Movie List by date Reviewed

1 December 2008 - I watched "Hancock" starring Will Smith and Charlize Theron. I think that Charlize is the next most beautiful actress in Hollywood after Halle Berry. I liked Hancock but wasn't crazy about it. I enjoyed it better than "I Am Legend". I guess I could deal with the silly special effects on Hancock better than the ones on "I Am Legend". The monsters had the tendancy to creep me out. My rating is that I will watch it twice and the 2nd time will be on BluRay DVD or HD off of my satelite dish but I won't purchase it.

10 October 2008 - There have not been many movies that deserved to be discussed. There are exceptions. I liked "Iron Man" and "10,000 BC" very much. I liked them enough that after renting them, I went back and purchased the BluRay DVDs. There were movies such as "The Visitor" that kept my interest but many others that just don't deserve to be mentioned.. I have come across good prices on some BluRay versions of old movies that I like but they also don't deserve to be discussed.

27 July 2008 - I had a lot better luck with "The Man From Earth". I hate discussions and the whole movie was about a professor that was leaving, telling his lifes story. When he admits that he is immortal and is 14,000 years old, the movie gets a little bit strange. It wasn't so strange that I stopped it, got up and walked around but it was strange because it yanked the cords of his friends basic beliefs. Some reacted better than others and that was half of the entertainment.

19 July 2008 - I rented "The Ruins" but didn't finish it. The stupidity coefficient was too high. When the locals pointed guns at the kids and the girl started taking pictures with her camera, I muttered "stupid bitch" and a little bit later, after one of the kids was hit with an arrow and also shot, I hit the stop button. I continued playing the movie latter but when things were pulled out of the mouth of one of them, I decided that enough was enough and ejected the movie. I needed to get it back to Hastings to get the $2.00 off and thought that wasting more time on a movie I wasn't enjoying was a waste of my time.

7 July 2008 - I rented "Anatema", which is a movie about a woman in war torn Kosov. It has a 5 vote rating of 7.8 on IMDb but there isn't much of a synopsis. Personally, it was a movie that I just couldn't finish. The stupidity level was too high. The main character is a worman who is raped, is made pregnant, and keeps the baby. Stupid theme #1. The whole character of the American photographer, "David Swartz" is stupid theme #2. I must have made it about 2/3 through when I uttered some truly nasty words and hit the eject button. By getting it back early, Hastings knocks $2 off my next rental. So, Anatema only cost me $1.99.

4 July 2008 - I watched "10,000 BC" and "The Spiderwick Chronicles" recently. I waited to rent 10,000 BC because there were so many bad reviews. When I wrote this, it only had a 4.9 rating on IMDb. The main complaints were the acting and historical information. For what it is worth, it didn't miss history nearly as bad as the 1954 movie, (Sitting Bull), did. It has Sitting Bull leave Canada to come back into the USA to rescue a soldier that helped him escape. In the real world, Sitting Bull fled to Canada in 1876 and didn't return until 1881. If a soldier had helped him escape and was to be executed for treason, he would have been dead a long time by 1881. For the most part, I actually enjoyed watching 10,000 BC. It entertained me and I don't ask for anything more from a Movie.

I didn't like "The Spiderwick Chronicles" that much. The two characters that Freddie Highmore played were over the top and I cringed at the dialog at times. Now he wasn't mouthy enough for me to cheer if one of the nasty critters had grabbed him but it would have been close. I had actually thought of buying it in Blu-Ray but a $1.99 rental saved me from that blunder. The viewers have given it a 7.0 on IMDb, so, that means that were a lot more people that enjoyed it than didn't. I would have tended to give it a high 5 or low 6.

21 June 2008 - After watching "Under The Same Moon", I went to Amazon.com and read the reviews. One seemed to be particularly bad and compared it to "August Rush", which he thought was better movie. I went back to Hastings and rented it. After watching it, I had to agree that "August Rush" was a better movie but I would bet that the Hispanic community around here knows Carlitos and they have never met an August Rush. I was curious enough and did a Google search on "august rush" and after reading a number of reviews, I decided that the the best review I had read was at rogerebert.com. He hit all of the points that made it enjoyable to me personally. It seemed to be something people enjoyed or they hated it. He only gave it *** but thought it was a movie kids would enjoy. I am a long way from being a kid and I also enjoyed it.

