Movie reviews

A friend saw Big Fish and really liked it. A very beautiful and touching movie. One of the few cases where a movie surpasses the book that it's based on. (The classic example being Jurasic Park.) Highly recommend Big Fish. Well worth watching.
And there's probably some other movies I should mention, too. I've (mostly) stuck to reviewing the ones that are part of the movie project, but the FP Gal and I see other ones too. Don't think I've mentioned any since Million Dollar Baby, but I probably should.
One of the better movies I've seen this year was a film called Millions. A movie about two young brothers that find millions in illicit cash. The older brother is very worldly and wants to spend the money. The younger one, though, is different. His world is populated with saints. He's studied them very carefully and they appear to him and guide his way. The idea of patron saints is odd (to this non-Catholic) and the movie plays that oddness very well. Saint Peter for instance is fasicnated with keys. A wonderful movie.
Star Wars III, of course. (No spoilers.) If you've seen the other five, you have to see this one. It does the absolutely necessary work of tieing up all of the strings and presenting them well. But...I wasn't overwhelmed. Some of the major flaws of the first two (well fourth and fifth) remained here. The dialogue was still poor, especially the love stuff. The characters were almost utterly humorless. A Han Solo character would have been manna from heaven. And the complex politics behind all of the conflict were still very murky. One problem this one had in comparison is that the rest of the movie world has caught up with the special effects and it had a tough row to hoe. Not a bad movie by any means, but I really wish Lucas had only been the producer instead of writer/director. Still, a must see.
War of the Worlds, too. (Spoilers, sorry!) Was quite excited to see this one. Speilberg is a very good director and this should have been a very good film. But...it really wasn't. Tom Cruise is very two dimensional and I've always found him good or at least serviceable. The technical part of the movie is excellent, but didn't have nearly the punch that 'Signs' did as far as inspiring fear.
The most disappointing thing was the huge plot holes. If aliens visited millennia ago to bury machines under the ground, why didn't they just attack then? Wouldn't stone age man have been an easier opponent? And if aliens are attacking population centers, why would you flee to a different major city? And was it one plane that crashed or several? The wreckage seemed to imply that a whole fleet had dropped on that one suburb.
And the ending wasn't satisfying either. I know that it's true to the book, but what was a twist ending 100 years ago is cliche now. And it made the rest of the movie seem pointless. Was the theme of the movie really that nature will somehow take care of it all? Really? Or was it just an excuse to show big alien machines and blow stuff up. Expected better of Speilberg.