Movie Reviews

Road to Nowhere -- Just goes to show you, don't trust movie reviews from the Economist.   The glowing portrait in that mag must have been because it was August and they were desperate for copy and some intern from Oxbridge named Alistair piped up and said "I saw a jolly good flick over the weekend," which appealed to his sophomoric taste for everything meta and a really pretty actress.  In fact, the movie was just a bummer, overwrought, like going back and watching Jarmusch's Stranger than Paradise 15 years later and thinking "man, we must have been stoned to think this was cool."  Mary would easily have not finished this one, but I pushed through to the end, thinking it might get better.

The Black Balloon -- Toni Collette stars in this Aussie feel good film about a really autistic kid and his family, mostly about his 15-year old brother, also pretty nerdy by macho down-under standards, if cute.  For some reason, the hottest blonde in the brother's class decides that this skinny kid with the odd brother is hot, and takes after him. The romance is completely unmotivated at a plot level, but from a filmic perspective, it's always good to have and excuse to have eye-candy in a bikini around.  Even with a pubescent blonde model onscreen much of the time, not worth watching, we didn't finish it.

Star Wars -- Graham and Natalie had never seen it, so I got it out of the public library. Surprising how stilted and formulaic it is, after all these years, but you've got to give Lucas credit for creating lots of wierd creatures and a pretty fully-fledged world.  Graham has read lots of books about the series, so he knows what all the creatures are called, but he was still bouncing up and down with excitement. Natalie thinks it's silly and boring and went back to playing with her iPod and reading fantasy novels.