19 June 2008 -  I only found one movie released on 17 June 2008 that I was interested in. It was called "Under The Same Moon (La misma luna)". The movie is in Spanish with English subtitles available. It was about a mother that had emigrated illegally to the US and left her son with her mother. The grandmother dies and the boy takes off to find his mother in the USA. There was an interesting appearance by "Los Tigres del Norte" who picked up the boy and his grumpy, unwilling companion. They wrote a song that they sang for Carlistos in the movie as they were driving down the road to a gig in Arizona. I really enjoyed the movie. I loaned it to some Hispanic friends and they all cried at both the happy spots and the sad spots. I have all of LTdN's recent CDs and I was disappointed that the song wasn't on one of their CDs.

I also purchased "Al Otro Lado" with "Under The Same Moon" because one of the actors was Adrian Alonso. It was not nearly as enjoyable as UTSM. The story has 3 independant plots, something I really do not like because of the disruptions to each story. In the first pass, I only made it to where Fatima, the Moroccan girl, was led to the hold of a ship containing a number of children. The first thing that came to mind was that instead of getting to the other side, she was going to be sold into prostitution or something equally bad. I wasn't in the mood to watch something like that and hit the stop button and killed the movie. That didn't happen but the movie was not satisfying. The ending left nothing basically changed. It was not a movie you would watch for enjoyment.

The movie Jumper was released on 10 June 2008. I watched it once straight through. That is a clue as to whether I like it or not. I decided that I liked it enough to buy it on Blu-Ray. I liked the original book called Jumper better than the one about Griffin. Samuel Jackson made an awesome paladin.

3 June 2008 - I have some changes. I liked Rambo 4 so well that I bought it and 1-3 on Blu-Ray. Hastings had a $12.97 off if you purchased all 4 movies. That dropped the price of each to under $14. Not too much later I found Stargate SG1 on sale at Wal Mart for $14.96. It is much cooler in HD. The BD version was the extended cut, which I hadn't watched. I also purchased "The Punisher" on BD for the same prices as SG1.

I have 5 or 6 movies that I really like. In no particular order, they are: Blade Runner, The Quick and The Dead (Sam Elliot's version), Stargate SG1, The Dancer Upstairs, Code Name: Dancer, and Final Countdown. I have some of them on Blu-Ray and have no hope for the rest. I have a second level but there are so many movies in that list that they are impossible to enumerate.

28 May 2008 - I watched "Rambo 4" last night. I have an HDTV and watch from 2 positions. One is a reclining chair about 15 feet away from the TV. If the movie is really good, I have been known to get a ice cooler and sit much closer to the TV. I was sitting on the cooler when I watched Rambo. Watching the "special features" was interesting because some people claimed that as bloody as Rambo is, it is less than in tight combat.

This time, what makes it special, is that Rambo starts out as a really flawed character and he redeems himself at the end. Stalone said that he directed it as if Rambo was directing it, which made it pretty gritty. It obviously made the Myanmar regime unhappy because in the special features they say that selling it can be fatal.

29 April 2008 - I have been preoccupied with learning Spanish and have neglected adding new movies. Only 2 of them really ranked high in my mind and they are "Charlie Wilson's War" and "The Brave One". I thought Cloverfield was so bad that it came close to being added to my "Really Terrible Movies" list. Some people that I know really liked Cloverfield but to me it was so strange that it was almost funny. "I Am Legend" was pretty good but it didn't make it to the really great category. I was thinking about buying it as Blu-Ray and rented the Blu-Ray. I decided that seeing it twice was enough. After HD died, the Blu-Ray people have gotten greedy and think a Blu-Ray is worth $35. I don't think any movie on Blu-Ray is worth more than $24.99. So, I haven't been buying at lot of Blu-Ray. This lets me save money and travel to Mexico. I was looking at the current releases and almost went into shock when I saw they wanted $39.98 for "The Golden Compass" on Blu-Ray.

29 December 2007 - I watched "Eastern Promises" last night. It had Vigo Mortensen as an undercover agent in the Russian Mafia. It was a really weird movie to watch. It isn't a movie you watch for enjoyment but you can't stop it once you start playing it.

22 December 2007 - I purchased an HD DVD of "The Kingdom" because of the trailer. Jamie Foxx is an actor, that to me personally, hits most of his parts. I didn't think of him as an actor until he starred with Tom Cruise in Collateral. He played a kind of dumb cab driver caught up in Cruise's hit mission. The next movie I watched was "Stealth" and he was kind of an over the top as a pilot of a cool airplane. Jessica Biel had the advantage there. In "The Kingdom", he is an FBI agent with an agenda of finding out who killed a friend in a Kingdom that resembles Saudi Arabia. An American investigative team is not going to be allowed to do anything but they show up and produce results. The are so many scenes that will keep you riveted in your chair but the car bomb scene on the freeway and the final shoot out are awesome, simply awesome.

