Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)

IMDB: Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)

Source: Library

Date viewed: February 23, 2008

This is a great movie. - T

Zehr gut! This one came highly recommended and didn't disappoint. I don't want to say much about it because one of the great things about watching it was the fact that I had no idea what to expect and had to just let the movie unfold. - A

L'Auberge Espanole

IMDB: L'Auberge Espanole

Source: Library

Date viewed: February 21, 2008

I had seen this when it came out in 2002. I enjoyed it back then, and I enjoyed it now. It, too, has a bit of a "follow your dreams" message, but more than that, it is a fun story about life as an exchange student. - T

An entertaining picture about spending a year abroad. The movie was nothing special, really - very "rah-rah all people from all cultures should get along," maybe, but I enjoyed it, especially all the languages flying about. It made me want to travel again. - A

Ratatouille

IMDB: Ratatouille

Source: Borrowed from the folks

Date viewed: February 20, 2008

There is a beautiful moment at the end of this film that recalls both Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu and Welles's Citizen Kane, and it almost makes the whole thing worthwhile. Almost. Am I wrong for not loving it? Didn't rats, by the plague they carried, kill some 50 million people in the Middle Ages? And why do I have to accept a system of control based on hair pulling? A system so accurate that... oh, nevermind! I found myself digging for a reason that this film might have come to exist, and, aside from showing off the awesome power of today's computer animators, all I could come up with was the tired old "Follow your dreams," and for some reason, hearing a cricket singing about it is more palatable to me than seeing a rat enact it. - T

Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe my hygiene standards are too exacting (and by hygiene I mean entertainment), but I just couldn't get behind Little Chef. All right, so maybe it's an heart-warming allegory dressed up in fancy animation, that doesn't make it a great movie. - A

Reservoir Dogs

IMDB: Reservoir Dogs

Source: Netflix

Date viewed: February 18, 2008

Just when I had started to come to grips with Flannery O'Connor's short stories, I'm presented with Tarantino's first feature. Ugh. Violent and disturbing, and yet disturbingly captivating. It was entertaining, I'll give it that much, and more and more that's becoming my top criterion for any film. - T

I have to list this one as DNF. Tom forced me out of the room because it was bothering him that I was disturbed by the torture scene - sorry if you didn't already know there was a torture scene. If knowing about the torture scene keeps you from watching the movie, my work is done. I just didn't see the point here. Except for the first scene with all the guys at the lunch place, which had some humor and some promise, I found the movie (what I saw of it) to be uncomfortable, tense, horribly violent, and therefore, contrary to my colleague across the aisle, not entertaining. - A

There Will Be Blood

IMDB: There Will Be Blood

Source: Cinema

Date viewed: February 16, 2008

Well-made, but not wonderful. As I watched this movie, one word kept coming to mind: spare. The dialog was spare, the visual palette was spare, Daniel Day Lewis was physically spare, the scope of action, too. The word could even be applied to the ending. - A

The complete absence of humor made a long and unpleasant story even more so. It wasn't all bad, but it wasn't "Best Picture" material, in one reviewer's opinion. - T

Live Free or Die Hard

IMDB: Live Free or Die Hard

Source: Netflix

Date viewed: February 6, 2008

Fun, but it didn't always seem realistic. I mean, the last time I tried launching a speeding car up a ramp-like pylon, it didn't hit the hovering helicopter I was aiming for, it just got smashed up. :( - A

Um, yeah. This set a new standard for absolutely absurd scenarios. And that's not easy to do. Amy mentioned one that she tried - and my experience jumping from the back of an 18-wheeler, on a mostly destroyed bridge, onto the top of a fighter jet, and then, after the pilot ejected and the jet began to spin, onto a sloped section of the destroyed highway, to slide into a tunnel-type area just in time to escape the fireball from the exploding jet... well, let's just say it didn't go as smoothly as it did when Bruce Willis did it. Oh, wait, I forgot to say "spoiler alert." Oh well... I don't think anything will really be spoiled. - T