January 6, 2006

Still here and watching movies

Yes, I've been M.I.A. for quite some time, though I've been watching movies. A LOT of movies.

For instance, tonight I watched The Skeleton Key, a movie that was okay - not great - until it got to the end where it sucked in a very major way. Predictable ending - the kind where some idiot decides he or she will be clever and do a Twilight Zone kind of end. That means (bit of a spoiler here) that the good guys come out badly and the bad guys win.

It's the kind of ending you dream up when you're 16 and think you're brilliant. I found it a very disappointing end to a movie that, up to that point, had been a parade of cliches fairly well handled.

By the way ... who was the genius who hired a great actor like John Hurt to play a part where he does nothing but groan and look pathetic? A freaking monkey could have played that. If you're going to hire good actors, give them something to do for heaven's sake.

The movie isn't as bad as I make it sound. But the more I think about it the more annoyed I get at its wasted potential.

On the other hand ... should you want to see a good movie, one of the many films I've seen recently is This Gun For Hire (1942) with Veronica Lake (looking fabulous), Robert Preston and Alan Ladd as the somewhat tortured Raven, a somewhat troubled killer. A great noir piece.

I've seen many other films recently, and hope to get to them eventually. For example, Two for the Road (1967) was pretty good (Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney), as was Leave Her To Heaven (1950), in a bit of a soap opera-ish way (Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde and Jeanne Crain).

And my favourite over the holiday period, the TV series Firefly and the subsequent movie Serenity. They were fabulous!

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