Anyway, first up was the good movie. Late in the week my wife and I went to see "Married Life" with Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Pierce Brosnan and Rachel McAdams.This is listed as a dark comedy with much emphasis on dark and little emphasis on comedy. It takes place not long after World War II. The basic idea behind it is that the lead character played by Chris Cooper has finally found love in his life and not with his long-suffering wife. However, he's so upset that a divorce would destroy her that he decides everyone would be better off is he just murdered her.
The story is one that continually gives the impression of going in a clear direction and then fools everyone by taking a totally different path. The twists and turns keep it all very interesting.
The acting is first-rate. In fact, I think this is yet another great example of how solid an actor Pierce Brosnan is. The guy could have just been Bond and retired. Instead we get another great performance from him. The story is presented to us via narration from his character's point of view and it's his demeanor and presence that makes this not only work but to drive the story forward. The only misstep here is Rachel McAdams. She just didn't fit here for me. She didn't do a bad job. I just thought she looked too innocent for this role.
The cinematography is notably excellent. Several shots are done to give it a 1950's look. All the sets look great as do the clothes and the personalities. It's like a "Leave It To Beaver" episode re-imagined by Daniel Steele.
I was disappointed to hear several people leave the theater commenting that it was too slow. Doh! Hardly. It's just not their kind of movie.
The second movie came Friday night when my son and I went to see "Dr. Suess' Horton Hears A Who". This is the latest animated movie to come out and it's done extremely well at the box office. I'll give the writers credit. They did a wonderful job taking a very short book and turning it into a 90 minute movie. Bits and pieces of it are interesting. Some of the animation is great but much of it falls flat. The story suffers from all the obvious and frustrating plot lines. There are no surprises here and surprisingly few laughs for a Jim Carrey movie. The best part of the night was before the show where we saw a new preview of the next Pixar movie--"WALL-E". I have high hopes for this one and this preview did nothing but support my thinking.The last movie was a bit of an odd one. I didn't see it at the theater. The TV station, HDNet Movies, worked out some trial deal to debut a movie on their channel a couple of days before it actually came out in theaters. The movie is called "Flawless" and stars Demi Moore and Michael Caine. The problem with this is that I saw it and then this week it didn't debut anywhere that I could find it. After seeing it I can see why the studios allowed this movie to be tested this way. I'd never heard of it. There hasn't been a preview anywhere and no advertising outside that. I suspect that short of this curious release it would have gone straight to video.
The movie suggests it's a true story of a 1950's female employee in a large diamond company called LonDi or London Diamonds. She's, in fact, the only female manager in the company and this is supposed to be a big deal. The movie starts off with an supposedly aged Demi Moore (but looks like Moore wearing a rubber mask) telling an annoying young reporter her life story. The big moment is when she pulls out a diamond the size of a grapefruit and says, "I stole this from them."That's all well and good except that the story is entirely dull, unbelievable and not worth your time. It's as slow as slow gets for no good reason and Moore is terribly cast in this role. Michael Caine looks like he figured out this was a bomb 10 minutes after he showed up on set. It's just a lifeless movie that you'll forget about almost immediately after seeing it.
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