Reviews and More

I have never watched The Simpons TV series on a regular basis, but I’ve seen enough episodes over the years to get the basic premise of the show. I’ve always thought the show was pretty funny, so when I heard about The Simpsons Movie release over the summer, all I could do was wonder what took so long. I knew I would see the film at some point, and that happened over the weekend when I finally rented the DVD. It turned out to be similar to all the episodes I’ve seen: a few decent laughs, a couple of chuckles, and plenty of entertaining moments.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The plot for this movie was very straightforward, which I guess is a good thing since I’m sure a lot of younger kids wanted to see this. As the film opens, we see that Lake Springfield has become nothing more than a dumping ground for industrial waste, chemicals, and all kinds of other pollutants. After the band Green Day dies in the lake, Lisa Simpson decides that it’s time to take some action. With the help of an Irish boy named Colin, Lisa convinces the Springfield residents to stop dumping waste in the lake.

This works for a while, but then Homer gets a pet pig. At first, Homer just put the pig’s waste in a silo in the backyard; however, it begins to smell so bad that Marge demands that he remove it at once. On his way to the town dump, Homer learns that the donut shop is giving away freebies, so he decides to toss the silo into the lake to save time (and get to the donuts that much quicker).

The pig waste brings the lake’s pollution level to the breaking point. Mutant animals start appearing, which causes the federal government to get involved. An EPA official named Cargill decides to drop a huge glass dome over Springfield to seal in the residents and their problems. When everyone learns that Homer was cause of their domed existence, they form a mob and storm the Simpson home. The clan escapes through a sinkhole in the backyard, make it to the other side of the dome, and decide to move to Alaska to start over.

The rest of the film then deals with the the various mishaps that the family gets into on the way to Alaska, as well as Homer’s attempt to get back into Marge’s good graces and save Springfield.

My Reaction: I’m not sure how the hardcore fans reacted to this film, but to me it felt more like an extended TV episode than anything else. Yes, there were a couple of things thrown in there to remind me that I wasn’t watching FOX (like that shot of Bart’s penis or Marge saying “God damn”, but otherwise, there was very little difference from what they do every weekend. I guess it didn’t help that I watched this at home on a Sunday night instead of at the theater!

I have to say that I was disappointed that some of my favorite characters didn’t make it into the movie. I can’t believe the writers didn’t give Apu anything to do! And how hard could it have been to give Mayor Quimby a speech or two? After all, the pollution directly affected the town, so wouldn’t it be natural for the mayor to have something to say about the issue?

I really don’t have any comments about the plot because it was highly outlandish, as is usually the case with The Simpsons. At least it moved along pretty quickly, and at just about 80 minutes to the credits, there wasn’t much time to get bored.

Overall, I thought The Simpsons Movie was a decent film for a bit of mindless entertainment, so I give it 6.0 stars overall.

In order to have fresh content for this blog, I have to consume a lot of media. I always have 2-3 books going at any given time, watch at least two hours of primetime TV series (on DVD right now) per day, and try to take in at least half of a movie every day so I can have materials to review. Every once in a while, get tired of taking notes while I watch TV or movies, so I kick back with an old favorite, grab a bowl of popcorn, and just enjoy the show. Recently, I had a chance to watch The Color of Money again — one of my favorite movies of the 1980s.

The Color of Money is more or less the sequel to the 1961 film The Hustler. Paul Newman reprises his role as “Fast” Eddie Felson, a remarkable pool player who made a living by hustling games at different pool halls around the country. After he became well known, it was impossible for him to hustle anymore, so he gets out of the game. But then he meets Vincent (played by Tom Cruise), a young, obnoxious hotshot who spins and twirls his pool cue after running the table on his opponents.

Eddie sees a lot of himself in Vincent, and decides that together, the two of them can make a lot of money. He then starts teaching Vincent how to hustle, how to dump games in order to set up his opponent for a big payoff.

After some initial objections, Vincent eventually embraces Eddie’s methods, and the two do indeed start cleaning up. But then Eddie and Vincent start seeing things differently and have a bit of a fallout, which sets up their meeting at a big Atlantic City pool tournament.

I won’t give away the ending, but instead recommend that you see the film for yourself. No, it’s not one of Scorsese’s best films; however, it’s a lot of fun and there is definitely some great pool action in it.