10 December 2007 - I rented "Battlestar Galactica: Razor". I have had problems watching the series but Razor was susposed to be a gritty story of the Pegasus before it encountered Galactica. It was an interesting background story for the series.

2 December 2007 - I don't remember ever watching Glen Ford in "The 3:10 to Yuma". He was an actor that played a variety of parts flawlessly. I liked his westerns where he played really slick gunfighters. Superman and Spiderman were disappointing to me because he played a meek old man. Van Heflin plays the part of Dan Evans, a man hired to take Ben Wade (Glen Ford) to Yuma. The interaction between Wade and Evans made it an interesting movie to watch.

I have been watching some previously released movies in HD. I have a new Toshiba HD-A3 DVD player. I have a Sony HD TV that does 720p or 1080i and the A3 supports those resolutions. It was also on sale for $199 and came with 7 HD DVDs. I was really going to buy a Blu-Ray but they are another $200 more.

The African scenery in "Blood Diamonds" was interesting. "The Unforgiven" came in a package. A scruffy Clint Eastwood playing an aging gunfighter that couldn't hit the side of a barn with anything other than a shotgun is still scruffy gunfighter whether it is DVD or HD. "Bourne Identity" is another that better detail doesn't improve the movie. The menu options are significantly better on HD but I am not sure that is a sufficient reason to watch these moves.

I keep going by the Blu-Ray demonstration in Best Buy and "The Kingdom of Heaven" is much more awesome in HD but it is only available in Blu-Ray. I have wanted to watch 2001, A Space Odessy, but haven't seen a copy of it lately. When Bourne Ultimatum is released, you can safely bet that I will buy the HD version. I had to rent Transformers to see if I made a mistake in buying the regular version. The best deal on it was more than my pain threshold, so, I don't feel bad having a regular DVD version of Transformers.

23 November 2007 - I rented "Beat The Drum". I was a little off on my concept of what the movie was about. I have liked African drums and harmony since I was around 20 years old. That was a long, long time ago. Wondering about this mysterious illness that was killing the village also caught my attention. Following Musa as he developed an insight that had bypassed the elders was interesting. I don't know if the truth would set them free but it certainly changed their future.

22 November 2007 - I bought "Live Free or Die Hard". Lots of action. It has the typical unbelievable code breaking hackers. The introduction of the F-35 was interesting. There is a long list of errors on IMDb. It was still an interesting movie to watch.

16 November 2007 - I rented "Amazing Grace". It is about William Wilberforce and his effort to banish the slave trade in England. The common feeling was that to banish slave trading will make the British Empire collapse. This created enormous pressures to maintain status quo. Opposition to this concept could be considered sedition and etc. Watching them move forward to the vote was both boring and anxious. It isn't a movie for enjoyment but more for enlightenment. Watching the bagpipes playing "Amazing Grace" as they single step up to the rest of the military band was an emotional moment.

15 November 2007 - I rented "Urban Justice" by Steven Segal. One person rated it as being his best film since "Fire Down Below". I think I have to agree with that. There is excessive swearing but that is probably typical for the environment. The excessive violence goes with the territory. I figured something was different because the local video store had more than one copy.

13 November 2007 - I purchased 2 DVDs today. They are Avenging Angel staring Kevin Sorbo and Shakira's "Oral Fixation Tour". I would occasionally catch Sorbo in Andromeda and Hercules. I didn't realize how tall he was until he did the "Walking Tall" series. They caught my attention and I rented them. I thought they were much more realistic than the one done by "The Rock". Of course, Dwayne Johnson's specialty is comedic stunt action. In the "Avenging Angel", Sorbo is a preacher that offers sanctuary to some people run off of a farming claim by the greedy rancher. Men sent by the rancher chase them down and kill them. In the process, the Preachers wife and daughter are also killed. Sorbo's part turns from preaching to being a bounty hunter. He has a pretty miserable life at that point but he ends up back in the town where he lost everything and decides to take on the greedy rancher and the corrupt Sheriff. In the scene where he confronts the Sheriff, he calls him "baby killer". It is another one of the flawed personality to redemption plots that I like so well.

Shakira's "Oral Fixation Tour" DVD really surprised me. I have moved away from listening to her CDs because, for me, she is hard to understand. Still, I own all of her CDs. She is one of my original artists that sing in Spanish. Around the middle of the show, Shakira does this song (No) where she dances in a red dress that will blow you away. I was trying to work in the kitchen and listening while I worked. The sounds made me think something was going on and I stepped into the living room where my HDTV is located and all I could see was this spinning and undulating red thing. I seem to remember invoking one of the dieties and stood there with my mouth open in shock. Then, she does a belly dance to "Whenever, Wherever" and goes out into the crowd. The mic is live and it is wild.

