Reviews by Al

Animated films.  Not bad, but nothing spectacular. 

Amazing how Flushed Away just simply ignores the obvious nasty thing about toilets and sewers.  I guessed they were determined to stick with this rat story.  I look forward to the other rat story,  Ratatouille (which I’ll probably see at least 6 months from now…)

Happy Feet seems to assume all their viewers have seen March of the Penguins before; they’re probably right.  Several scenes are actually more (or less) spectacular versions of scenes from March of the Penguins.  I did get a kick out of the scenes of the penguins taunting the sea lion and killer whale predators while on land.

An interesting film with a proper ending — I wonder if it matches the book’s ending.  I also wonder about Edward Norton’s voice.  It’s high like a school boy’s.  No wonder the woman doesn’t like him.  How could you respect a guy with a voice like that.

I haven’t seen the original film, Infernal Affairs, but I can believe this one is no comparison.  Sure, there are moments of brilliance, especially when DiCaprio is on the screen.  You feel his terror at the possibility of being found out.  But the villain, played by Nickelson, is not truly fearsome.   He’s coasting a bit and having too much fun.  He’s not quite smart enough and has no idea that DiCaprio is the mole.   And Damon is not so good as the evil mole.  I disliked him, but perhaps not enough.  In the end, he attempted to be too sympathetic.  I should’ve liked him to be more totally evil.  Perhaps they should’ve got a different girl also.  I think she is more central to the real plot, but somehow she didn’t quite have the star power, for me anyway.

Still, the story is good.  It makes you think about how you can know someone for a time and still not really know them.  Typical spy stuff, but yet interesting and entertaining.

A Hitchcock film featuring Montgomery Clift and Anne Baxter.  I liked it a lot.  Monty is quite good as the priest who heard a murderer’s confession.  The DVD extras talk about how Hitchcock liked to get the scenes focusing on the actors eyes and then what those eyes were looking at.  Monty has great and expressive eyes and serious presence needed for this film.  He has various moments in the film where he expresses or hides his surprise — Interesting.  This is also a film made a few years before Monty’s car accident which damaged his jaw and altered his looks slightly and health, both for the worse.

Here again also, the ending of this film was apparently changed versus the original material.  In this case, I agree it’s too bad, but the current ending is still suspenseful.

I liked this film marginally better than the other one: The Illusionist.  Partly because the Illusionist was more predictable.  The Prestige has quite an interesting twist or two in the end.  Plus it has Hugh Jackman (who apparently is left-handed).  The idea that magicians of old had huge egos and competitive drives is pushed to the extreme with these two movies.  Prima donnas with dark pasts and willing to dance with the devil to be claimed the best magician.  Incomprehensible to my mind, but I suppose I’ve always been a person of modest ambition.

An early Hitchcock film has a few minor holes in the plot.  Not as good as several of his later films though.  The male lead is more than a bit unattractive, or perhaps it’s the manner of dress and hair of the 30’s.

A documentary by Discovery Channel about the differences between the sexes.  Combine this with learnings from the book The Selfish Gene to see a genetic reason why women might live longer than men.

This book was written 30 years ago, but amazingly the science behind it is still valid.  Learn about genetics and how everything is geared towards survival of genes, and not the necessarily the soma (body) containing the genes.

After watching several French films, I’ve come to realize the French are a different sort.  Not in a bad way, but just different.  Here a French police woman reconnects with her ex-boyfriend, is an ex-alcoholic, and was a mother, before her son died at a young age.  Life is tough it seems.  The young lieutenant learns the ropes with her and other detectives as they chase a couple murderers.  The divergence from Hollywood and Hollywood’s tendency towards star power rather than story is refreshing.

I didn’t recognize Olivier in this film by Hitchcock.  I suppose he doesn’t have a very distinctive face.  Older, but not unattractive here.  Joan Fontaine was very young and pretty and she plays an innocent quite well.  Hollywood code required that the film be changed from the du Maurier book in a significant way.  I actually like the film the way it is.  But the book is much darker and quite different from the film.  I wonder that Hitchcock might have been quite disappointed about not being able to take more liberties with the film, but apparently he was somewhat micro-managed by producer David O’Selznick.  There is a lesbian story-line which surprisingly survived the censors.