Despite the fact that it just opened on Christmas Day, there’s already been a lot of Oscar buzz about Denzel Washington’s new movie The Great Debaters. I’ve been hearing about this film for more than a month now, and when all the positive reviews started rolling in, I decided that I’d go see it in theaters. Obviously, there’s always the chance that a film generating this much hype would be a disappointment in the end, but that didn’t happen here.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The Great Debaters presents the true story of the 1935 Wiley College (Marshall, TX) debate team coached by professor Melvin Tolson (played by Washington). The team was comprised solely of African-American students at a time when racism, lynching, and Jim Crow laws were still facts of life in the South.

Nevertheless, the Wiley College team overcame every obstacle in their way, and through sheer persistence, were able to secure invitations to debate against all-white universities — including Harvard, the reigning national champions.

Considering the title, the plot dealt surprisingly little with the actual debates. Instead, the focus was on team members Henry Lowe (Nate Parker), Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett), and James Farmer, Jr. (Denzel Whitaker), and their interactions with Tolson. We see Tolson helping the students work through their separate issues to make them not only better debaters, but also better, stronger individuals.

A running subplot in the film was how Tolson spent his off-campus hours trying to organize sharecroppers (both black and white) into a union. This didn’t sit well with local authorities, which led to even more problems for Tolson and the team.

In the end, however, they all make it to the Harvard debate, and, drawing on the horrors that they lived through and witnessed, manage to defeat the reigning national champs.

My Reaction: I knew nothing about Melvin Tolson or the Wiley College debaters before going into this film, but that didn’t detract from my viewing experience at all. I thought this was a very powerful movie that dealt with major issues (without getting preachy), so I can definitely see why it’s making all sorts of Top-10 lists for the best movies of 2007.

I thought Denzel Washington was fantastic as Tolson. He’s just so believable in this type of inspirational mentor role that I couldn’t really imagine anyone else being as effective in the part. In addition, I thought Denzel Whitaker was awesome as James Farmer, Jr., the precocious 14-year-old college student. I’m sure we’ll be seeing him in more movies in the future!

Ordinarily, I don’t like it when subplots overpower the main events in a film, but The Great Debaters was definitely an exception. Everything that was going on with the lynching and unionizing attempts was so relevant to the students’ lives that it would have been impossible to separate one story from the other. Plus, even with all the sidetracking, I thought the pacing of the film was quick enough to prevent me from being bored.

The only thing I didn’t like about this film was the fact that it didn’t bother to explain the debating format or anything about the way the debates would be judged. It’s as though the filmmakers assumed that the audience would already be familiar with such things or wouldn’t care about such details, but that wasn’t the case with me. As a result, I didn’t know what was going on during the climactic scenes against Harvard, and had no way to gauge if the Wiley team was doing well or not. Let’s face it: debate is not like, say, football. You can’t just assume that people will understand what’s being judged during the speeches.

Overall, I thought The Great Debaters was a very moving film. It is certainly one of the year’s ten best, and is absolutely worth seeing in the theater. I give it 8.0 stars out of 10.

With the writers’ strike still in full swing, I’ve been branching out and watching some different television shows. I recently borrowed the entire first season of Showtime’s Dexter from a friend, and have gone through a few episodes already.

I wasn’t too taken with the pilot because I actually found the premise to be a bit off-putting. But I stuck with it, and have found subsequent episodes to be a lot more engaging.

I think the best part of the show is the titular Dexter, played by Michael C. Hall (in an amazing departure from his previous Six Feet Under character). Dexter is a forensics specialist with the Miami police department who happens to moonlight as a serial killer.

He chooses his victims carefully, making sure to go after scumbags (child molesters, wife-killers, rapists) who have somehow escaped justice. And like most serial killers, Dexter takes a token from his victims. Instead of the usual personal effects like cufflinks, money clips, or earrings, Dexter likes to take blood samples, which he preserves on microscope slides and keeps in a box. Weird, huh?

My friends who like this show positively RAVE about it, so I can’t wait to get into it a bit more. Hopefully I’ll end up enjoying it just as much as everyone else!

