Disappointing Movies

I haven't had much luck picking movies the past couple weeks. Everything I've seen has been disappointing.

When I saw a preview for Coffee and Cigarettes at Princess Cinema a couple years ago, it looked novel and full of potential . But it was just a bunch of vacuous and dull vignettes. Nothing in it was compelling. Normally if a movie is bad, I'll still watch it. I thought about turning it off, but instead caught up on my e-mail while it ran to completion.

Uncovered: The War on Iraq wasn't bad. But, nothing in it was new or enlightening and, like most other people, I have fatigue from listen to same Iraq stories over and over. Also, I thought their presentation on certain things could have been a lot stronger. i.e. They showed the clip of the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency stating the Niger uranium documents were "not authentic", but did not mention the date, even though the timeline is very compelling. It was February 2003. One month before the war started and one month after President Bush referenced these documents in his State of the Union address. It was also the same month that the US and UK failed to convince the rest of the Security Council and the World to go to war. It should be clear why the rest of the World was skeptical and it is an obvious demonstration of how the US government and US media mislead the US public prior to the war. But the documentary didn't bring this up.

Domino should have been good - part action, part biography; Keira Knightley is hot. But the story was clearly all made up and it really covered only a couple days. So none of the biographical aspects were there. And making up things like "Hollywood Hostages" and sticking in some 90210 characters is strange and subpar for a B-movie. It's more like C- or D-movie. Also, I am not really a fan of Tony Scott's style, which didn't help. (Aside: I liked Man on Fire. I'll credit Denzel Washington and not Tony Scott for that though).

I wouldn't describe myself as a "fan" of Nicolas Cage, but he makes his characters interesting and I generally like dramas, so I had great expectations for The Weather Man. The story was novel and a little dark. Nicolas Cage made his character compelling and I liked the Michael Caine character. But the pace of the movie was too slow. Hence, it was only a "3 star" movie, when I had been expecting "4 stars".

The Thin Red Line had great cinematography and decent acting. But there was no context, no plot, and a lot of characters, who never really interacted with each other. Plus it was really long. So I couldn't really get "into" it.

Good Night, and Good Luck is next in my Netflix queue. I have great expectations.