Two highly recommended films: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Quills. The first possesses a certain lyrical beauty that is difficult to describe. The acting is excellent (Michelle Yeoh is amazingly expressive even when she is not speaking, and the other principals are also quite good). Ang Lee's direction is understated and highly effective. The stunts that have received so much attention were, for me, rather uninspiring. In fact, they were the least affecting part of the movie. But it truly is a movie worth seeing. Quills is also worth seeing, but the audience would be somewhat more limited. While particulars of the Marquis de Sade's life have been toned down, it is still not a movie for the squeamish. The film manages to juxtapose the melancholy and pitiful with the humorous and uplifting (the example of the insane asylum inmate with a fascination with fire springs to mind). While the filmmakers obviously have a point (several, actually) to make, it is still not a film that presents easy answers. They do not make the Marquis ought to be a totally sympathetic character; in fact, Geoffrey Rush portrays him as a man who is most difficult to endure. But he is a complex character, which is enough to ensnare us. This film refuses to take the easy way out, which would have rung hollow, and it is not a feel-good film by any means. Nevertheless, it presents the viewer with a certain satisfaction because it is excellent.
I am so sick of Hallie Kate Eisenberg. I hate those stupid Pepsi commercials at the beginning of movies. And I'm not the only one, apparently. There's a backlash brewing. She's going to be embarassed when she's older.
Disney is pushing Pearl Harbor hard. Very hard. I don't see how it makes a good movie concept, even by Jerry Bruckheimer standards. It was a single event, and not a particularly uplifting one either. While movies have been made about single events (Titanic comes to mind, though there is also the upcoming Thirteen Days as well as other war movies like Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line), those movies have had a certain degree of closure to them. Pearl Harbor is totally different. In both a historical context and a cultural one, it is regarded as the beginning of World War Two for America, and not so much of an isolable incident. While I don't believe movies should always sew up the endings, in this case it is so open-ended as to be ludicrous. And the only possible way to sew up a movie about Pearl Harbor is to have the words on the screen "After 4 years, Japan was finally defeated," at the end of the movie. Very unsatisfying. But then, this is Jerry Bruckheimer.