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Sunday, February 27, 2005

Movie night at my place.

Well, we rented three movies this weekend and I'll give you the low down on them in this post. Our first selection was The Forgotten.

The Forgotten is about abduction and tampering with memories. Julianne Moore was ok, nothing too special here. She starts out playing the mom who loses her child decently enough, but things quickly fall apart from there. It becomes more of a long episode of X-Files than a full feature length movie. It comes in at just around 91 minutes and goes about 20 to 30 minutes too long. There are some loose ends that just kinda don't get addressed, like where do the people go when they get sucked into the horizon. Over all the film was just barely interesting enough to hold my attention until my cats decided to fight over which of them got to sleep on my paintball gear bag. It's a middle of the road movie with nothing to really stand out through the whole 90+ minutes, and it gets a rating of 2.5 on a scale of 5.

Second movie was Ray. I have wanted to see this movie since it was released in theaters, but I'm lazy and hate going to the movies (thanks everyone who can't mute their cell phones, chews pop corn loudly, kicks my chair, or just in general is a pain in the ass in an otherwise quiet place). This movie was very enjoyable. Jamie Fox was great in his role as Ray Charles. I've watched quite a few movies with Fox in them and this was his best performance. His walk, manner of speech, and overall study of Ray Charles garnered him an Oscar as best male actor, and he earned it. This movie does an excellent job of drawing you in and keeping you in, watching his triumphs and downfalls. I highly recommend this movie and give it a 4.5 out of 5 (mainly cause I don't know if any movie can get a 5 since that's perfect.. but this one is damn close!)

Third movie of the weekend was Vanity Fair. This was one of those "do something nice for the woman who puts up with your crap 24/7 and doesn't kill you." The scenes in this movie were very rich and beautiful. Reese Witherspoon is a good actress and puts her talents to good use in this movie, but it just can't quite save what turns out to be over 150 minutes of a movie about her character's attempt at rising from her lowly status to that of a noble. It just doesn't quite draw you in and get you to care about the characters as well as it needs to and leaves you feeling a little indifferent when the ending credits begin to role. It overall was an ok movie, visually it was very nice, but acting and story left me a little bored. This movie gets a 3 out of 5.

Hey, Tom, how bout a review of Million Dollar Baby?

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