It was only about 3 degrees here today, so it's been a movie marathon weekend. The last flick I watched was Michael Moore's Sicko. I was a little reluctant to rent this for a long time, mainly because I was disappointed by Fahrenheit 9/11, and I find Moore's public persona a little irritating.

However, I thought it was probably his most effective film in the way it portrayed the problems with a privatized health care system. Like Mark said in his review, I realize that Moore stacked the deck a bit, and the people's stories that he spotlights are probably extreme cases, but the fact that it happens at all in the country with "the greatest health care in the world" is too often. He interviews doctors, lawmakers, and patients (rich and poor) from countries with universal healthcare (UK, Canada, France, Cuba) to refute most of the propaganda fed to the U.S. by the healthcare industry (poor care, long wait times, little choice, underpaid physicians).

Of course it wouldn't be a Moore film without a big stunt, and Mike's big stunt this time is to take a couple of boatload of people who've been denied treatment in the U.S. by their HMOs (including a few 9/11 rescue workers) to Cuba. Initially they try to go to the Guantanamo Bay naval base, but when refused entry, they end up going to Cuba.

Usually, I find Moore's stunts to be the weakest parts of his movies (going to Charleton Heston's house), but I thought the Cuba sequence was utterly heartbreaking. Here, these Americans who've been denied care, or gone broke getting care in their own country go to this third world Communist country and are welcomed with open arms and given first class treatment for basically nothing.

Everyone should see this, especially folks who don't think the U.S. healthcare system needs a major overhaul.

A

Jackass 2.5- i love all the jackass movies...and can't wait for number 3 to come out. This movie is basically just stuff they couldnt fit into number two. It's still halarious, and definetly worth watching.

The Ringer-I love this movie so much. Some might take offense to it, but you really have to keep an open mind during it.

Apocalypto (2006) - Mel Gibson
When first released I was told to avoid it all costs. I rented it recently and was blown away. Although the plotline is a little fantastical, who wouldn't buy the story with the gorgeous, authentic-looking make-up and costumes. The starring actors, Rudy Youngblood and Dahlia Hernandez, besides being ridiculously photogenic pulled some excellent acting. The rest of the cast was funny and serious when needed and exactly to the right degree. Beautiful Movie. B+

United 93 (2006) - Paul Greengrass
Humanity when honest. A historical and dire situation seen from many different angles, and yet filmed in real time. To be honest, I cried more while watching the real families in the features, but the movie in itself did not feel rushed or crowded. Also the acting was nothing to complain about.

[p.s. yay to my first post]

Sabrina (1954) Billy Wilder's classic romantic-comedy starring Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and William Holden. I'd never seen this before in it's entirety, only bits and pieces on cable. Never cared for the remake of this film and after seeing this tonight, I doubt I'll ever watch that version again.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

My mom rented this one for me and I finally got around to seeing it earlier tonight. The gritty story of the bandit Jesse James and his eventual assassin Robert Ford (can you tell by the title?) is turned into a pretty decent film. I know many people have it on their “best films” list and though I won’t argue with that, I think there were many other greater films last year. The acting is good and the directing could have been better. However, the cinematography was brilliantly done and the music was simple but touching. I also enjoyed Nick Cave and Zooey Deschanel’s nice cameos (both sing!) at the end of the film.

One Million Years B.C. (1966) Ah Raquel Welch and her prehistoric bikini! Flick stars John Richardson as Tumak, an up-and-coming leader of the mountain tribe of cave people. But infighting among his people leads to his exile. After avoiding being dinosaur meal several times, he winds up at the beach with Raquel's fair-haired pre-hippee, not-too-violent clan.Raquel helps save him from a giant turtle and try as he may to fit in, he's too programmed by his own tribe's violent ways to act civilized- even though he'd get to bed Raquel. Stupid! But she follows him as he heads home and there are the eventual tribe battles and dinosaur toss-downs and whatever. Excellent SPX by Ray Harryhausen also make this a very fun watch.

Watched "Nanny Diaries" last night. Pretty bad. The character of the boy was horribly shallow, the romantic aspect of the film was laughably cliched. And the acting, subpar. The plot unoriginal and plodding. Blah.

I watched a few movies over the weekend:

The Hoax - Richard Gere stars in this true story of a struggling author who devises a plan to sell a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. I enjoyed this a lot, and I'm not sure why it didn't get more praise. It reminded me a lot of Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can.