I remember watching some of her music videos when she first became popular. Univision had a show called "Exitos de Onda Max" that I left turned on the TV while I worked. It was mostly music videos. For Shakira, the music would pull me in and the video would drive me back into the computer room. You will not do that with this DVD. It is also obvious for anyone that has watched her perform that she has someone arranging her dancing because she is a much, much better dancer.

8 August 2007 - I finished watching Pathfinder and then, I watched the 2-DVD version of "Red Dawn". Pathfinder was a little much for me. The violence was probably characteristic of a Viking attach but that doesn't mean it is entertainment. Red Dawn was Red Dawn. I think it was as realistic as a partisan style guerilla war being waged in the USA could be. The Wolverines were teenagers. They started out being lucky. They were taught how to fight by soldiers as the movie was being made, which made them look the part, as the plot developed.

26 July 2007 - I finally watched a really interesting movie, at least to me. It is called "Nomad - The Warrior". It is a historical epic movie about the Kazakh legend that one individual would gather the tribes into one nation in the 18th century. It became Kazakhstan. You have people that descend from Genghis Kahn. In the final battle, you have nomads with arrows, spears, and swords fighting against canons. I really enjoyed it.

You can watch it in Kazakh with subtitles or English. Personally, it seemed inapropriate to watch it in English, at least the first time I watched it.

13 June 2007 - I bought "Ghost Rider" and rented "Breach". The IMDb rating for GR was only 5.5 and I thought that I was going to have problems watching the comic strip character movie and wanted one in hand that was less trouble. It turned out that I had no problem enjoying GR and stopped Breach to watch GR. I have read some of the user reviews and have come to the conclusion that most people have problems with movies made about comic strip characters. It is a comic and I don't expect life like cgi. Breach, on the other hand, was rated around 7.4 and it made me squirm to watch. I eventually finished it but it took awhile.

10 June 2007 - I taped and watched "Sor Tequila". It is another "La India María" movie. She plays a Catholic nun who is constantly getting into trouble. It is all slapstick humour. It is in Spanish but doesn't have subtitles.

9 June 2007 - I was desperate and watched a movie called "Crooked". In retrospect, it was one pretty girl and a bunch of fading stars. You have Don Wilson and Olivier Gruner being the only 2 honest cops. You have to see the whole list of actors on IMDb where it is called "Soft Target". It was much more enjoyable than I expected. First of all, Hastings only had 1 DVD. That means it was not anticipated that it would have a high call for renting. I call it a 1-*. Well, it has a 2.8 rating on a scale of 10 on IMDb and that would make it a 1.4 on a scale of 5.

30 May 2007 - There are a number of movies about "La India María". The first one I watched part of was "Tonta, Tonta pero no tanta" or maybe "Dumb, dumb but no so much". María is played by María Elena Velasco. You have an Indian woman from the montains going into the big city where even crossing the street can be life threatening. Her primary mode of travel is a burro and you can imagine the slapstick humor that can develop. For example, what all can happen if you have María in the driver's seat of a pickup and it starts rolling downhill. The Spanish is simple; however, you probably need to be Méxicano to appreciate the humor. Even being raised by Méxicano parents may not be sufficient to appreciate the humor. The movies are still funny. You just won´t be rolling on the floor laughing so hard that you are crying. Individual shows are all reviewed as "La India María" in Spanish Cinema.

23 May 2007 - I was awed last night by Apocalypto and Letters From Iwo Jima. For the first time this year, I have 4 movies that went beyond the norm and provided me with entertainment. It has been a long dry spell waiting for a real hit. Apocalypto in Drama Movies.

20 May 2007 - I have watched several movies that I have not commented on. "The King", which stars William Hurt and Gael García Bernal. Bernal has a tendancy to appear in quirky kinds of movies. In the end, I clicked forward several times because I just couldn't sit and watch the scene.

Pan's Labyrinth was a much better movie. It kept me on the edge of my chair almost all of the time. Reviewed in Spanish Cinema.

Seraphim Falls also did that. Neesen's part was kind of like a badger that wouldn't let go. Brosnan, on the other hand, was pretty adept at getting away but never by much. It was also kind of funny to listen to 2 Irish boys talk with a western accent. That isn't too far from reality because many of the early emigrants were Scot-Irish. I have been thinking about this movie and decided in humor that it was (Badger Boy against Wolverine). Badger Boy was the name of an Indian warrior from an old Western book. He was called that because he wouldn't back off. There is a movie about a spec-ops warrior that was called Wolverine for the same reason. Combining the two had a ring to it and seemed appropriate.

