Movie Clip Notes

A sweet ending to a wonderful movie.

Winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Palm d’Or in 2006, The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a beautiful film about Ireland’s struggle for independence, and how it tore apart friends and family. Solid acting, incredible cinematography, heart wrenching story, adds up to a powerful movie.

A last letter home full of love, honor and forgiveness. [SPOILER]

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**Attempted to provide some sweet movie clips, but it looks like the movie studio (Universal Pictures) has put a block on any sort of “fair use” videos of their movie. Lame.**

The Kingdom was a somewhat welcome surprise of a movie. I didn’t have very high hopes for such a plot in the time of other reactionary U.S. versus the Middle East movies this year. But The Kingdom was more of an action/detective story, and kept the preachiness to a tolerable low level.

And the two main, non-American actors (Ashraf Barhom and Ali Suliman) performances were excellent.

Plus, any movie espousing “Pabst, [is the] best beer on the planet” gets top marks every time.

The awesome trailer. “Bullet the Blue” by U2 always felt to me to be the weakest song on their Joshua Tree album, until this trailer, when I heard the lyrics for what seems like the first time. “In the howling wind comes a stinging rain, see it driving nails into the souls on the tree of pain.”

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Lady Chatterley reminds me in all the right ways of the similarly wonderful movie, The Lover. Incredibly sensual love scenes, very little dialogue, a forbidden love, pitch perfect acting.

And Marina Hands is absolutely breathtaking. I look forward to seeing her in future movies.

Is The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (now that’s a mouthful) worth seeing? I guess so.

It’s interesting to see how Jesse James might have been during his latter years. But the story goes on and on, with little insight into anyone but Robert Ford’s motives.

And while Casey Affleck is creepy as hell, which is ideal for his role, Brad Pitt brings nothing to the movie. Is there a discernable difference in his acting when he’s showing some heavy emotion (anger, sorrow) between this movie and Troy and Fight Club? His crying always seems to make me laugh.

Crazy Love is a documentary about the simply unbelievable true story of a man who has the woman he loves blinded with acid when he can’t have her. And then, incredibly, when released from prison, convinces the same woman to marry him. Fascinating and disturbing.

At least she gets to nag him for the rest of his life. Maybe that’s punishment enough, but probably not.

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This one scene near the end gives me goose bumps especially after knowing the full story.

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“Cinderella story, out of no where, a former greens keeper, now about to become the Master’s champion.”

An absolute classic.

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I really still can’t explain why, but this movie has always had a profound effect on me. With this scene being the most effectual (is that even a real word or the right context?!).

[NOTE: Again, another ending, so major spoiler]

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Love is far too often romanticized in movies to the point that it resembles nothing like a real world relationship (other than maybe the first 10 minutes of a new flame).

Love is rarely that easy. It’s about acceptance. It’s about possibility. It’s about the ride.

“Ok.”

[NOTE: This is the ending, so it contains a major spoiler]

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I had such high hopes for this comedy, especially after listening to the always funny Paul Rudd explain the movie’s interesting premise at last year’s Sundance. And with such a great cast, how could you go wrong.

The Ten truly was an odd and eccentric movie. But also, unfortunately, very unfunny. It was actually quite bad, to be honest. The “CAT Scan” piece and the final bit had one or two funny jokes, but the rest was simply not funny, I don’t care where your sense of humor lies.