B+

Enchanted - I normally detest Disney movies, but this story of a fairy tale princess who gets booted out of her two dimensional Disney universe into live action Manhattan is kind of cute. I like how they deconstruct the fairy formula and poke fun at it.

B-

Stardust - I rented this on a whim, since a lot of people compared it to The Princess Bride. It was okay, but I found myself getting bored by the end of it, mostly because of the overly convoluted story. It definitely didn't have the heart that The Princess Bride did.

C+

Across the Universe

As I am sure many of you know, this is the musical about an Englishman and American woman who fall in love with the music being covers of a bunch of Beatles songs. I found a lot of it too be tacky and too campy for my taste. A lot of the songs, though covers, were butchered and too dissimilar from the originals. What especially irked me was how they had to name so many of them after Beatles songs—there wasn’t anything lovely about the Rita character. As a purist, it bothered me and I don't really get what the point of the Prudence character was.

Thus, there was a lot that could have been edited out like everything with Bono and the "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" scene. I also thought some of the acting was overdone and the cinematography wasn't that great. I have seen many other films with much better cinematography (There Will Be Blood jumps to mind.)

Through all of this, it was a decent film. It would have been so much worse if it weren't for those memorable songs.

I think Across The Universe is a love it or hate it deal. I was pretty blown away by the visual aspects and I think along with the aforementioned There Will Be Blood and Sunshine, it was one of the more fun films to watch in 2007.

I think low expectations might've saved the film for me. Even though I was a fan of Julie Taymor's previous films, I really expected the worst going in. Some of the subplots weren't necessary, but I think when you got into the meat of the Jude-Lucy romance, it was a pretty good story, or at least as good of a story as you'd find in most musicals.

I hated the two scenes you mention, and whole-heartedly agree that they could've been left on the cutting room floor and wouldn't have been missed.

Yeah I can see where you are coming from. The romance and the story around it was pretty endearing. Mostly, it was the lack of editing that killed it for me.

I did love Salma Hayek's cameo during "Happiness is a Warm Gun"-that was very hot and appreciated.

la Vie en Rose (Olivier Dahan, 2007, Grade: B-)

I've watched this film twice and I may watch it again. Originally, I gave it a higher rating, mainly because Marion Cotillard delivers such an awesome performance as Edith Piaf. My wife loves Edith Piaf, so I've been exposed to her in the last 20 years much more than I was in the preceding 30, even though I could name her voice in ONE note way back when. Then, I started to wonder if this film really is any better than Ray or Walk the Line just because it's in French. I decided that it's still well worth watching, but aside from the central performance and some spectacular makeup, it's not ALL THAT super. However, I am pulling for Marion to snag the Best Actress Oscar.

Across the Universe (Julie Taymor, 2007, Grade: B-)

The strangest thing to me about this semi-strange movie is that the script was written by the 70-year-old tag team of vets Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. That totally caught me off guard. Even so, I was pretty impressed with the film. Compared to messes like Help!, Magical Mystery Tour, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Tommyand Pink Floyd: The Wall, this film actually tells a relatively coherent story which covers much of the history of the 1960s. In that way, it reminds me of Milos Forman's Hair. I probably would have given it a higher rating, but about halfway through (somewhere around the time that Bono played Doctor Robert as a cross between Robin Williams and Ken Kesey; then Eddie Izzard took a few too many liberties with "Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite"), I started thinking that it was going to be TOO LONG. Even so, it does right its way toward the end. However, Evan Rachel Ward does prove herself to be a fine singer, and she keeps getting more beautiful as the years pass. Plus Julie Taymor is a master visualist.

The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik, 2007, Grade: C+, benefit of a doubt)

I find this to be a boring, pretentious art-western which can't touch the unshined shoes of last year's 3:10 to Yuma. It has none of the poetry of Malick's Days of Heaven (despite the presence of Sam Shepard as an attenuated Frank James) and none of the insane genius of Cimino's Heaven's Gate, yet it seems to think that it does. For the first two-thirds of the film, the characters and dialogue seem to be almost entirely inconsequential. This film can't even compare to Henry King's Jesse James (1939) and Fritz Lang's superior sequel, The Return of Frank James (1940).

