becoming jane

although it's always fun to watch a period piece and it's amusing to speculate on the life and times of the real Jane Austen, this movie has a lot of problems. for one, Anne Hathaway just can't pull off the role. she mumbles all her ostensibly witty lines and has so little sex appeal that it is impossible to believe that a dashing young James McAvoy would fall her, or even any of her dull and boring suitors. this leaves 80% of the movie feeling completely implausible and therefore uninteresting. it doesn't help that the story is predictable and unoriginal. but, James McAvoy has pretty blue eyes and Maggie Smith is great as a crusty grand dame.

away from her

this is a very beautiful and sad Canadian movie about a man who institutionalizes his Alzheimer's stricken wife made brilliantly by Sarah Polley. everything felt perfectly familiar, and once in a while one line would just effortlessly sum it all up - the moment, the film, life. why can't more movies be like this?

3:10 to yuma

this is a good western contrasting Russell Crowe's charming murderer with Christian Bale's hardened, one-legged family man. the soundtrack is lovely and Ben Foster plays an intriguingly loyal and feminine killer. although I really didn't buy the movie's ending and overall premise, that didn't stop me from enjoying it.

next

Nicolas Cage has really bad hair and, to be fair, I should disclose that I was on an airplane, with nothing else to do, and this movie came on and I tried, I really tried, to watch it, but I just couldn't bear more than about 20 minutes of it. I still love you, Julianne Moore, but I couldn't watch you do this to yourself. hopefully I am done with funerals and interviews for the time being, and will be back to movie watching shortly.

broken english

this is a bona fide indie. how do I know? for one thing, it stars Parker Posey. for another, it has lots of great cameos from people like the director's mom, Gena Rowlands, and is all about a single woman in new york looking for love. said thirty-something suffers from anxiety attacks and likes art. need I say more?

the nanny diaries

I kind of can't help loving Scarlett Johansson, even though I think I should. happily, she's in every scene of this yet-another-adaptation-of-an-autobiography-expose-that-was-so-poorly-written-that-the-movie-just-had-to-be-better. it's fun to see Alicia Keys, even in a nothing part, and Laura Linney is talented as always. ultimately, this is a throwaway movie useful for ruminating on how rough it is to be really really rich.

stardust

this is a surprisingly fluffy film, considering it's from the director of Layer Cake, but it's a reasonably amusing distraction from reality. Michelle Pfeiffer plays the same character as the one she does in Hairspray but with more wrinkles. Robert deNiro is utterly unconvincing as a gentle, cross-dressing pirate, but Charlie Cox is cute and Clare Danes, dare I say it, is luminescent.