the heart of the game

documentary about a high school girls' basketball superstar's rise and fall. the game footage is great and the story is enthralling.

how to lose friends & alienate people

much funnier than I thought it would be, but still just amusing, Simon Pegg elevates this true story of a British wanker who makes it in the American magazine scene to something very watchable.

flash of genius

a sad true story about the man who invented the intermittent windshield wiper then spent his whole life trying to get recognition for it, losing everything in the process. Lauren Graham is strangely personality-less, and Greg Kinnear is seriously bland.

something the lord made

a true and amazing story about the first open heart surgery, done on a baby, and the fifty years it took for its co-creator, a black man, to gain recognition for it. Mos Def and Alan Rickman are excellent.

the ugly truth

the best thing I can say about this movie is I got a much-needed nap. completely awful from start to whenever I fell asleep.

the education of charlie banks

a low-key movie about Jesse Eisenberg, a curly-haired intellectual who backs out of a confrontation with a smooth but vicious neighborhood bully then encounters him again in college. I can't really think of any reason anyone should watch it.

fired up!

two sexist football playas go to cheerleading camp to score chicks. predictable personaity overhauls ensue. not horrible for a cheerleading movie but under any other system of measurement, it would be more than wrong of me to recommend this movie.

killshot

this sounded pretty decent - based on an elmore leonard book with Mickey Rourke, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Thomas Jane, Diane Lane - makes you wonder why it had such a short run. perhaps because it was overly violent and ultimately pointless. just a guess.

bride wars

I watched this movie in increments of five minutes over five days in a noisy hospital ward making it nearly impossible to hear the dialogue. I'm sure I didn't miss anything, and I would have hated to see this under any other circumstances.