On paper, Invictus seemed like the kind of movie I should have loved. It tells a true story. It stars Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon (who obviously knows a few good diets for quick weight loss since he was looking fit and trim again, shortly after packing on all those pounds for The Informant). There’s a healthy dose of sports involved. It was directed by Clint Eastwood. But, man, the execution was just godawful!! The film is so boring and took so long to get off the ground that I gave up on it. I watched for 38 minutes (that’s the first seven chapters according to the DVD) before finally turning it off in frustration and disgust.

What happened in that 38 minutes? Not a whole heck of a lot. Eastwood spent most of that time showing us that there was friction between blacks and whites in the early ’90s in South Africa when Mandela came to power. Yeah, no kidding. Did it really require that many scenes to show us most blacks favored Mandela and most whites didn’t? Ugh.

There were only a couple of rugby scenes in the first 38 minutes, which is another indication of how short on action the film was.

Hey, this might have turned out to be a great movie — after all, it did get a lot of good reviews — but I’ll never know because I was bored out of my skull and refused to subject myself to any more punishment.

I give this film 0 stars out of 5.

This is not going to be a real review, for the simple fact that I couldn’t get through the whole film. Quentin Tarantino is kind of hit or miss for me: I love some of his stuff, hate others. File Inglourious under “Hate”.

Ugh, I could only stomach about 40 minutes before giving up in disgust. Was the plot moving anywhere? Was there ever going to be any dialogue worth listening to? Actually, I’m surprised I even made it 40 minutes. That long-ass opening scene, which consisted almost solely of a couple of talking heads, was excruciatingly boring — with absolutely zero payoff for sitting through 20 minutes of gibberish. Yeah, I’m sure the girl who escaped turns up later in the film to exact her revenge, but I didn’t feel like sitting through nearly 3 hours to see it. Seriously, listening to my little cousin jabber on about all the new truck accessories he’s gonna buy with his allowance is infinitely more exciting and interesting than anything I saw in the first part of this film.

Look, I’m sure there are people who love Tarantino and think that I’m probably not smart or sophisticated enough to appreciate his “genius”. Whatever. I hated the movie and wasn’t about to waste 2 more hours of my life on something so utterly craptastic. I give it 0 stars, obviously.

I like Anne Hathaway as an actress, so when I saw that she received rave reviews and an Oscar nomination for her role in the 2008 film Rachel Getting Married, I decided to check out the DVD. I was encouraged by the fact that the film as a whole received overwhelmingly positive reviews from professional critics, and by the fact that Jonathan Demme directed the project. It felt like a can’t-lose situation — but how wrong I was about that!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Hathaway stars as Kym, a young woman who has been in and out of rehab a few times. As the film opens, Kim is currently in a residential treatment program, but gets a weekend furlough to go home for her sister Rachel’s (Rosemarie DeWitt) wedding.

Right from her initial interactions with family members like Rachel and father Paul (Bill Irwin), it’s clear that Kym is used to being the center of attention. No matter what’s going on, she tries to turn things around so that the spotlight falls squarely on herself. She immediately makes waves by insisting on being the maid of honor despite the fact that Rachel already selected her best friend Emma (Anisa George) for the position, and the situation deteriorates from there.

The rest of the film then shows numerous extended scenes covering the preparations for the wedding (such as the rehearsal dinner) as well as the ceremony and reception itself. Through it all, Kym proves herself to be a constant source of tension and unease for her family, and as more is revealed about her backstory, the audience learns why this is so.

My Reaction: I usually try to make the reaction section of my reviews as thoughtful as possible. It annoys me when people say that a movie “sucked” or was “awesome” without giving specific reasons why they felt that way. That doesn’t help anyone and contributes nothing to a discussion about films, so I try to avoid giving generic responses like that.

But I don’t know if I have the energy to say why I hated Rachel Getting Married so much! This film was so bad that I can’t for the life of me figure out why it has received positive press. This makes me feel that I’m missing something, but I really don’t know what.

There was absolutely nothing in this film that I liked, and that includes Hathaway’s acclaimed performance. She was good, not great, and certainly not amazing enough to distract me from the utter crapfest that was the rest of the film.

Ugh, from the shaky handheld cameras used from beginning to end to the interminably long and boring scenes (dishwasher loading contest, rehearsal dinner speeches, wedding reception dances, etc.), this was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in my life. I sat through the whole damn thing just to make sure I didn’t miss a stunning moment that would warrant a high rating. I didn’t.

Since I base my star ratings on how entertained I was while watching a film and how likely I would be to watch it again, I give Rachel Getting Married 0 stars out of 5. I can’t imagine ever willing to subject myself to another sitting in this lifetime. I’d watch almost anything else over this — and if that makes me lowbrow, then so be it!

More than anything else, I’m drawn to particular movies by the actors and actresses who appear in them. I think performances have a huge impact on films, and really determine whether or not the finished product turns out well. If you start with a great script but have mediocre actors, you risk losing the story. Conversely, great actors can sometimes (not always) elevate a mediocre script to something better than anyone hoped for. Unfortunately, there are also times when even good actors can do little with the source material, and that’s exactly what happened in the 2000 film Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her presents a series of five stories (most other reviewers call them “vignettes,” so I suppose I ought to do the same) that turn out to be very loosely connected because some of the characters overlap. Each vignette gives viewers a glimpse of the various challenges faced by the featured women. The stories begin in media res, in the middle of things, and don’t even provide any neat resolution. I guess they’re supposed to mirror real life in that way. Each vignette begins with a title card that tells us what the story will be about.

