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Honeycombe
Reviews
The Prestige (2006)
Comme ce comme ca (so-so)
This movie is not bad. This movie is not good. The costumes are great, the movie stars beautiful (it was worth $5 for a matinée glimpse of Jackman without his shirt on), the acting superb (I mean..Michael Caine; it doesn't get any better than that).
But the plot is convoluted and hard to follow. It jumps back and forth, with the audience finding themselves trying to place whether this is in the past, the present, or the future. It also assumes the audience will relate to an obsession of the sort detailed in this movie. I didn't.
The movie was interesting, well worth the reduced matinée price of a movie, and the actors rose to their peak levels for a movie of this sort. But ultimately, it seemed to me that a group of suits sat around a table, made a list of some movie star names, and said, "What movie can we create to have all these guys in the same movie and really pack the audience in?" They ended up with a movie created for these performers, rather than a great movie, the cast for which was pulled from a list of excellent actors.
How it would have been better: A better script, tighter, shorter, a bit less convoluted. Photography - there were far too many extreme closeup shots. It would have been better if they had made some of those extreme closeups more full body or upper body shots, so that the audience could see the body language and maybe the other person the actor was communicating with. Not that there weren't great extreme closeups. And not that I mind seeing Hugh Jackman's eyes in closeup. It's just that there were too many such shots.
I expected more from Bale, Jackman, and Caine. Like I said, it was good, not bad. But I would've thought that these three powerweights of Hollywood could have commanded an excellent script and an award winning movie. They didn't hit it with this one.
Connie and Carla (2004)
Very cute movie...Worth the Watch
Maybe your opinion of the movie starts with what you were expecting to begin with. I didn't expect much. So when I saw it, I was pleasantly surprised. I thought it was funny, funny, funny. Being female, I could relate to Connie and Carla's predicament. It was a fanciful look at a cliché' plot of two gals running from the mob (a la Some Like It Hot, or Victor Victoria). It's no classic like Some Like It Hot, but it's still a very entertaining, well acted small movie made with a small budget. I found myself amused at the girls' confidence throughout the years that they would "make it" professionally, when in fact they were not very good. And I found myself thrilled for them when they DID finally make it (although as drag queens)....they finally saw their dream come true. And the mob guy who chases them across America and becomes infatuated with "Mame" .....hilarious.
A great little movie worth the watch. Entertaining from start to finish. A few laughs, a few tender moments. Kudos to the actress/producer who persevered to get her movie made, despite many obstacles.
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004)
Too dissimilar from the first Bridget Jones
The original Bridget Jones movie, Bridget Jones Diary, was immensely popular. Not one to gush over movies, I will admit to having watched the first Bridget Jones movie ten times. It was glorious in every way a movie can be glorious...the writing, the characters, the acting, the star quality of the actors, the chemistry, the location shoots. So it makes me wonder...did anyone involved in the first movie have a clue as to why it was so popular and loved? I guess not, because they have stripped from the second movie virtually everything that made the first one successful. Bridget Jones' quirky friends? Gone, for the most part, except for a couple of obligatory scenes. Bridget Jones' interesting and quirky parents, and in particular, her mother? Again, mere cameos with nothing much to say. Bridget Jones' plump but curvaceous and appealing figure? Gone. They let her gain way too much weight for the second movie, leaving her with an overweight, dumpy figure that looks matronly in everything she wears. Can't imagine her in that bunny outfit in this movie. The two male leads have lost their edge. Hugh Grant retains some of his, owing more to his acting ability than to the writing. Colin Firth is as handsome as ever...but the writing left him with little to do. Without all these interesting supporting characters being antagonistic to Bridget Jones, there isn't much to watch in the movie, except Renee stumbling along saying her lines in a wishy washy script. Her accent isn't even as good in this one. The close up camera shots of Renee's face, showing her facial expressions - they worked well in the first one, but are almost totally missing from this sequel. How could no one connected with this movie spot the deficiencies in advance? How could no one have demanded a re-write? In short, everything that made the first Bridget Jones' movie is missing from the second one. It's not awful. But it's not good. A shame, since it would have been so easy to make it good by just fleshing out the non-Bridget characters and giving them a few lines to say.