I like to have audiobooks on my iPod to help me pass the time when I’m driving or exercising. However, I don’t buy audiobooks because they’re relatively expensive and I’d never listen to anything more than once, so I have to rely on free stuff from Librivox, my friends, or the public library. Free is great, of course, but the selection is extremely limited. I guess this is a good thing, in a way, because it forces me to branch out and try stuff that I ordinarily wouldn’t even consider. That’s precisely why I picked up The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by Lilian Jackson Braun.

I’d heard a little bit about Lilian Jackson Braun before checking this book out, but not enough to know what to expect from it. I figured, however, that since she’s published more than 25 novels in this Cat Who series, that the book was at least mildly entertaining. I was right.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The main character in the novel is a man named Jim Qwilleran. He used to be a respected crime reporter for a major newspaper, but lost his touch (and quite a few jobs) after he started drinking heavily. He has now cleaned up his act and is looking to make a comeback, but none of the papers will give him a chance — except the Daily Fluxion. And he won’t be on the crime beat anymore; he’ll be writing fluff pieces about the numerous artists and galleries in the city.

Qwilleran’s first assignment is to interview a local artist named Cal Halapay. During the meeting with the strange young man, Qwilleran learns quite a bit about the city’s art scene. Specifically, he learns that most of the artists have a beef with the Daily Fluxion’s art critic, a man named George Bonifield Mountclemens III. Mountclemens has a habit of mercilessly lambasting artists, which is why very few people like him. Qwilleran also learns about a few other artists in the area and about how very competitive they are with each other.

The interview piques Qwilleran’s interest in Mountclemens. He has never met the critic because he works from home, sending his articles in on tape. One evening, however, Mountclemens invites Qwilleran to his house for dinner. It turns out that Qwilleran actually likes Mountclemens (and his Siamese cat Kao K’o-Kung), and ends up renting an apartment on the first floor of Mountclemens’ home.

Things get interesting when Earl Lambreth, the owner of the most successful gallery in the city, is murdered. There are several suspects, but no real leads, so the investigation goes nowhere. Of course, Qwilleran isn’t a detective, so he doesn’t even concern himself with the problem too much — beyond the usual idle speculation.

Soon thereafter, another artist dies in what might have been an accident or might have been murder. And finally, Mountclemens himself is murdered as well. Now Qwilleran becomes a bit more active in trying to figure out what’s going on, and he eventually does solve the crime — with the help of Kao K’o-Kung (Koko), the cat who could read backwards.

My Reaction: I was caught a bit off guard by this book because I was expecting it to be an all-out mystery. But it seemed to me that the crimes were actually a subplot, while the main point of the book was to introduce the reader to Qwilleran and the cat. I found Qwilleran to be likable and all, but focusing on him when he wasn’t even investigating the murders made the book progress a bit too slowly for my tastes.

I have to admit that with this being an audiobook, I got the names of the artists confused all the time. I couldn’t remember who the characters were, which other characters they were in contact with, and what kind of grudges they held against each other. Of course, this made it impossible for me to piece the clues together on my own, so I had no idea who the killer was until Braun revealed it at the end. Even then, I couldn’t remember the character’s significance in the novel, so I’m afraid most of the mystery plot was lost on me.

Nevertheless, I thought this was a decent little book in its own way. It’s certainly not what I’m used to, which is perhaps why I liked it despite its lack of action. I guess a change of pace is a good thing every once in a while.

If you’re looking for a hardcore murder mystery, The Cat Who Could Read Backwards is not for you. But if you don’t mind a character-driven piece with a bit of mystery thrown into the mix, then go ahead and give this one a try!

I am pretty much indifferent to Pixar films. I don’t go out of my way to see them, but neither do I actively try to avoid them as some people do. My five-year-old son apparently feels the same way, as he never asked to see Ratatouille until this past weekend, even though we’ve been walking by the DVD cases at Blockbuster for months now.

I’d seen previews for Ratatouille, of course, but wasn’t really intrigued by the premise of a rat who wanted to be a chef. Nevertheless, I was determined to give this movie a fair shake as I sat down to watch it with my boy. I shouldn’t have bothered.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Rémy (voiced by Patton Oswalt) is part of a rat colony living in the ceiling of a cottage on the outskirts of Paris. While the rest of the colony is content to scavenge garbage like most rats, Rémy is different. He has more refined tastes, and prefers to eat from the kitchen — an extremely dangerous practice, as it leaves him out in the open and makes it easier for humans to spot him.

