomatoes says 93% fresh. I would have to agree. An entertaining movie with a few really good production scenes. Is there an underlying moral in there somewhere regarding true love, love and first sight, or good triumphing over evil? You can probably read one in there somewhere. Even sans interpretation, it is a movie that could make your worst day a little bit better. I do think, however, that they could have found a better looking “girlfriend” for McDreamy than Idina Menzel who has to have one of the biggest and ugliest mouths on the big screen. Not to give away the plot too bad, but the ending is as expected. McDreamy gets the animated princess come to life, and the Prince goes back to his animated kingdom taking the jilted girlfriend. And in both worlds they all lived happily ever after.

This movie is classic Cohen Brothers. I am still not sure I understood it. I liked the movie and thought I understood it pretty much until the ending. Then I really got ticked off because the movie ended abruptly after a strange monologue by Tommy Lee Jones who played the sheriff. I had intended the movie to have a formularic ending of good triumphing over evil and there was certainly enough gratuitous violence to satisfy the average movie goer. After thinking about it, I may need to go see it again because everyone I told that I hated the movie, they loved it and had a different interpretation. I don’t think I fell asleep and missed anything but evidently I wasn’t really paying attention. The more I think about it, it was an allegorical movie simply reminding us that there are varying degrees of evil in the world because several of the key players personified different levels of evil, except for the sheriff who was truly an honest and honorable man. In the end, without seeing again, the best I can figure out is the movie tells us that we have progressed from an honorable society to an evil on and that maybe in the war between good and evil, that good may win some battles but you will never eliminate evil. Also, there is such a thing as pure evil. Do the good become apathetic and just do the best they can? That question is up for grabs, at least until I see the movie again. I think I missed something in the translation.