Haven (2006)

Pippa (what a cute name!) is whisked from the states to the Caymans by her shady businessman father, minutes ahead of the feds on his tail.

Fritz is a native hustler who has a way with the ladies who quickly becomes Pippa's island guide.

Shy is a sweetheart in love with the beautiful daughter of the island kingpin -- and neither the kingpin nor his son is too happy about it.

I kept assuming that, eventually, the flashbacks and current events would sync up satisfactorily and the storylines would finally mesh into something meaningful rather than simply a group of things that happened at the same time. Instead, to the end, it remained a jumble of scenes looking for a direction and that's pretty frustrating.

It looked good, it felt good -- but, somehow, in the end, it wasn't good.

C-

Samurai 1: Musashi Miyamoto (1955)

About 10 years ago, I received a book for my birthday: 400 Videos You've Got to Rent! (yes, the exclamation point is actually on the cover). Because I've got a list-making/list-completing compulsion, this book has become a problem for me. You see, I've "GOT TO" watch the movies in this book. The ones I haven't seen are either in my Netflix queue or in my TiVo wishlist. I will get to all of these films. Why? Because I've got to.

So, I was pretty excited when TiVo informed me that IFC was showing the entire Samurai Trilogy -- all three of which are listed in the book and I've been unable to track down elsewhere. Unfortunately, the first installment was pretty "eh" and now my excitement has turned to "let's see if I can put off watching the other two until the TiVo gets so full they drop out of the Now Playing list and then it won't be my fault I couldn't see them."

Damn book.

C-

La Haine (1995)

I was about a quarter of the way through this movie before I finally got on board with it and began to appreciate what I was seeing. Until that point, it seemed like another predictable movie following lower-class youths -- too old to be kids, too feckless to be anything else.

The story opens in the wake of a riot in which police put a kid in the hospital. His friends are indignant and haven't got much else to do other than to get themselves more worked up about it. I really enjoyed the rhythm of the movie...the way in which they make plans and get sidetracked and seem to "oh yeah" collectively to get back on track -- just seemed so familiar without being too scripted.

Parts of it didn't work but, over all, it's a powerful film that took me completely by surprise.

B+

The Sentinel (2006)

It's got the Secret Service, polygraph tests, a good guy on the run, a shooting in a mall, and I can barely remember it. It was so familiar that Gary and I kept repeating variations of "well, duh" throughout the entire thing.

Every single bit's been done better in some other movie that I'm not sure why anyone thought this was worth making.

C

Magnolia (1999)

I loved this movie so much when it first came out. I thought about for, literally, months afterward -- it was just so moving and powerful and affecting. It also introduced me to Aimee Mann, who is a genius.

So why did it feel so obvious this time around? I was cringing at the Tom Cruise scenes, which felt forced, and the William H. Macy scenes, which seemed ridiculous. Everything felt artificial this time around...what's changed?

I wish I'd left it alone. I liked the movie I remembered...

B- (down from an "A+")

The Rules of the Game (1950)

Whenever I write up a movie, I delete it from my list of "to see" films. Every Oscar-nominated movie from the major categories is on that list and it's largely the reason I watch things I'd otherwise not bother with (e.g. One Night of Love). So I went to my list to mark off this one and couldn't find it. I searched under its French name, "Le Regle du jeu," and still didn't see it. I'm kinda miffed that this somehow wound up in my DVD player when I didn't have to see it. Who the heck stuck it in my Netflix queue?? Grr.

Oh well. I watched it, so I might as well type about this weird partner-swapping movie.

There's a world-famous pilot who's been having an affair with a flirty married woman whose husband has been getting it on with yet another woman. There's a good-guy best friend of the flirty one who secretly pines for her and a silly little subplot about a married maid and manservant who work on different estates which is fine with the wife (who likes her work more than her man) but not so fine with the hubby. Everyone gets together for several days in the country for some hunting and sexual exploits. It's all very urbane but not nearly as entertaining as one would expect.

The DVD extras are full of breathless "the original version has been lost -- thank goodness we were able to restore at least one version!"-type stuff, which was more interesting to me than the actual film was. I'm actually surprised anyone cared enough to work on piecing this back together and describing what's missing...maybe I'm just not worldly enough to grasp the meaning in all of the goings-on? (And just a note -- the movie was first released in 1939, but didn't make it to the states until 1950.)

C+

One Night of Love (1934)

One of those movies centering on music I hate. Even if a film had a great script, likable actors, and beautiful set design, my lack of enthusiasm for sopranos singing opera would kill it for me -- so the fact that this movie possesses none of the above means it's already fighting a losing battle for my affections.

Story in a nutshell: poor girl with good voice is "discovered" by a demanding teacher with a reputation for falling in love with his female protégés. He's had enough of that and she's not interested anyway, so they make a deal to keep things strictly professional. You don't have to be a psychic to see where this is going to end up...