Rémy has other quirks as well. He has a highly developed sense of smell, which lands him the role of poison-sniffer for the colony. Moreover, he enjoys watching cooking shows on TV, particularly one hosted by Auguste Gusteau (Brad Garrett), the foremost chef in France. Gusteau’s motto is that anyone can cook, and Rémy takes those words to heart. His biggest dream is to become a chef, so he practices whenever he finds the kitchen empty.

Soon a couple of things happen that put Rémy on the road to chefdom. First, Gusteau dies after a scathing review from top food critic Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole), leaving his restaurant in the control of Skinner (Ian Holm), a former sous-chef. Second, Rémy gets separated from his colony and winds up right outside of Gusteau’s restaurant. This is significant because it allows him to meet Linguini (Lou Romano), a young man who has recently been hired at the restaurant as a janitor.

As Rémy watches from outside the window, he sees Linguini spill some soup and then try to fix his mistake by adding a bunch of nearby ingredients. Rémy is horrified at what the outcome might be, so he slips into the kitchen and touches up the soup. It’s a big hit in the restaurant, prompting Skinner to demand that Linguini recreate the soup or be fired. Linguini can’t do it, of course, so Rémy decides to help him. He’ll hide under Linguini’s chef hat and control his movements by tugging on Linguini’s hair, much like a puppet master.

The rest of the film then deals with the way Rémy helps Linguini attain success in the kitchen and in his personal life. Various subplots are resolved along the way, including identifying Gusteau’s rightful heir, satisfying the critic Anton Ego, and making Rémy’s cooking dreams come true.

My Reaction: Despite my initial feelings that Ratatouille didn’t look all that great, I actually found myself liking (and rooting for) Rémy during the first quarter of the film or so. But as soon as I realized that Rémy wouldn’t actually be able to talk to Linguini, everything went downhill for me.

I mean, let’s see if I can get this straight: the filmmakers gave us a rat that could talk, read, cook, and understand people, but then decided that it would be too much of a stretch to have the rat be able to speak directly to said people? What’s up with that? It made no sense at all, and rendered the scenes between Rémy and Linguini incredibly boring.

I guess one could make the argument that if Rémy and Linguini could talk, then one of the biggest obstacles of the plot would be removed. I can understand that to a point, but how hard would it have been to come up with other problems that a rat who wants to be a chef would potentially face?

And I wasn’t the only one in my household who didn’t like this film. My son was bored throughout, and didn’t even bother to finish it.

Overall, I was expecting Ratatouille, with its obscene $150 million budget, to be so much better. I was extremely disappointed with this latest project from Pixar, and give the film just 5.0 stars out of 10.

Even though I like watching movies based on true stories, I’ve been wary of A Mighty Heart ever since it was released earlier this year. I was definitely interested in getting some new insight into what happened behind the scenes of the Daniel Pearl kidnapping; but at the same time, I’d heard about all the mixed reviews this movie received, with some of the more cynical critics deriding it as a showcase for star Angelina Jolie to get an Oscar nomination. This was enough to put me off for a while, but I finally gave in and rented the DVD over the weekend. I should have just stayed away.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The film opens with a few short scenes of Danny Pearl (played by Dan Futterman) interacting with his pregnant wife Mariane (Jolie). Both of them are journalists, and they’re in the city of Karachi, Pakistan so Danny can chase down various interviews and stories, most notably about the attempted bombing by Richard Reid. He finally got a big lead, a potential interview with a man named Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani at a restaurant in Karachi, but mysteriously disappears during the cab ride.

When Danny fails to come home or call, Mariane becomes agitated. The political unrest in Karachi was well known, so she felt that there was definite reason to worry. She calls people at the U.S. Embassy, at the Wall Street Journal (where Danny worked), and got some of her friends to make sure that the local Pakistani police agencies were involved as well.

The different players try to piece together Danny’s movements in the days leading up to his disappearance. They comb through his emails and phone records, and try to track down everyone who had contact with him. After a few days, they finally get a new email on Danny’s computer: he’s been kidnapped by extremists who are protesting the treatment of Pakistani detainees in the U.S. They believe that Danny is really a CIA agent, and demand the release of Pakistani prisoners or they’ll kill Pearl.

