Movie Reviews
Best In Show
I was given a homework assignment several weeks ago, after going to the dog show, to watch Best In Show (2000). As I have explained before when writing reports on previous assignments, I am about 10 years younger (on average) than the people with whom I most often eat lunch. They have decided that I'm deficient on pop-culture movie knowledge, and in order to keep up with the frequent movie quotes, I'm given homework assignments to catch up.
This movie was funny! I find its best quality to be the abundance of one-liners that are later quotable, such as "Rhapsody has two mommies," or "We met at Starbucks. Well, actually, I was in my Starbucks, and she was in her Starbucks across the street." The characters are all strange in their own way, and most are extremely neurotic about winning the dog show.
The basic plot is that they follow around about six different couples and their dogs as they preprare for and compete in a dog show. In the characters, there is the requisite redneck, the lesbian couple, the gay couple, the neurotic catalog readers, the couple with the ugly dog, and... who did I leave out? There is very little story line, except that we end up seeing most of the dogs that make it to the final level of competition. The purpose of the movie is to expose the strange behaviors of the owners in dog shows. One has to wonder how many takes they did of certain scenes to get the dogs to act a certain way.
I give this movie two paws up.
The Manchurian Candidate
Wayne and I went to see The Manchurian Candidate last night at the Alamo Draft House. The plot is complicated and surprising, and I actually had a nightmare last night based on the movie. Although I am pop-culture deficient, this story line appears to be very original - however, further research indicates that it's the remake of a Frank Sinatra flick. I haven't seen the first version, but reviewers say that this one does the first justice, and is different enough that the viewer has no idea how it's going to end.
Denzel Washington's character was the leader of an Army operation in 1991, just before Desert Storm. As the plot unfolds, several of the characters are having dreams about what actually happened versus what they all recollect. One of the men is running for Vice President at the time.
Without giving too much of it away, I really enjoyed the movie. It's not especially scary, but there are some images that stay with you for a while. All of the actors portray their parts well. Denzel, as always, was in character very well, and Meryl Streep played the overbearing mother so convincingly that you start to hate her, but at the same time, can't wait to see her character again. Liev Schreiber, though I've never heard of him before, did a great job of being mysterious and creepy, while drawing sympathy from the audience. There are also nuances in the movie that you may not catch the first time they happen; the hypotic state that the men enter when their names are repeated a certain way is one example, as I completely didn't catch what was going on the first time that Shaw recieved the phone call summoning him to the closet.
See this one in the theater. Two thumbs up.
I was given a homework assignment several weeks ago, after going to the dog show, to watch Best In Show (2000). As I have explained before when writing reports on previous assignments, I am about 10 years younger (on average) than the people with whom I most often eat lunch. They have decided that I'm deficient on pop-culture movie knowledge, and in order to keep up with the frequent movie quotes, I'm given homework assignments to catch up.
This movie was funny! I find its best quality to be the abundance of one-liners that are later quotable, such as "Rhapsody has two mommies," or "We met at Starbucks. Well, actually, I was in my Starbucks, and she was in her Starbucks across the street." The characters are all strange in their own way, and most are extremely neurotic about winning the dog show.
The basic plot is that they follow around about six different couples and their dogs as they preprare for and compete in a dog show. In the characters, there is the requisite redneck, the lesbian couple, the gay couple, the neurotic catalog readers, the couple with the ugly dog, and... who did I leave out? There is very little story line, except that we end up seeing most of the dogs that make it to the final level of competition. The purpose of the movie is to expose the strange behaviors of the owners in dog shows. One has to wonder how many takes they did of certain scenes to get the dogs to act a certain way.
I give this movie two paws up.
The Manchurian Candidate
Wayne and I went to see The Manchurian Candidate last night at the Alamo Draft House. The plot is complicated and surprising, and I actually had a nightmare last night based on the movie. Although I am pop-culture deficient, this story line appears to be very original - however, further research indicates that it's the remake of a Frank Sinatra flick. I haven't seen the first version, but reviewers say that this one does the first justice, and is different enough that the viewer has no idea how it's going to end.
Denzel Washington's character was the leader of an Army operation in 1991, just before Desert Storm. As the plot unfolds, several of the characters are having dreams about what actually happened versus what they all recollect. One of the men is running for Vice President at the time.
Without giving too much of it away, I really enjoyed the movie. It's not especially scary, but there are some images that stay with you for a while. All of the actors portray their parts well. Denzel, as always, was in character very well, and Meryl Streep played the overbearing mother so convincingly that you start to hate her, but at the same time, can't wait to see her character again. Liev Schreiber, though I've never heard of him before, did a great job of being mysterious and creepy, while drawing sympathy from the audience. There are also nuances in the movie that you may not catch the first time they happen; the hypotic state that the men enter when their names are repeated a certain way is one example, as I completely didn't catch what was going on the first time that Shaw recieved the phone call summoning him to the closet.
See this one in the theater. Two thumbs up.
posted by CyndyMW at
4:30 PM
2 Comments:
Why is he the Manchurian Candidate if he was a Desert Storm veteran? Wouldn't that make him the Bedouin Candidate? Remakes.
The Frank Sinatra movie was pretty good and certainly pretty original at the time; I have it on DVD. Janet Leigh's character was pretty useless but Angela Lansbury was phenomenally creepy.
For a guy's movie that is FULL of references to older movies (with a SF slant) rent Free Enterprise. It stars your other boyfriend Eric McCormack and Bill Shatner! There are web sites dedicated to all the references.
By
John, at 8:48 AM
I want to hear the review of Blazing Saddles.
By
zhsy00001, at 10:08 PM
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