300 was one of the most well-created movies of all time. It almost made me forget about Gladiator for a while..! But, all in all, it was a super movie- Gerard Butler does an amazing job.!
"1408" Off to a slow start. Overall not bad but somehow the previews made me expect more (as if that's anything new). I'd give 3 out of 5 stars.
Brothers My first Danish film, an intense, beautifully photographed, brilliantly directed, realistic psychological drama about the effects of war on returning soldiers and their families. The acting is superb all-around, the brothers are played by Ulrich Thomsen as the war veteran and Nikolaj Lie Kaas as his ne'er-do-well brother. At the beginning of the film, Thomsen is a gentle, quiet family man in the military about to be deployed to Afghanistan while Kass is a criminal just out of prison, w/an abusive, violent streak. Then Thomsen becomes a POW and is thought dead for a long time, during which period Kass and his brother's family are drawn together in their grief; he becomes the surrogate father and husband and for the first time in his life feels a responsibility toward others and we watch as his character transitions from pure selfishness to selflessness. Throughout this period there is a sexual tension between the wife, played by the brilliant and beautiful Connie Nielsen, and Kass, but they never consummate, though they come close, and this raises their relationship to a complexity above the standard melodrama. They fall in love w/each but their guilt and grief, and their sense of responsibility, is so great they cannot possibly follow-thru. Meanwhile, these growing relationships are intercut w/Thomsen's experiences as a POW, which alternates between soul-killing, endless boredom and moments of sheer terror as he and his fellow prisoner, a young mechanic, are threatened w/death at any moment. Of course he bonds w/his one friend and ultimately becomes a kind of protector of this weaker soul, who cries so much that Thomsen gently reprimands him at one point that he should get hold of himself if for no other reason than his tears are dehydrating him. This tender father-son relationship collides w/the circumstances of their imprisonment, climaxing in a one of the most brutal scenes of murder I've ever seen in a war film. Seemingly on a whim by his captors, Thomsen is given a choice: Either beat his fellow prisoner to death w/a lead pipe or they will both be shot. He does it. The scene is in no way graphic or exploitive but it is horrific because it feels so true. As an actor Thomsen takes everything to another level in this scene; as he shatters his friend's body he shatters his own soul. He is rescued soon after and he goes thru the rest of the film, which is about how his resurrection and war experiences effect he and his family, in a stupor of guilt and remorse. Thomsen physicalizes this anguish; when he returns home he seems heavier, plodding, as opposed to the light-hearted, somewhat careless man who went to war. Connie Nielsen (most well-know for "Gladiator") is too talented for her own good as far as becoming a Hollywood star, even though she is gorgeous. Nielsen so completely changes her personality in each role that most folk would not probably not recognize her as the same actress from one film to another. She is the true heart of "Brothers". When her husband, quite literally, returns from the dead, her character is caught between two worlds, yet she puts her own needs and confusion aside (or perhaps better to say, buries them) and becomes the anchor that holds a whole family together: Mother, Father, Daughters, Brother, Inlaws. Nielsen's situation is meant to mirror that of her husband: She too is put in a situation where she is torn between selfishness and sacrifice, but unlike him, she is able to rise to the occasion. A great film about war and family. Harold
The Number 23 The dvd was shipped from Netfix on Monday, 7/23. When I popped it into my dvd player to watch it this afternoon, the time was 3:23. And I made it thru exactly 23 minutes of this piece of crap before I ejected it and sealed it into its Netflix return envelope. Weird, huh? H
Well, I haven't stopped watching a movie because it was too scary since I was, like, 8 yrs old. The only thing scary about "The Number 23" was how bad it was. H
"FlyBoys" Overall very disappointing. Jean Reno was the only actor I had ever seen before. The aerial combat animations on The History Channel's "Dogfights" series are more realistic than this movies footage. Nearly half the movie was a crappy love story, without even the benefit of nudity for crying out loud. I'm glad I waited to rent this one. If I had paid full fair I would have been pissed.