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ranwulf
Reviews
Gilmore Girls (2000)
Great dialog = great show.
I just discovered this show in cable reruns, and I'm hooked. Maybe it's supposed to be aimed at women, but the target audience really doesn't matter when the writing is this good. This show has the fastest-paced, most intelligent dialog on television - that's what sucked me in and keeps me tuning in every afternoon. I even spent most of Sunday 5/14/06 watching the ABC Family Channel's "Gilmore Girls Marathon," much to the bemusement of my friends. I'm a 39 year old divorced male, and this is supposed to be a "chick" show, right? Who cares? Of course - while I appreciate the writing, the "oh-my-God-I-want-her" hottness of Lauren Graham is a huge draw. Her character is perfect - the kind of woman you wish you really knew. This will be the only TV series that I've ever bought the DVDs for. I just wish I'd gotten on at the ground floor with this one.
Serenity (2005)
Lots of fun
I really liked this one. Joss Whedon's style was all over it - especially the dialogue. The same kind of off the cuff glibness Buffy and friends were always spouting is in evidence here as well - and it's great! I've never seen the series Firefly, but if it's on DVD I'll have to go get it. Morena Baccarin as Inara is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life, and I hope she gets bigger roles in the future. My only complaint is that the almost rural dialect most of the major characters affected seemed out of place and a little strained. Perhaps that's explained in the series, but if there's an explanation in the movie, I missed it. Overall - a really great sci-fi story that proves everything doesn't have to be about Star Wars.
The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Utterly disappointing
I'll rate this disaster at a 3, with only the sets and costuming saving it from being a total loss. Don't mistake me - I loved Brazil, Jabberwocky, and Baron Munchausen. The Fisher King was a masterpiece, and pretty much everything Python is near mythic genius. But this latest effort fails to ever come together. A mish-mash of every fairy tale ever known (and then some) this film wastes its huge potential in a writhing morass of plot twists that never come close to cohesiveness. Virtually at no time is it clear what the hell is going on and who's doing what. Several characters (especially Cavaldi) are completely extraneous and do little more than detract from the story (such as it is). Things happen that have little to do with anything else going on in the film: Angelica's father/were-wolf/Woodsman feeds spiders to a horse that in turn eats a little girl; the whole scene where viscous, black well-slime sucks off the mouth and eyes of another child and turns into - I'm not making this up - the Gingerbread Man; or the occasional girl-floating-in-a-pond-for-no-apparent-good-reason motif. And what's with the bugs? My strongest objection to the story, besides the fact that there isn't one, is that the evil and dead Thuringian Queen who seems to be causing all the trouble is never really all that evil. Considering the depicted state of affairs in that part of Germany at the time (Franco-Prussian War, I think), rule by an ageless hottie with substantial cleavage (Monica Bellucci) would be much more preferable to that of the occupying French general Delatombe (Jonathan Pryce). The film's major failing is its effort to include references to seemingly the entire collection of Grimms' Fairy Tales, regardless of relevance to the oh-so-thin plot. The story loses itself before it can quite get going, and never recovers from its resultant downward spiral. Overall - a chance to make a great movie from great source material ends up looking like the unedited first draft of a film school student on acid - and the acid is the only thing even vaguely original. What a shame for Gilliam.
Queens Logic (1991)
One of my top 5 favorites
God - I love this movie! I must've seen it 20 times by now, and I still can't pass it up when it appears on some random cable station at 1 in the morning! This film was an epiphany to me - great cast, great characters, great story, great locations - all without becoming a stereotyped "Nu Yawk" movie. And Tom Waits as Monte? Perfect! Whenever I see this, it makes me miss the City. I was really lucky to have lived there in the early 90's - only a little later than the film's setting. Anyone who doesn't think these Bridge & Tunnel characters are real should spend some time in the boroughs. I highly recommend this film to anyone who wants a slice of New York City life away from the glitz of Manhattan.