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Reviews
Burning Blue (2013)
Great subject, poorly handled
The witch hunts that went on in the armed forces during Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a great subject for a film, but the script for this movie is practically incoherent - it's difficult not only to keep the characters straight (no pun intended), but the chronology. After more than 30 minutes of exposition and character-introduction, there is a vitally important scene that is so obtusely directed that ***SPOILER*** I didn't realize until an hour later that two of the characters had had sex. This isn't one of those movies that is so bad that it becomes funny; it's just tedious and confusing. The MPAA guide warns that there is "graphic nudity." Unfortunately, this doesn't involve Rob Mayes, who is very attractive and appealing as the guitar-playing object of desire, and who makes his part of the story believable.
Letters to Juliet (2010)
Gives romantic comedy a bad name
Apart from some gorgeous Tuscan scenery and the presence of Vanessa Redgrave, this movie offers no reason to waste 90 minutes of your time. The contrived premise - a young woman on holiday with her fiancé writes to a woman who left a letter to Juliet (Shakespeare's heroine) on a wall in Verona - might have been easier to swallow if the script had a little wit and the cast had been more appealing.
Amanda Seyfried, who was hilarious in "Mean Girls," has a lovely smile but is otherwise merely a pretty cipher here. Her purported leading man, Christopher Egan, is totally charmless and is unable to make his disagreeable character appealing. After his first few minutes of screen time, I desperately hoped he wouldn't end up with Ms. Seyfriend - to no avail.
The only possible reason to see this film is the presence of Vanessa Redgrave, an actress who is always a pleasure to see. Although given not much interesting to do, she nonetheless makes her character believable and touching. Would that she was in a better movie!!! The scenery is beautiful, but it may just as well have been saved for a travelogue.
Superbad (2007)
Depressing "Comedy"
The credit sequence was very entertaining, but not long after it ended I began sinking into despair. This movie has received excessively positive reviews - and the fellow across the aisle from me was busting a gut from laughing every couple of minutes - but I kept thinking that if this is what passes for comedy these days, I don't want to see anymore "comedies." The only reason I went to see this is because its precursors, "Knocked Up" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," also received extremely favorable reviews; I didn't go see those because I was afraid they would be like, well, like this movie. It's not just that the variations on the word "fuck" become really tiresome within the first five minutes, nor the teen-boys-trying-to-get-laid plot has been worked to death; there's just no wit or style to this thing. By the time the obnoxious, way-over-the-top cops came on, I was ready to leave. The last movie I saw that struck me as clever and actually made me laugh out loud a couple of times, was "Stranger Than Fiction," so I know there are still people out there who can write and direct a movie with some wit and class.