The rest of the film then shows how the different agencies, both Pakistani and American, race against the clock to try to track down Danny and his kidnappers before it’s too late. Of course, I’m sure that 99 percent of the people who watch this film already know the outcome, so I’m not giving anything away when I tell you that all these efforts fail and Danny is beheaded — on video.

My Reaction: It’s hard for me to write a negative response to something that’s so personal and tragic to real, living people (the Pearl family), but I thought this film didn’t focus on the right story. When the Pearl case unfolded back in 2002, it was a gripping, terrifying, and ultimately tragic story that captivated a worldwide audience. The reason for that was simple: the images of a shackled Danny Pearl with a gun held to his head were frighteningly memorable. Danny was the story then, not Mariane. And that’s where the film went wrong.

Instead of focusing on Mariane during this tragedy, I think the filmmakers should have given the audience a chance to get to know Danny. We saw him for all of, what, two minutes before he disappeared, which simply wasn’t enough time to care about him or to become emotionally invested in what happened to him.

The bulk of the film should have been about Danny, showing us what kind of reporter he was and how he was working hard to chase down the Richard Reid story. Then give us the kidnapping, a condensed version of the efforts to find him, and finally, the tragic result. That’s the story I wanted to see. And think about it: 10 years from now, is the next generation of moviegoers going to understand what the hell this film was about? No, because it doesn’t do anything to set up Danny’s character!

Why the filmmakers chose to focus on Mariane is a mystery to me — particularly since she didn’t do anything the whole time! She kept her cool, didn’t freak out until she his death was confirmed, and then was right back to being her strong self on TV interviews and so forth. Kudos to her for being such a together woman, but does that make for a compelling film? Absolutely not!

Moreover, it was impossible for me to keep all the other characters straight. I didn’t know who was who, what agency they represented, or what their connection to Danny/Mariane was. As a result, the movie was a jumble most of the time.

Overall, A Mighty Heart was not at all the kind of film I was expecting. I was extremely disappointed with the result, and give it 6.0 stars out of 10.

Back in 1987, I was just beginning to go to movies without my parents. On Friday nights, they’d drop me off at the local theater so I could meet my friends, and then they’d pick me up again after the movie ended. I clearly remember that one of the first films I wanted to see with my friends was The Monster Squad. I had a major crush on the lead actor André Gower, and couldn’t wait to see him in this.

Of course, once the movie came out on VHS tape, I asked for (and received) a copy for my birthday — and promptly wore it out from repeated viewings. It took a long time for The Monster Squad to come out on DVD, but you better believe I purchased one as soon as I was able to get my hands on it!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Gower stars as Sean Crenshaw, the leader of a club called The Monster Squad. The club basically consists of Sean and his friends Patrick (played by Robby Kiger) and Horace (Brent Chalem), and all they really do is hang out in their treehouse, read comics, and quiz each other on the appropriate ways to kill werewolves, vampires, and other assorted creatures. They’re also trying to recruit local tough guy Rudy (Ryan Lambert) to join the group.

One day, Sean’s mom, who knows all about his obsession with monsters, buys him an old diary from a garage sale. It was written by a man named Van Helsing, a well-known vampire hunter who lived in Germany a century ago. Sean is ecstatic to receive such a present, but unfortunately, it’s written in German. He and his friends therefore have to go ask a neighbor known as Scary German Guy (Leonardo Cimino) for help in translating the diary.

The diary tells of the existence of a special amulet that helps preserve the good in the world. Once a century, however, the forces of good and evil become perfectly balanced, and on that day, if the amulet is destroyed, the forces of evil can run rampant and take over the world. The next D-Day is just around the corner, which means The Monster Squad has to recover the amulet before Dracula and his henchmen can get to it.

The rest of the film then deals with The Monster Squad’s preparations for the big showdown with Dracula in their efforts to save the world from being overrun by evil beings.

My Reaction: I saw The Monster Squad so many times when I was younger that I remembered most of the movie when I watched it for the first time as an adult. I have to admit that this is the sort of film that will only appeal to a small group of people. It’s not a true “horror” movie, as there are no scary parts at all (well, very young kids might get scared, but that’s about it), but it’s not quite campy enough to endure as a true cult classic. To be honest, I was a bit bored during my viewing over the weekend.