9 May 2007 - I watched "Music and Lyrics". I only watched it because one of the reviewers on IMDb said that it was much better than the average ratings. I had to agree. I watched it in one setting. Much later, I found a previously rented version and bought the movie.

8 May 2007 - I watched "10 Items or Less" last night. Well, that isn't completely true because I skipped to the next bookmark several times. I would have never finished it if I hadn't. I happen to like to watch Paz Vega and Morgan Freeman. Unfortunately, this isn't a movie that you should make a real effort to find.

28 April 2007 - I watched the Spanish telenovela "Pasión de Gavilanes". It was interesting and dumb all at the same time. You have 3 brothers that want revenge after their sister is wronged and she commits suicide. Their targets are the 3 Elizondo sisters. More in Spanish cinema.

I also watched Déjà Vu and .45. Déjà Vu was by far the most interesting show that I have watched in the last 2 or 3 weeks. It provided me with much more entertainment than "The Last King of Scotland" did. I am always leary of movies staring Denzel Washington. He played whinners so long that I have a misplaced, bad image of him similar to my opinion of Sean Penn prior to watching "The Interpreter". More in Action cinema.

The movie ".45", on the other hand, was just totally strange. Watching some co-dependant woman being abused was not enjoyment, although, watching her get revenge gave it some redeeming value. I hate manipulating people and she manipulated everyone she knew in order to get revenge. Finding out who finally set that up made the movie enteresting enough to finish. Reviewed in Action cinema.

19 April 2007 - I have watched several new movies. They are El Aura, Bendito Infierno, Mi Mejor Enemigo, and The Last King Of Scotland. I had problems finishing all of them. El Aura is reviewed in Spanish Cimema and so are Bendito Infierno, and Mi Mejor Enemigo.

The Last King of Scotland is reviewed in Drama.

11 April 2007 - I purchased "Buscando a Leti". It didn't have any awards but it had both English and Spanish subtitles. The DVD has "Searching for Leti" as an English title. It is about a disfunctional family separated by immigration to the United States (EE.UU). A racist grandmother left in charge of the children made for miserable times. Dealing with life was the search. Reviewed in Spanish Cinema.

I finally finished Volver tonight. It was better than I thought it would be. It had too many layers of complexity. It also had a lot of comedy involved. A non-talking Russian that likes to watch Spanish TV is a good example of things that were put over people in the movie. Reviewed in Spanish Cinema.

1 April 2007 - I saw a really strange movie tonight because Hugh Jackman was in it. It was called "The Rat Tamer". He was damaged between when he was arrested and he showed up at the prison. Because of the beatings and what ever, he was not functional mentally. One of the guards held him responsible for his mates death. The guard was border line insane. It was a vicious circle until the final scene.

30 March 2007 I rented Pursuit of Happiness and Children of Men. Children of Men was really strange. The primary actor was Clive Owens. He typically plays quirky parts and this was one of them. The premise was that mankind had become infertile and he is asked to take a pregnant girl to a shelter. Owens part dies waiting for a ship to take them to a refuge shelter and you don't really have an ending.

Pursuit of Happiness had a good rating but I simply could not get interested in the story. I watched about 1.25 hours and ran out of rental time and took it back.

29 March 2007 - I purchased "Happy Feet". So far, I have only watched it in Spanish. That is not really a good way to watch this movie. The songs are all in English and the speech is in Spanish. You feel like you have the wrong movie.

28 March - I was in Best Buy and saw the movie "De Nadie". It had a list of awards on the back cover but the text is so small the I really couldn't read them. We have a large percentage of Hispanic people that live locally. Many are supposed to be illegal. Most of the Hispanic people I know are from Mexico but I have met people from Mexico to Chile and Argentina. I don't understand the drive to get here. So, the trials and tribulations of people trying to get into the US illegally are of interest. Reviewed in Spanish Cinema.

27 March 2007 - I have been slow updating this blog again. The movie I enjoyed the most in this timeframe was Eragon. It was aimed at teenagers but anyone that loves to read fantasy fiction will like Paolini's trilogy. I watched it once to enjoy the movie and then, I watched it to see what the Spanish version was like. The Spanish subtitles do not follow the audio track. What happened to the Spanish script?

The next most interesting was Blood Diamond. You have Dicaprio playing a hustler, thief, or whatever trying to find a pink diamond. He finds it and gets involved with getting it to market. A pretty reporter follows the diamond to the end. It was enlightening to watch. More in Action Cinema.

I also watched "The Departed" but it was not nearly as interesting for me as the others.

22 February 2007 - I watched Babel yesterday. I was glad that I rented it and didn't purchase it. It was too involved for my taste. It was typical Iñárritu in that the individual stories were all related. I watched it in one setting, which places it into my special rating.

