Reviews

Too bad. What a waste of talent. This pic has the sense that everyone involved in its making were quite aware of how artistic and deep it was. Meryl Streep is excellent (and it seems, under-rated here), Julianne Moore is great too, but Nicole KIdman seems too detached to be interesting. (But she'll get the Oscar for making herself look so plain.) Ed Harris plays the cliched "Tragic Aids Victim" and is really quite tedious to watch.

Philip Glass' music adds to the self-serious tone of the movie. I will admit the ending is (finally) emotionally effective.

What a bore. This film has absolutely no emotional core. Tom Hanks and Paul Newman do the best they can with the slim-pickin's of the script, but Sam Mendes' direction is so heavy- handed that not even beautiful cinematography and exquisite art direction can save this hollow dud. The usually excellent Jude Law is miscast and paints a broad stroke with every turn of his head. This is Hollywood at its worst.

"Hearts in Atlantis" is a muddled, pretentious, bore of a film. The characters are so thinly drawn and the story so pointless that it practically evaporates on the screen. Anthony Hopkins, an actor I greatly admire, could've phoned this one in. The children are way too Hollywood to be believable and the whole thing seems extremely self-conscious. The cinematography is very nice, but everything else fails.

The Others is way too slow and relies way to much on atmosphere to be involving. The story is thin and the ending is trite. Nicole Kidman is her usual limited self. The production design and cinematography are very nice but not good enough to save this film (or its audience) from the doldrums.

The Big Kahuna is such a complete misfire that I was tempted to leave the theatre 30 minutes into it. There is absolutely no chemistry between the three leads, something that is extremely important in a film of this kind. Kevin Spacey wears thin after about 5 minutes and the rest of his performance is excrutiatingly mannered. A pompous and empty film.

Toy Story 2 is just not as funny or as clever as the first Toy Story. There seems to be lots of filler (ie. needless action and chases) and not enough witty interaction between the characters. Even the voice performances seem to be a little lackluster. Still, I laughed out loud more than a few times and was only slighty bored in the middle section.

We've all seen this story a hundred times. You can see each plot turn coming a mile away. The relationship between the mother and daughter is way too sweet and understanding to pass for realistic. Janet Mcteer's performance is stock southern hot- ticket mother in vintage clothes. Should have been made for the Lifetime Channel.

Not terribly offensive, just utterly derivative. Kevin Spacey mugs throughout as he comes across the same predictable characters we've all seen a thousand times. (Television has had a frightening influence on film.) A second-rate Atom Agoyan movie.

Pretentiously cute and annoyingly full of cliches, Happy,Texas is just the sort of film that people will want to laugh at in order to feel cool. The stereotypical characters are insulting and the acting is fair to poor.

I'm so tired of the Disney formula. They just go through the motions. The story was bland and empty and the characters stock. And then there's those hideous, soaring Phil Collins songs.

Oz is perhaps the most sensationalized depiction of prison life ever on T.V. Pretentious, poorly acted and chuck full of cliched characters, Oz is just plain garbage. Almost worth watching to see what NOT to do when creating good drama.

MH2 is the greatest show ever on television. No show before or since has captured the pathos and absurdity of American life. Louise Lasser's performance was nothing short of genius.

Woody Allen's heavy- handed "drama" comes off like a satire of an Ingmar Bergman film. Unintentionally, that is. Rent "Persona" or "Cries and Whispers" and see the real thing.