Now that I’ve seen it with my adult perspective, I realize how totally outlandish the whole concept is. I mean, forget about the fact that the movie has Dracula, Frankenstein, a werewolf, and an aqua-thing in it. How about the major coincidence of the amulet showing up in a town that happens to have a Monster Squad in it? Or that Sean’s mom happened to buy Van Helsing’s diary just in time for Sean and his friends to save the day? Obviously when I was a kid these things didn’t matter; but it’s hard to overlook this stuff now.

Overall, however, I can’t rate The Monster Squad that low because I have such a nostalgic attachment to it. As a result, I’m giving this film 6.5 stars out of 10, and will qualify my rating by admitting that I’m being generous here!

There are a lot of new movie releases that I want to see in theaters right now, so it was very difficult to settle on just one when my husband and I went to the cineplex last night. However, since my husband was in the mood to see something light and entertaining, we finally selected National Treasure: Book of Secrets, the sequel to the 2004 hit National Treasure, which grossed more than $173 million at the box office. I really enjoyed the first film, and was looking forward to seeing this second one. Unfortunately, the formula that worked so well three years ago came off as being, well, formulaic this time. The result was a film that was flat and boring, with none of the excitement or wonder of the original.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The film opens with treasure hunter Benjamin Gates (played by Nicolas Cage) giving a lecture about why his great-grandfather Thomas Gates should be considered a Civil War hero. But just as the lecture ends, a man in the crowd says that he has one of the missing pages from the diary of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth. The page lists Thomas Gates as one of the co-conspirators, which would obviously change everything that Ben and his father Patrick (Jon Voight) have thought about their ancestor.

The accuser is Mitch Wilkinson (Ed Harris), a black market artifacts dealer who wants to bring some historical glory to his own family. Wilkinson gives the missing page to Ben so he can compare it to the original diary. It seems to be a fit, but Ben still doesn’t believe his great-grandfather was involved. He wants to run some additional tests on the fragment, so he calls up old pal Riley Poole (Justin Bartha), who is now a best-selling author. Riley needs to help Ben break into his old house since his girlfriend Abigail (Diane Kruger) kicked him out. Ben needs Abigail’s ID so he can get to a spectral imaging machine to check out the fragment.

Sure enough, there’s a cipher on the diary page. That sets the rest of the plot in motion, as Ben, Patrick, Riley, and Abigail try to clear Thomas Gates’ name. Ben firmly believes that Thomas, in accordance with family legend, burned the diary pages to prevent the Confederacy from finding the so-called Cibola, a Native American City of Gold. If the Confederacy had been able to get their hands on that kind of capital, the outcome of the Civil War would have been different.

The treasure hunt leads from Washington, D.C. to Paris and London, before finally winding its way back to D.C. again. The ultimate clue lies in the Book of Secrets, a tome that passes from U.S. President to U.S. President and contains the nation’s biggest secrets. The book is supposedly kept in the Oval Office, which of course poses quite a problem for Ben and his team.

Nevertheless, Ben manages to succeed in the face of all these obstacles (as well as near-constant pursuit from Wilkinson) and find the City of Gold — near Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota.

My Reaction: As I said, I really enjoyed the first National Treasure movie, but I was completely disappointed by this one. Everything unfolded more or less in the exact same way as in the first movie, but because I was familiar with the gimmicks, they simply weren’t fun anymore. It also seemed like everything happened much too quickly in Book of Secrets. The filmmakers didn’t bother setting anything up and waiting for a good payoff. Instead, Gates and his team get a clue, and three minutes later, they’ve already solved it and have moved on to the next one.

I liked the first one so much because the team actually had to work at solving the clues. This time, everything came far too easily — including that harebrained scheme to “kidnap” the President. In one scene Ben says the only chance he has of getting to the Book of Secrets is if he can ask the President about it point-blank, which means they would have to be alone. In the very next scene, the team is in place to converge on the President’s birthday bash. Whaaat? With no planning at all?

I was also disappointed with the Cibola reveal. It was almost the same as the Freemason treasure room from the first movie, but this one was a lot less jaw-dropping. There should have been far more gold, far more glittering, far more… treasure.