I liked Flags of our fathers much better. FOOF appeared to be much more realistic than the John Wayne version of the capture of Iwo Jima. "Sands of Iwo Jima" was the name of the "John Wayne" movie. When it was filmed, the Duke was full of action and always died at the end. The sergeant in FOOF also died. He just wasn't the main character in the movie. Sarge was played by Barry Pepper and he always does a good job.

3 February 2007 - I was watching a movie that I purchased a long time ago. It is a rescue drama called "Lost In The Wild". It is about some Air Medicine people that run a clinic in Mexico. On a flight down, one of the planes developes engine trouble and crashes in the Jungle. The drama is about rescuing the people in the plane and fighting the bueracracy and arranging for a jet medivac. Because of the drug problems, planes do not have clearance to fly at night but the air rescue jet from San Diego can not get there before dark. I had the Spanish subtitles turned on because the Spanish is simple except when they are dealing with the medical emergancy. One of the bloopers involved Rosie, who was played by Jennifer Lopez. She tells José that her father comes from Oaxaca but the subtitle had Guajaca. IMDb had a weighted average of 4.3 but I think that it is was much more interesting that that.

28 January 2007 - I made my walk through of Hastings and here is a list of the movies that I have been very slow to review. They are: Archangel, Backlash, Attack Force, Blackbeard, Broken Bridges, End of The Spear, An Inconvienent Truth, The Matador, The Russian Specialist, Second In Command. I will add more later. Of this list, I could not finish Attack Force, and The Matador. A lot of people liked Matador. Since it was loaned to me by my neighbor, I didn't feel bad ejecting the DVD.

I have a hard time dealing with Al Gore, so, the fact I watched the movie and finished it is important. Some of the satelite channels on DirecTV have documentaries where someone says something and then they chop it up in to little segments and you don't know if they were for the title or against it but the cons had been cut out. I expected An Inconvienent Truth to be cut up like the others but it was not and it was fairly coherent. Not too long ago, Michael Crichton said that Gore had it wrong. It was within days that I read "State of Fear" by Crichton. Crichton has data from an official site that shows an temperature oscilation after 1880 and 1960. Shortly after his book was published, the data was truncated to only show the current rise. That makes me suspicious. Was it inconvienent data that conviently disappeared.

I thought the two best movies were End of The Spear and Broken Bridges. There were troubled people that came together and a reconciliation occured at the end. End of The Spear was about missionaries that were killed by the tribe they visited. Later, the son of one of the missionaries becomes a friend of one of the killers. For an ending, he took the son to where they had killed his father. This is the kind of movie I really like.

Broken Bridges is about a country singer at the end of his trail. The next step down is oblivion but he goes home and meets the daughter he never knew he had. She reinvigorates him. The singing is really good. A flawed person is redeemed at the end.

Next came Archangel and Second in Command. In Archangel, a British Professor was investigating the life of Joseph Stalin and there were a lot of people that were still staying out of the reach of the public.

Jean-Claude Van Damme was appointed 2nd in command in the US Embassy in an Eastern European nation. The military started to overthrow the legal government and the task of stopping them fell on the part played by Jean-Claude Van Damme. I thought it was one of his better movies.

The woman starring in Backlash would get the crap kicked out of her by much larger men and then get up and come at them again. Come on, get real. She would probably have broken bones and would need help to just get up. I thought Blackbeard had potential but never got started. I did finish it and that gives it a few points. The Russian Specialist was watched too long ago to be fair. I remember watching the whole movie but I can't remember how far above 5 out of 10 I went or how far below.

27 January 2007 - Last night, I watched "Green Street Hooligans". The people at Hastings had told me on numerous occasions to watch it but it was never in when I went past it in the racks. It was an interesting movie because an American, who had unfairly been kicked out of Harvard as a drug dealer, ended up in the underground hooligan group on Green Street called the "Green Street Elite". The hooligans are rabid fans of football (European style). The story goes along way towards explaining how the violence we read about happens around football (soccer). After being involved in fighting and developing a rep, talking on the lying rich kid was a snap. It made a good ending.

23 January 2007 - The Guardians was released today and I bought a copy. This is one of those feel good movies where raw people are trained to be Coast Guard rescue people. It just didn't leave me feeling good. It is full of the old dog trying to stay ahead of the new dog. You have Kevin Costner playing the old dog and Ashton Kutcher playing the new dog. The battle of wits between OD and ND leave a lot of mental bodies on the side of the training pool. It really about US Coast Guard rescue people. They are the people that drop from helicopters onto the deck of a sinking ship or into the ocean to rescue people. At one point, Fischer (Kutcher) asks Randal (Costner) what his number was and was told 22. Fischer asked if that is the number of people he rescued and he is basically told, "No, that is the number I lost. The rest don't count".

