Last year, between the two of us, we watched an average of 317 movies.
This year our goal is to top that by watching at least one a day.
And as an extra special torture, we've decided to write about all of them.

26 October 2008

The Dark Half

Director: George A. Romero
Writer: George A. Romero
Released: 1993
Cast: Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan, Michael Rooker, Julie Harris, Robert Joy

STEVE says: Not one of the best Stephen King adaptations, but surely one of the better ones. The fact that it's Romero gives it a bump, as well.

3/5

Burn After Reading

Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Writers: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Released: 2008
Cast: George Clooney, Francis McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Brad Pitt, Richard Jenkins

STEVE says: I haven't seen a Coen Brothers movie in the theatre since O Brother, Where Art Thou? in 2000. Coincidentally, I haven't cared for much of their work since then, either. So the fact that Burn After Reading had me excited enough to get into the theatre seemed a good sign.

Now I'm wishing I'd waited for the DVD.

I didn't hate it as I did The Ladykillers, wasn't indifferent to it as I was to Intolerable Cruelty, and wasn't bored by it as I was to The Man Who Wasn't There. But I didn't love it. Better than Fargo, but it was no Miller's Crossing or Lebowski, films I can revisit again and again and never get bored with. Burn After Reading had its moments. They were just too few and far between.

3/5

NIKKI says:
Wow, about as MEH as you can get. Well, maybe it would have been less meh had it not been a Coen borthers movie of which I expect so much more. But, you know, maybe I shouldn't. The guys haven't really been all that impressive with their original stuff of late. (No Country, of course, was brilliant, even if it fucked the ending of the book.) I don't know -- everything I really don't like about the Coen brothers was all over this movie. I'm not into wide-eyed Fraces McDormand characters who are supposed to perhaps be lovably stupid, but come off as just stupid. I'm not really inot the whole Brad Pitt playing the fool thing. And I didn't really care for the intertwining stories rehash.

This was a failed attempt to pout every cool Coen trait inot one big star-filled movie as if the stars would detrct from the really kinda lame plot and poor execution. It was horrible or anything, but it wasn't anything special either. The guys, it would seem, are out of Lebowskis.

2/5