Movie reviews

Actually no, despite being a Cate Blanchett fan, I haven't seen "The Aviator" yet. We're like cave dwellers. We don't get out much.

I bought "My Life" with Michael Keaton and Nicole Kidman. It's about a guy given less than a year to live who makes videos for his unborn son. Normally I wouldn't buy this kind of tripe but I did happen to be looking at the $6 DVD section and I did happen to have a fatal, incurable disease and I do happen to be making a video project for my kids to watch after I die. So, I bought it and watched it. I guess I'd grade it as a straight C. At least they did have the sense to kill him off in the end, not cure him with happiness. Don't go out and get it. All the actors were squandered, especially Kidman, and Keaton is no great prize. The movie suffers from what I call Script Obstacles, meaning that a character is given artificial emotional issues in order to create some kind of tension. So in this one they decide that Keaton is a workaholic who avoids emotion and buries his childhood anger. Now granted, there are plenty of people like that. But watching the movie is like reading Blue's Clues: Should Blue just be sad, or should she help clean up the milk? The moral lesson is so obvious. I'd much rather watch a movie about a sensitive, emotionally and spiritually advanced guy who is dying his freaking ass off. Something sophisticated, not typical Hollywood drivel. I'll send this one on to the troops. What with the theme of dying before you get to see your kid born, it ought to freak them right out.

I also bought "Sex, Lies and Videotape," which goes to show you how out of touch with current events I have been for, oh, 16 years or so, since when videotape itself was a fairly new, trendy, titillating concept. Now we use digital video, but I'd still never seen this film before. It starts out with a guy having sex with his wife's sister. Do you suppose there'll be a happy ending? ... Wow, the danged thing was over before it started. I guess that's an independent film for ya. Not bad. Happy ending? Maybe, sorta. We won't know.