Reel Sad

I'm looking for a good, old-fashioned inspiring movie. Or at least something that doesn't make me bored.

Perhasp I've been watching too many movie critics lately and I'm being overly picky. I know I definitely used to be a big old movie whore. Give me a rolling hillside and a British accent or some creepy confusing plotlines or both and I was set.

Recently I've seen the new Bourne thingy (Ultimatum?), Mr. Brooks, and Becoming Jane. None of which were anything to write home about. Ultimatum was probably the best because it doesn't really disappoint. It's a Bourne thingy and that's lots of crazy unrealistic car chases and government conspiracies and it's just good clean fun.

Mr. Brooks came out somewhat recently, can't remember when. Kevin Costner is a high level box company owner and apparently he has an alternate personality that's played by William Hurt. Mr. Brooks has an addiction to killing. I'm no good at plot summaries unless I'm truly inspired and this is not one of those times. There are just too, too many twists and turns that seem to be there solely for the point of twisting and turning. One or two of them may have been good but there were too many of them for any of them to be well-developed so it's like the movie that tried to be like five other movies about serial killers. For my money, I think that further developing the role of the daughter and leaving out the Mr. Smith guy and the TOTALLY pointless wife character may have really done some wonders for this movie. That and not casting Kevin Costner. A lot of critics don't really like Kevin Costner, and it's a good point that he's kind of always the same, but it's just that he had me at Field of Dreams and I have a hard time just letting that go. Even after all this time.

Oh, and Mr. Brooks -- you like killing. Just own it. That whole struggle with trying not to is just really silly and a further waste of time.

Tonight it was Becoming Jane. I have seen too many reviews bemoaning its mediocrity to have high hopes and I was not pleasantly surprised. There was always that hope. I think that movies I am meant to see with my godmother are just doomed. I completely agree with whomever said that it's completely ludicrous to assume that Jane Austen's life was some reflection of her novels. Whatever. And in those times, that her parents would say that they wanted her to marry for love and not money. Her father to say that, further. Whatever squared. And should that I be so poor that my house is strewn with Oriental rugs and have a piano in my conservatory and a two story cottage on however many acres... Oh, the rough rustic life.

God love Jane Austen, but I doubt that she would have remained single if she looked like Anne Hathaway.

Better to mire oneself in the Big Brother Backdoor-a-palooza than try to have hopes for decent movies in the summer. Even old ones.