The film also makes the huge mistake of assuming their lead is charming when she's actually pretty full of herself and rather annoying. It's difficult to care much about the petty slights this prima donna "suffers" when I believed she'd earned every bit of heartache (however short-lived) she experienced.

D+

Children of Men (2006)

A "seems like it could actually happen" view of the future. The world is in utter chaos and apparently suffering from mass depression (government-provided suicide kits are available to anyone who wants them), the cause of which seems to be the human race's infertility. I guess when there's no possibility of future generations, people have a hard time coping. Go figure.

Clive Owen is wonderful as a guy who appears to be rather unaffected by the goings on around him -- as though he's always been the misanthrope we see rather than having become one due to circumstance. Of course, there's more to him than meets the eye.

The story really does a decent job of showing us what a world without hope looks like, but I almost feel like it was too ambitious for the time it had. I don't know that I can really fault it for not living up to my expectations as it did a good job with the material -- I guess I'm just not sure that the material should have been pressed into a feature-length format in the first place.

B+

The Bachelor Party (1957)

In a nutshell: office workers are off to celebrate an upcoming wedding. One's an older, sick, family man, one's an ambivalent young married, one's a dedicated young man with a blossoming family, one's a party boy, and then there's the scared virgin groom about to marry a war widow. Their attempts at a fun evening just get sadder as the night wears on. None of them have any fun and neither did I. At least they all learned some life lessons.

Although we spend the bulk of the night following the guys, the best part of the movie is back in the apartment of the ambivalent young married. His young, newly pregnant, wife is entertaining his sister, a resigned middle-aged housewife with some of the saddest, but honest-feeling, advice for her young sister-in-law.

One of those patience-testing exercises where we're stuck watching a bunch of not-very-likable characters act like the tedious jerks they are until they finally slap "The End" up on the screen.

C-

Charlotte's Web (2006)

This movie falls somewhere in between the 1973 cartoon version and the classic children's book by E.B. White. I mean, duh -- it's not hard to do better than the animated film and it'd be almost impossible to come close to meeting the quality of the source material.

I have to say that I enjoyed this. It was charming and the animals looked great in a Babe-like way. But the book moves me: Fern's total involvement in the world of her barnyard friends, the hurt when she begins to move away from them, and the double pain of Charlotte's departure and the sudden flight of hundreds of her children are all so beautifully poignant on the page and in my mind. I don't know if it's fair to complain that the movie isn't as good -- but I just can't help it.

In a nutshell -- it's pleasant for children, but if they're old enough to read they should skip this and dive into the written story instead.

B

Alibi (1929)

The premise of "Alibi," one of the first gangster movies of the sound era, is pretty solid. A prisoner who's maintained his innocence throughout his incarceration is finally released from prison and into the arms of the girl who believed in him all along. Her dad's the cop who put him in jail in the first place, so he's less-than-happy about the arrangement.

The movie isn't what I'd call horrible, but the acting is. Most of it reminded me of the "Singing in the Rain" sequences where the former silent stars were overdoing everything -- apparently subtlety was off the menu and they had a choice of only wooden or hammy. The storyline, perhaps daring at the time, is fairly boring now.

But hey -- the art deco sets are awfully pretty and that's something.

C-

The Hurricane (1937)

The entire movie is a flashback -- we're told that a strip of wasteland was once an island paradise and then we travel back in time to see it as it used to be.

Manakoora is a beautiful place full of happy free spirits. They know the ocean and the vegetation and co-exist with the occupying French. The story focuses on a young couple: Terangi and Marama. He's the prom-kingy gifted sailor and she's the daughter of the chief. They've got their whole lives laid out before them, but then Terangi winds up in prison for assaulting a white man, Marama bears their daughter alone, and a hurricane hits.

Not sure what the moral here is supposed to be. Don't cage a beautiful wild creature? Watch out if you're happy, because the world's about to crap on you? Don't try to find meaning in melodramas that feature sarongs?

C+

Mini's First Time (2006)

So high-schooler Mini's got money, a nubile body, and freedom to do whatever she wants whenever she wants. She chooses to use her resources to actively ruin everyone around her.

Alec Baldwin, Carrie-Ann Moss, Jeff Goldblum, and Luke Wilson all do their darndest and might have been able to pull this off if it weren't for one huge problem: the lead. I mean -- what in the world happened to Nikki Reed? I thought she was incredible in Thirteen (her first role) -- but here she's just so boring. I think the entire movie hinged on us getting "on board" with Mini's schemes, but I just wanted someone to knock her down a flight of stairs. If the role had been played with a spark of fun, I'm almost positive the grade would be a full letter higher.

I think the script, directing, and Ms. Reed all deserve a "D" -- but the acting by most of the cast and some decent scenes are enough to push it to "almost OK" grade of...

C-