However, the reason I will rewatch it is that the final third did actually provide some suspense and characterization, as well as providing info which I believe is not found in any other film. To me, the best thing about the film is Brad Pitt's performance. It may well be his finest. He blows Casey Affleck out of the water, although I was impressed with the younger Affleck's turn in Gone Baby Gone. The much-lauded cinematography didn't especially impress me, except for a few brief scenes involving shadows extending across the landscape, train interiors, houses, etc. I actually believe that Deakins did a better job with No Country For Old Men. However, I am rewatching it again this week, so if I feel the need to correct myself, I'll come back and you can tell me, "I told you so!"

Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck, 2007, Grade: B)

I watched it last night. This was much better than Mystic River, which I give a C+ at most, although when this film started out, I wasn't totally convinced. I was almost having a complete flashback to the earlier film for awhile, but all of a sudden, this film came much more to life. This film's overall mystery was much more complex than Mystic River's. I'll admit that if you're awake, there is only one way to interpret some of the incident at the "lake", and that leads a certain direction, but you can't understand where it all will eventually take you. Even before that scene, there was some good suspense; this film did have many tense, exciting moments to go with its moral ambiguity.

As the film twists and turns back upon itself, it maintains all the audience's first impressions of the characters, but deepens most of them to show how things are never that black and white, but really that painful cliché of shades of gray. The verisimilitude of the film adds immeasurably to its quality. Kudos to director/co-scriptor Ben Affleck for using so many true Bostonian people and locations throughout the film. I haven't really mentioned the performances, but I thought that Casey Affleck was much more powerful here than in his nominated turn as The Coward Robert Ford. Amy Ryan obviously deserves her Best Supporting nom, and it's just a pleasure to see veterans Ed Harris, John Ashton, Morgan Freeman and Amy Madigan doing their best in something they obviously believe in.

This forum is great for people like us who watch movies all the time and are interested on reading different reviews before actually spending time to watch the movie.
I like foreign movies the best. Most people don’t watch them because they don’t like reading the subtitles. For those of you who don’t mind ….I highly recommend this 3 French movies:

• Amelie- Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Its about and innocent girl who, while helping people, finds true love. It’s not only romantic but its also funny.
• Very long engagement- Directed by Jean-Pierre Juenet. It is about couples who loved each other since they were kinds and were separated after he goes to fight World War I. It is absolutely amazing! And it will definitely make you cry.
• Paris Je T’aime- It has different directors because the movie is divided into 16 different stories which are interconnected in some way. Loved it 

Amelie is probably my favorite foreign film made in the last decade, and I enjoyed A Very Long Engagement too.

I'll have to check out Paris Je T'Aime based on your rec.

if you want a good french movie, check out Ne Le Dis à Personne, an excellent adaption of Harlan Coben's Tell No One by Guillaume Canet, from 2006

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford Excellent flick! Brad Pitt's best film by far and his performance soared over all others. Loved the music and cinematography and that Zooey chick who wasn't in it long enough (couldn't they have bent the truth and made her Jessica James, the outlaw sister?).

Are you telling me so, crazed?

I was hoping so!

In the Valley of Elah Tommy Lee Jones's son has returned from Iraq and gone AWOL. Jones heads to the town near the military base to find his son. He gets stonewalled by the Army and help from local cop Charlize Theron. A good anti-war and mystery flick in one, though it could have been 20 minutes shorter than it's 2 hours.

hello folks
I am new here but will love to be involved so here it goes
Superbad uncut - D
not even very good comedic value but the occassional burst got it above the F mark
Saw IV - B
I give this a B, because I thought it did a good job of carrying Johns Legacy over and keeping the SAW games alive not to mention the suspense
I am Legend - A
No doubt going to be one of the best movies of the year.
the Heartbreak Kid - C+
this would have had a B or an A if not for the fact of Ben Stiller playing th part of the guy who keeps putting himself into the horribalist ( is that a word) positions in a Romantic Comedy.
There Will Be Blood - A
Awesome Awesome Awesome. this movie is An hour and 40 minutes and well worth every minute

Tell us what your 2¢ worth

Michael Clayton George Clooney is a "janitor", "fixer", "whatever" for a NY law firm. His lawyer pal Arthur (Tom Wilkinson) is representing a chemical company and has a nervous breakdown, so out comes the "fix-it" man to "handle" the situation. But there's a mean-ass, stone faced bitch with a corporate bug up her rear (Tilda Swinton) who wants to be a "clean-up" person too, or so it seems. I dunno, seems like I've seen these characters before doing the same things in same situations. An okay flick, some good scenes, could have been tighter but nothing to get excited about.