Movies, Drama
It is difficult to put this film into standard categories. I would call it a tragic comedy. Set in Texas and Iowa in the 1960s, the film wonderfully captures the life and transformation of middle class America. The constant bickering between the mother (Shirley MacLaine) and her daughter (Debra Winger) reminded me of A Streetcar Named Desire with Marlon Brando. But unlike the later film, Terms of Endearment does not feel out of date. It covers about 30 years in the life of tough-minded mother and strong-willed daughter. It has moments of great beauty. Jack Nicolson plays the mother’s austronaut neigbour, who not only chases young girls, but also develops a taste for the mother after she has her first grandchild.Terms of Endearment
Movies, Drama
Terrible, terrible, even for an airplane movie! The movie is lame, cheesy and uninspired. Carter gets dumped by his famous L.A. girlfriend. Next he moves in with his ailing grandmother to write a novel about his high school time he has not been able to write for the past 8 years. Confirming that location is as important for romantic success as it is in retailing, Carter’s grandmother lives next door to a gorgeous mother (Meg Ryan) and her even more beautiful 16-year-old-daugther. This love triangle leads to predictable conflict. At the end grandma is dead, the mother continues her suburban life, and the daughter realizes that she loves the best friend of her former boyfriend, and not Carter. As far Carter is concerned, he returns home with a solid manuscript, but is not longer with any woman.In the Land of Women
Movies, Drama
Eddie Murphy latest comic film brings Cinderella into the hood. Little Norbit grows up in an orphanage. His bliss comes to end when his buddy Kate gets adopted. Norbit is not the smartest fellow in the universe. But who says that Cinderella was a genius. This film has very funny scenes and at times is even moving. Murphy wrote, and directed the film, in addition to playing three different people, adult Norbit, his fat wife, and the Chinese owner of the orphanage.Norbit
Movies, Drama
Biographical films often stumble precisely because they try to cover an entire lifetime. The viewer finds it disorienting when multiple actors play one and the same person during childhood, teenage years, adulthood and old age. Just when you have gotten used to a person and learned enough to feel a connection with her, a new actor severs the emotional tie you have developed to the character. Compressing a lifetime into 120 minutes makes it difficult to cover any period in sufficient detail that you feel you learned enough about the character to understand his or her actions. The Namesake solves these challenges by only covering the first 30 years of GogolThe Namesake
Movies, Drama
Shooter is a reaction to the shenanigans of the Bush administration. Inspired by the deeds of Dick Cheney and his neo-conservative fellow travelers, the film suggests that a few powerful officials can manipulate the entire machinery of government to pursue policies that would never be condoned if the public truly understood what is going on. In Shooter, a senator gets away with organizing the assassination a foreign leader who is sitting next to the president. Recruited to help protect the president, a former special operations soldier (the shooter, aka Mark Wallberg), is getting framed for the assassination. When justice is not available to the Shooter, he follows the West traditions and takes justice his own hands, killing the conspirators. The premise of the entire film is unrealistic. Now that the public has realized that it was duped into believing the IRAQ war was necessary, the Bush government would not succeed in getting the U.S. into an unnecessary war.Shooter
Movies, Drama
Breach chronicles how the mot damaging traitor in the history of the FBI was caught. This film has non of action sequences that made Shooter suspenseful. Robert Hanssen, who sold very important secrets to the Soviet Union, is portrayed as deeply religious catholic man who goes to church every day. The film implicitly suggests that no direct link exists between religiosity and moral behavior. What the film cannot answer, perhaps because such a question cannot be answered at all, is why a person like Hanssen would betray his country and send American spies in the Soviet Union to their death. One is left with the realization that human behavior in some cases defies all explanation. For a culture that prizes coming up with reasons for everything this is a bit hard to swallow.Breach
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