9 January 2007 - I watched Bandidas, which starred Penelope Cruz and Selma Hayak as Robin Hood style bank robbers. It was kind of interesting to watch because they keep bumbling along and keep winning against all odds.

11 December 2006 - I have watched some movies that I thought were really bad. One had a 4.0 rating on IMDb. Tonight, I decided to go for one that looked good. It was epic Canadian and I have not had very good luck with Canadian movies lately. The movie, "Battle of the Brave", was to prove an exception. The reviews on both Amazon and IMDb were all extremes. You liked it and it was a 5-* or you hated it and could only give it 1-*. It was almost like a Romeo and Juliet but involved intrique around the time the British fought the French for control of Quebec. This time it was a trapper and a peasant worman. I thought it was a much better movie than the ratings. It lasted 2:25 minutes and I sat and watched it from start to finish. I don't usually do that. So, it had to be 4 of 5-*.

17 November 2006 - I had watched "The Da Vinci Code" in a theater at Kelowna, BC. I had read the book several times but still found the movie to be very interesting. It was released on DVD on the 14th and of course, I had to buy it. With the Clancy books, you always think they left something important out. They also left out many scenes in this movie but at the same time they seemed to enhance the viewing experience.

1 October 2006 - I rented the movie based on the Louis L'Amour story called "Shaughnessy, The Iron Marshal". You can not even find it in IMDb. It has all of the elements I like. The main character had a serious flawed characted and had redeemed himself by the end of the movie. The problem was it didn't help. It was sort of like drinking one of the "Ultra Light" beers. I think they taste more like bad water than beer. At first, I was going to call it a terrible move but on reflection, it wasn't that bad. I have a page for truly terrible movies and Shaughnessy was a longs ways from deserving to be added to that list. I watched it all of the way though in almost one sitting. I just wasn't satisfied when I got through. Everyone on Amazon gave it 5-*'s. For me to give it 5-*'s, it would have to be as good as "The Sacketts", Hondo, "The Crossfire Trail", or "The Quick and the Dead". It is hard to find a copy of "The Quick and the Dead". It starred Sam Elliott and not Sharon Stone. Shaughnessy was a long way from being comparable to the short list of LL movies and I use them as my criteria for a "good" Louis L'Amour movie.

25 September 2006 - I purchased "Dark Kingdom - The Dragon King" several days ago. I had to stop a couple of times. I read where the original story was the basis for Lord of the Rings". People only gave it a 6.4 on IMDb but I think it was better than that. It was another of those "days of different Gods" that took you back to Conan The Barbarian and stories about other mystical warriors. I would have to compare it to Schwarzenegger's Conan but Benno Fürmann is a better actor and they had a better production. He just didn't have the muscles from the Conan book covers. It was also much different than LOR because LOR was first written as bedtimes stories for Tokien's grandchildren. Dark Kingdom was not a bedtime story.

30 August 2006 - I watched "Take The Lead". It was a story about Pierre Dulaine's introduction of ballroom dancing to a bunch of students in detention. The part of Dulaine was played by Antonio Banderas. Dulaine thought dancing was a means to give them self respect and deal with other issues, which might keep them out of trouble. For example, when he matched the students up as pairs, he went on size. This forced them to deal with any predjudices. In the movie, you watched them develop skills and then compete in a ballroom dancing competition. It was a very good story. Imdb has a user rating of 6.4 but I would score it much higher. It also starred Rob Brown who was the awesome walk-on that did such a good job in "Finding Forrester".

17 August 2006 - I watched "An Unfinished Life". It was a complex story. You have 3 people with serious problems. One man lost his son (Rober Redford) and the other (Morgan Freeman) was severely mauled by a grizzly bear. A daughter in-law (Jennifer Lopez) with a daughter that had never met her grandfather. He blamed her for his sons death in an automobile accident. She also blamed herself, which led her into abusive relationships. For Lopez, it was a lot like "Enough", which I enjoyed. All of them coming to grips with their current situations and accepting life as it had been dealt to them made the movie worth watching.

2 August 2006 - I watched "V for Vendetta" tonight. I was told that I would really like it and they were close. It kept my attention for approximately 2.5 hours. When I succeed in watching a movie that quickly, it had my attention and that meant that it was interesting.

26 July 2006 - I watched Aquamarine. I was desparate for a movie and one of the clerks at Hastings thought it was good.but a little bit silly. He was right. I would have eventually rented it because of the spot in the trailer where the mermaid flips her tail out of the water and freaks the girls out. I was about 50 years too old to completely enjoy it.

