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January 05, 2007

Playing at a Theater Near You...

The Good Shepherd
The Gist: In order of importance: (1) Matt Damon meets and bangs Angelina Jolie at a Skull and Bones party; (2) Jolie gets pregnant; (3) Damon is tapped to become an intelligence officer overseas; (4) Joe Pesci appears in a wonderful cameo; (5) Some Soviet defector claims to be someone important; (6) You can’t trust anybody; (7) Alec Baldwin works for the FBI; (8) William Hurt is a lying punk, or is he? (9) Damon’s son grows up wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps (even though he hardly knows his dad) and finds himself a nice ethnic girl to marry who might not be so nice; (10) The Bay of Pigs was a failure due to an American leak alerting Castro and his fellow Commie Comrade Bastards. I’d write more, but I couldn’t piece together a coherent narrative of what this movie was about if you held a gun to my head.
What Would Have Made this Movie Better: Angelina Jolie going at it with Matt Damon every thirty minutes or so. At least that would have been fun to watch! Have you ever noticed that a lot of movies starring Robert DeNiro are really long and boring? I know he’s a fabulous actor, but some of his stuff – especially from the 70s – just goes on and on like the Energizer Bunny on crack. As the director, DeNiro pieces together an incredibly incoherent movie, which is rarely suspenseful and hardly informative and way too long. If the first two thirds of the film were anything like the last third, this one could have been saved. Unfortunately, such was not the case.
Who Should See This: If you want to know the history of the CIA, try checking out wikipedia. I can’t really recommend this film to anyone. The last third was good, but up until that point, ushers paraded up and down the aisles to keep people from committing suicide.
The Verdict: D.

Notes on a Scandal
The Gist: Cate Blanchett plays a beautiful young art teacher who ends up letting one of her 15-year-old students pound her like a tenderized piece of meat. Judi Dench is a stodgy old teacher whom students neither bang nor like, but whom they at least respect. Dench ends up befriending Blanchett and learning about her illicit affair. She uses that information to become more deeply entrenched in Blanchett’s life to the point where it makes you think, “Something ain’t right, Willis!” Think Fatal Attraction on training wheels with a lesbian thrown in the mix.
What Would Have Made this Movie Better: More sex scenes with Cate (obviously). Aside from that, I don’t think much should have been changed.
Who Should See This: People who enjoy art-house flicks that aren’t too far removed from conventional films. Also, Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench fans, of course, because both are excellent as usual.
The Verdict: Ultimately, this one just didn’t captivate me the whole time. So I give it a B-.

Comments

Posted by: Meg at January 5, 2007 09:21 AM