Even the comedic moments seemed a bit forced in this film. Riley, who was so funny in the first movie, was trying way too hard in this one. Almost everything he said was intended to be humorous, but only a few of his one-liners actually evoked laughs. The best part was when he got in the car expecting to drive, only to realize that there was no steering wheel in front of him because they were in England. Other than that, I can’t remember any other truly funny moments with him.

Overall, I think Book of Secrets really missed the mark. When the entire cast returns for a sequel, and you have the addition of great actors like Ed Harris and Helen Mirren, then audience expectations will understandably be high. Book of Secrets fell well short of what I thought it would be, so I’m giving it just 5.5 stars out of 10.

I’ve been meaning to see Bug ever since it came out in theaters over the summer, but because it was going up against Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Spider-Man 3, I managed to miss it. Then I kind of forgot about it until I started seeing the DVD case at Blockbuster, and finally got around to renting it a couple weeks ago.

I was expecting this to be a horror movie because that’s how it was marketed way back during its release, and because it was directed by William Friedkin, of Exorcist fame. However, I discovered that Bug was more of a psychological thriller than anything else — a scenario that simply didn’t work for me in the end.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Ashely Judd stars as Agnes White, a lower-class woman who lives in a motel apartment and works as a waitress in a lesbian bar. The opening scenes show us that Agnes is skittish and jumpy because of prank phone calls she’s been receiving. No one ever speaks; all she ever hears is heavy breathing. She suspects the calls are from her ex-husband Jerry (played by Harry Connick, Jr.) because he’s due to be out on parole now, but she has no proof of this.

One night after work, a fellow waitress from the bar named R.C. (Lynn Collins) drops by Agnes’ apartment with Peter (Michael Shannon), a drifter she recently met. Agnes and R.C. drink and do cocaine, while Peter just hovers in the background watching them. R.C. leaves a little while later, but Peter stays on. He and Agnes get to talking, and it’s revealed that he was in the army for a time, and is currently between living arrangements and jobs. Agnes invites Peter to stay the night, and he accepts.

The next day, Jerry shows up. He comes in uninvited, takes a shower, hits Agnes, takes all her cash, and then leaves again just as Peter comes in. Peter helps clean Agnes up, the two get to talking again, and they eventually end up sleeping together.

From that point forward, the film focuses almost entirely on the way Peter and Agnes feed off each other’s problems. Peter is soon shown to be an extremely paranoid, delusional person who thinks the army is conducting experiments on him. He’s convinced that the army has somehow infested Agnes’ apartment with bugs as a means of taking him down. He exhibits bite marks despite the fact that neither Agnes nor R.C. can actually see any bugs, and spends a lot of time looking at things under a microscope. Soon after, Agnes becomes convinced that Peter is right, and they both descend into complete madness.

My Reaction: As I said above, this was certainly not the horror movie I was expecting it to be. I nevertheless watched it with an open mind, hoping that the story would be worthwhile anyway, but I was extremely disappointed by what I saw. I usually appreciate psychological thrillers — at least when the basic premise or the main characters are interesting enough to carry the film. That just wasn’t the case with Bug, so the whole thing fell flat.

First of all, I didn’t feel any kind of connection with either Agnes or Peter. I’ve read some fan reaction stating that Agnes and Peter were supposed to be regular everyday joes, but that didn’t fly with me. A delusional drifter and a white trash drinker/drug user who sleeps with said drifter within 24 hours are certainly not the kind of people I’ve ever been around. So I didn’t have any sympathy for either of them right at the beginning, and the script didn’t give me a chance to care about them as the story progressed.

Second, the premise just wasn’t engaging enough. So these two loony loners in a dumpy motel room believe they’ve got a bug infestation on their hands? They scratch themselves until they bleed, do up the room in tinfoil and bug zappers, and then barricade themselves in against intruders? Meh. Not exactly exciting stuff there.

Speaking of those bug zappers, how did they even afford so many? The cheapest ones are like $20 each, and there were at least 10-15 in the room. Agnes never had anything but crumpled singles in her purse, while Peter probably didn’t have much either. I know this is merely a nitpick, but I was totally distracted by these questions when I saw all those zappers on the screen.

Judd and Shannon were pretty good with the material they had to work with, but I just couldn’t get into their story or care about their plight. As a result, I give Bug only 4.5 stars out of 10, and recommend that you skip it.