18 July 2006 - I watched "Miracle at Sage Creek". It was supposed to be a feel good, family Western that the stars included Irene Bedard, David Caradine, and Wes Studi. I don't always like the movies that Caradine stars in but I have yet to watch a movie by Bedard or Studi that didn't have redeeming virtues. With 2 out of 3, how could I miss. As it turned out, Caradine was my person with the flawed personality that was converted into someone good. In the end, the movie fit my pattern of what I typically enjoy watching.

2 July 2006 - I took back "Fun With Dick and Jane". I had never hit the next button on the DVD player so many times just to skip a bookmark forward to let me finish a movie. The ending was interesting but I couldn't deal with much of the plot until the ending.

Then, I rented "16 Blocks". I couldn't watch it straight through; however, it is 1:26 am and I finished it on the same night as I started. When I have real problems with a movie, I may require 5-10 starts before I can finish the movie. This translates into 5 or 6 days of elapsed time. This time it is Bruce Willis that plays a seriously flawed character that redeems himself at the end. I could not give it a high rating but it was much more interesting to watch than any rating would indicate.

30 June 2006 - I rented Underworld - Evolution again. I couldn't finish it the first time in the 5-days allowed for a rentall but this time I finally did. It was much worse than the original Underworld.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang was another terrible movie. The part played by Robert Downey Jr. was simply out of control. Nothing he did was intelligent. The reviews that I read were all positive but I don't understand how they can give it ratings like that. Since I couldn't finish watching it, maybe something good happened after the mid-point, which is when I killed it.

20 June 2006 - I rented Syriana. I knew that it was going to be rough to watch and it was. I didn't expect the ending. I didn't know what to expect and that kept my interest into what has to be a fairly slow movie.

4 June 2006 - I bought "The Three Buirials of Mellquiades Estrada. It was Tommy Lee Jones directorial debut. I thought it was well done, just slow. A Horseback trip from Texas to a site in Mexico never went anywhere fast except when the part played by Barry Pepper tried to escape. I didn't particularly like it but I watched from start to finish. It was another flawed personality to redemption movie for Pepper.

Firewall was not given many great reviews. It was a good 3-star movie. I needed 3-days to finish it.

13 May 2006 - I rented "Shadows in the Sun". It starred Joshua Jackson, Harvey Keitel, Claire Forlani, and John Rhys-Davies. I don't understand how Rhys-Davies was listed that way because Giancarlo Giannini contributed much more to the movie. His somewhat tarnished Priest made it interesting. Perhaps I still had the image of him pinching the reporter's behind in "Man on Fire". I had to chuckle because it has only been 2 days since I watched Gunfighters Revenge and seriously considered one of the reviewers comment that he thought Keitel would do anything for money. Then, up pops SITS and I erased everything I thought about his choice of parts. I watched the movie from start to finish without stopping once. I also liked it much more than "Under the Tuscan Sun". The characters had a lot more meat to them.

The New World was a beautiful movie. It had all of this really great cinematography. Unfortunately, the script just didn't make any sense. I would have to include it in my "Terrible Movies".

28 April 2006 - I rented Casanova, and purchased Tristan+Isolde and Aeon Flux.I had problems watching Aeon Flux but I didn't have any trouble finishing the movie. My neighbor thought that Casanova was hilarious. I have serious problems with deceit that plays mind games with other people. Casanova violated that the worst and Tristan+Isolde was next in line. I didn't finish either of them.

22 April 2006 - I rented Stagecoach last night. It had Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and a number of top notch actors. It was an almost formula western. It was still entertaining.

12 April 2006 - I ended up renting "Dreamer". It was not a subject I am really interested in but it had actors that I find do really good jobs. You had Dakota Fanning playing a daughter (Cale Crane) that has a joke played on her by her father, Ben Crane (Kurt Russell) and she comes through. The grandfather, Pop Crane is played by Kris Kristofferson. Pop and Ben have basically flawed personalities. If anyone could grasp defeat from the jaws of victory, it seems to be this family of horse trainers. Cale has a dream about racing her horse. She has 51% of the horse and it is up to her. Fanning was 10 years old at the time but, as an actress, displays a maturity many years beyond her age. Cale was originally written as a boy but was changed to a girl so they could use Fanning. Most of the story is the build up to the final race. Of course, you will have to rent it to find out what happened. I only watched it once, but I watched all of the special features. I only do the special feature thing on movies that I enjoy and want to know more.

24 March 2006 - I ended up buying "A History of Violence". I was kind of sorry that I did. I enjoyed the movie but not well enough to purchase it. Reviewed in Drama.