The first one is called “This is Dr. Keener,” with Glenn Close in title role. We see her at home, taking care of an aged parent and frequently leaving messages for another doctor. From her tone and look, it appears that she’s not calling the other doctor for professional reasons.

While at home that day, she has a tarot card reading with a woman named Christine (played by Calista Flockhart). Christine looks at the cards and immediately starts describing Dr. Keener’s life, as portrayed in the cards. We can see from Keener’s reaction that Christine’s reading is spot-on.

And then that particular vignette ends. (No, really.)

The second story is called “Fantasies About Rebecca.” Rebecca (Holly Hunter) is a bank manager who has been having an affair with a married man (Gregory Hines) for three years. When she learns that she’s pregnant, she thinks that the only thing to do is “take care of it.” Before doing so, however, she has a fling with a co-worker named Walter (Matt Craven) and strikes up a strange relationship with a homeless bag lady who hangs out in the neighborhood where Rebecca works. When Rebecca gets her abortion, we see that her surgeon is Dr. Keener. Afterwards, Rebecca is devastated about what she has done — even though she never for one second contemplated keeping the baby.

The third story is called “Someone for Rose,” and it features Kathy Baker as Rose, a single mother who works from home. She has what appears to be a very strange relationship with her son Jay (Noah Fleiss) and also becomes obsessed with a dwarf named Albert (Danny Woodburn) who moves into the house across the street. Rose stares at Albert’s house all day long (and sometimes at night, too) hoping to catch a glimpse of him. Jay jokingly tells Rose that Albert could be the man of her dreams, but she just laughs it off. However, when Albert shows up at her door with a bunch of flowers, she looks very happy. The end.

The fourth story is called, “Goodnight Lilly, Goodnight Christine” and brings us back to the Christine character from the Dr. Keener sketch. Christine is in a lesbian relationship with Lilly (Valeria Golino), and we see that Lilly is dying from cancer or some other terminal illness. The two spend a lot of time talking to each other, and Christine recounts the time they met. Yeah, it’s that boring.

The fifth story is called “Love Waits for Kathy,” and features several of the characters from previous vignettes. Kathy (Amy Brenneman) is a police detective who lives with her blind sister Carol (Cameron Diaz). Carol is beautiful and has the more active love life out of the two. In fact, she’s just beginning to date someone new: Walter from the “Rebecca” segment. Kathy is shown helping her sister get ready for her dates by putting on makeup for her, and then sitting forlornly at home while Carol has all the fun. Then Carol’s relationship with Walter ends abruptly just as Kathy starts dating someone from work.

My Reaction: I have to say that this was one of the most excruciatingly boring films I’ve seen in a long time! The characters from each vignette barely interacted with each other at all and their connections weren’t even important, so what was the point of overlapping them in the first place?

The vignettes themselves seemed utterly random and pointless as well. The only one that came even close to making sense was “Fantasies About Rebecca;” all the others just made me want to jab my pencil in my eyes to make the torture come to an end.

And what was up with Rose and Jay? Was their relationship creepy or what??? As soon as Rose grabbed Jay from behind and hugged him after she looked at his freckle or whatever I thought something was strange. Then that whole thing about smelling his breath? Huh??? And then when Jay called her into his room and he was sprawled out on his bed in just his boxers — with one hand halfway down his pants??? That’s a normal mother-son relationship? Uh, I don’t think so. It was gross and uncomfortable, and had me fast-forwarding so I wouldn’t have to endure that crap any longer.

Overall, Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her wastes the talent of its cast members and the time of its audience. I give it 0 stars out of 5 and beg you to skip it for your own good. No wonder this movie went straight to Showtime instead of being released to theaters!

I like to watch a good mix of current films and movies that have been around for a while. I haven’t always been such a huge movie buff, so I’m sure there are plenty of good flicks from the last 20 or 30 years that I haven’t seen yet. During my last trip to the video store, I saw the 1996 movie Stealing Beauty on a shelf of Staff Recommendations. I like Liv Tyler well enough and vaguely remembered hearing good things about this particular title, so I rented it.

Tyler stars as 19-year-old Lucy Harmon, a young American girl whose mother has recently died. Lucy’s father sends her on a trip to Italy to have her portrait painted and to interact with some of the people her mother (who was a poet) knew when she was younger. I think some are relatives and others are friends. We also learn that Lucy is a virgin (she would like to change that) and that she’s not sure the man she’s thought of as her dad all these years is actually her biological father.

Unfortunately, that’s about all I got from the plot. This filmed crawled along at a friggin’ snail’s pace, and I gave up on it after 45 minutes. That paragraph up there? Is all I could figure out about the movie in all that time. I rarely ever give up on movies (I can usually watch from beginning to end no matter how bad they are), but this was complete suckage. Nothing happened in the first 45 minutes. Sorry, but I value my time too much to waste it on complete garbage like this!

So this isn’t a proper review of Stealing Beauty and I don’t expect to influence any opinions about the movie from what I’ve written here. Nevertheless, I’m still going to hand out a rating. I give this movie 0 stars out of 5 and think that it is one of the worst I’ve ever seen.