I watched Music and Lyrics. Drew's character was quirky, ok. But she was a bit too much for my tastes.
However, the movie was sweet and cute and I liked it.

Spanglish, on the other hand, started well and then after 20 minutes, it got boring and it never seemed to end! I thought Tea's character was okay, for the first 5 minutes, but then she increasingly irritated and was quite simply a bitch, which I think was the point.
Adam Sandler is quite an angry man underneath it all.

Aren't all comedians incredibly angry and/or depressed, though?

Yes, I believe it's the law.

I've just watched The Phantom of the Opera with Claude Rains in the eponymous role (how he must have loved being described as 5'8" which he most certainly wasn't) and Susannah Foster and Nelson Eddy doing the tedious operatic warbling and lots of technicolour. Utter tosh (Rains looked rather subdued through as well he might) but there was an interesting documentary with it which helpfully explained that the scriptwriters couldn't make up their mind whether the Phantom was Christine's father or whether he was in love with her.

I guess I hadn't given much thought to it.

No, but it assumes that the audience will love the music so much that it doesn't bother paying attention to important things like pacing and making the story interesting. And I never EVER want to hear Alanis Morissette trying to sing Cole Porter again. That was torture.

I don't think the movie would've disappointed me so much if I hadn't gone in with such high expectations. I mean, it's about Cole Porter, and I love his music, so I'll definitely love the movie, right? Plus, considering that most of the story is about his marriage and <<their conflict concerning his homosexuality>>, it made no sense that no one sang <<"I Get a Kick Out of You." I mean, "I get a kick though it's clear to me/you obviously don't adore me?">>

That was such a wonderful movie. So dear and sweet. I have been meaning to watch the sequel.

I rented Happily N'Ever After Friday night and fell asleep for the ending. It was just so boring and the graphics were so bad compared to Shrek or other animated movies. How it got made, I don't know. Loved Monk & Mambo (Wallace Shawn and Andy Dick), Rumplestiltskin (I stole a baby), as well as the militia dwarves. It was so uninspired. (Sigourney Weaver as Cinderella's stepmother, and Patrick Warburton as Prince Charming; George Carlin was the Sorcerer)

Later that night, I watched a dumb movie on Showtime called Do Not Disturb with William Hurt, Jennifer Tilley, Michael Chiklis, & a brief shot of Denis Leary. I'm not going to bore you with the details, but I'm normally not a huge William Hurt fan (except for Body Heat, but it's typical WH) so I"m not necessarily a good judge, but I'm definitely not the only one who thought it was bad. I only watched 10-15 minutes of it and just couldn't hold my attention. Warning you now.

Breach.

I liked it but it was kind of...boring. Partly because I basically knew the story, although I was unaware of Ryan Phillippe's character. But essentially, I think a story about SPYING itself is probably more interesting than catching a spy when you know who the spy is and that he was, indeed, actually caught. I guess the idea that the motivation for the whole thing was that >> they needed to catch him in the act so he would get a life sentence and spill his guts instead of just getting kicked out of the agency<< isn't particularly thrilling. He's no longer a threat, either way. I guess they couldn't really do a movie about Hanssen's spying, as it's classified.

I love Chris Cooper and I actually like Ryan Phillippe quite a lot, so that helps. But it was still a big whole meh.

Having a bit of an Austen mini-marathon, what with Pride and Prejudice last night and Persuasion tonight, but I don't think I can make it through Emma or Sense and Sensibility before bedtime. I like having something on while I write, but I don't watch TV anymore and I'm too lazy to get up and change the dvd.

I rented Breach this weekend too. It was alright, but honestly, Terry Gross's interview with the director and the actual FBI agent who brought down Hanssen is a lot more interesting than the movie. Like Billy Ray's other movie, Shattered Glass, Breach was almost too literal in its interpretation of a true event. It's like a really high production value tv movie. It left me feeling like I still wasn't getting the whole story. Of course, Hanssen's refusal to cooperate with the FBI has a lot to do with why we don't understand his motivations... but again, that's something that was explained in the interview, not the movie.

I also watched Flags of our Fathers this weekend, and I don't know if I couldn't get into it because it was actually that boring, or if I just have WWII fatigue (I've also been watching Band of Brothers and Foyle's War lately). I want to see Letters from Iwo Jima, but I think I might wait a while.

RE: the discussion of Gosford Park from a few pages back. The movie may not have worked perfectly, but when Altman can create a sense of place so sharp that a theater full of Texans audibly gasped when Emily Watson's character spoke out of turn at a formal dinner, well, that's saying something.

It was actually that boring. I am a veteran of dozens of WWII films, great and horrible, and none have bored me as much as that one did.

I just watched Copenhagen. I'm sure it's much better in play form, but I was so completely blown away by the writing that I didn't care about the weird things they did to adapt it to screen. There was a great moment while I was watching it where it dawned on me that I was not only watching a play about the fateful meeting between two of the most important physicists of the 21st century (Heisenberg and Bohr), I was watching examples of the very theories that they created played out before my eyes. There were dashes of other fun physics, too, including Schrodinger's cat. Highly recommended to anyone who dabbles in physics and likes a good play. And Daniel Craig is hot.

I also watched The Painted Veil, which was decent enough I guess. I would have liked it more if the cast had more chemistry... even when they supposedly hated each other, all I could sense was ambivalence. It was supposed to be tragic, too, but I didn't need a single tissue. I cry over commercials AND Star Trek shows these days, so that's never a good sign.

It wasn't so much a WWII film per se, as it was an anti-war film exploring the cynical way the government propped up "heroes" to justify the war effort.

After seeing both films, I certainly have to say that Iwo Jima was vastly superior. But the two films were very different, despite the related subject matter.

Blood and Chocolate. It wasn't very good, but I kind of loved it. Hugh Dancy was all head butting people, and they were all star crossed lovers, OMG. Except for not.

This book was amazing. Its one of my favorites; I love it an enormous amount. And this movie was nothing like it. But I would pay $5 to own it.

With the exception of the headbutting, I was less enthused than EggSpreader. I've seen better bad movies. And Hugh Dancy didn't wear the American accent well. he had that almost but not quite Southern thing going on and it didn't quite work. The movie just didn't know what it wanted to be, besides a poor man's Underworld.

The best part of how it was selected. I pulled it off the shelf and showed it to EggSpreader. Her comment, "Straight to video? We have a winner!"

We rented Human Nature this weekend. It is definitely Charlie Kauffman at his finested. I recall the film received mixed reviews when it came out. I found it highly entertaining and quirky. It was definitely more...French than some of his other movies. Loved it though. Rhys Ifans is always fun to watch.