Since I haven’t been blogging regularly since about August, I’ve seen a lot of movies that have not been properly reviewed. I probably won’t have the time to do so, or, by the time I do have a chance, I will not remember enough about them to give honest reviews. So here’s a movie review brief.
The Ladykillers – Tom Hanks leads a small band of criminals in a bank heist by conning an old woman who lives near the bank. Weird, quirky, darker than you’d think. Hanks does a pretty good job of playing a slimy bad guy. 2 grins

Being John Malkovich – John Cusack plays a frustrated puppeteer who gets a dull clerical job in an office with four-foot high ceilings. He finds a mysterious opening behind a file cabinet that leads into actor John Malkovich’s brain. It’s even weirder than it sounds. Still, I like weird, so I enjoyed this one. 2 grins

Seven Years in Tibet – Brad Pit plays a self-absorbed Austrian mountaineer, caught in the Himilayas at the outbreak of World War II. He escapes a British prison camp and stumbles into a forbidden Tibetan city, the home of the Dalai Lama. The story is well written and well acted. If you can stomach a heavy dose of Hollywood pacifism, it’s a good movie. P.S. Brad Pit can’t do accents. 3 grins

The Sixth Sense – M. Night Shyamalan’s creep show about a boy who sees dead people. I’d seen the last half of this show on cable, so knowing the surprise ending made the first half more interesting. Otherwise, it’d be a really slow, boring movie. 2 grins

Bewitched – Very clever story is not a remake of the TV series. Instead it’s a movie about the making of a remake of the TV series. Nicole Kidman is brilliant as Isabel, cast to play Samantha and Will Ferrell is equally brilliant as the Hollywood narcissist Jack, cast to play Darrin. Great, fun movie. 4 grins

Brothers Grimm – A good, scary, well acted fairy tale. Two brothers who make a living as Elizabethan era ghost busters slash con men find themselves caught up in a real live ghost story with a real live wicked witch. 3 grins

Hotel Rwanda – I watched this one on my computer while working in the wee hours, pausing it to write code, and watching it during builds. Don Cheadle plays a prim and proper manager of a five star hotel in Rwanda during the Tutsi/Hutu “ethnic clensing”. Cheadle plays the character brilliantly as he struggles to cling to normalcy but ends up housing refugees in his high-dollar hotel and bribing the authorities to keep the refugees alive. The fact that this is a true story makes it even more fascinating to watch. 3 grins