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bkelley-1
Reviews
WALL·E (2008)
Great animation does not a great movie make
Storytelling matters. This movie sets up a great tale (the first half hour is good), then seriously fails to deliver. The animation and the story get very, very boring once the movie leaves earth.
The large sections with no dialogue were a nice change of pace. But when the dialogue did come, a lot of it was WALL-E and EVE whining each others names over and over...and over...and over...as a way to move the plot along, I almost went out of my mind. EVE was especially annoying to listen to.
The endless shots of robots holding hands, robots figuring out how to hold hands, robots yearning to hold hands and robots thinking about the next time they could think about holding hands were EXCRUCIATING. Some people think this is a movie about the perils of gluttony and mega-corporations. I think it might be a movie about how it's nice to hold hands.
And I've got to say, having WALL*E find the green, healthy plant seedling growing inside a closed abandoned refrigerator is just stupid. Because you know, there's, like, no light in there. And don't give me "suspension of disbelief." That's for when a hard-to-believe plot point actually serves to advance the story. He has an entire abandoned city in which to find a single plant growing, 700 years in the future, and they have him find it inside an old dark refrigerator. There was no reason for it.
I'm puzzled by the raves saying this is Pixar's best film. Pixar's best-looking? Probably. Pixar's best? Not by a long shot.
Get Carter (2000)
I kept waiting for this movie to stink...
...but it never did! It's actually good. Some very good acting, some very good, well-developed characters and a plot that you actually get involved in and care about. At first, it keeps looking like the kind of movie that's going to beat you over the head with every simplistic character motivation or plot point, but it doesn't. It actually leaves a lot unexplained, to great affect. Even the third act, in which many movies, even good ones, fall completely to pieces, is solid here. The 4.6 rating is really not fair, and is more about how much some people just DESPISE Stallone and anything he does, no matter what. I generally hate about 80% of what Stallone puts out, but when I like him, I like him a lot. And in this movie, he's good. Mickey Rourke is good (starts out strong but gets a little two dimensional as the movie develops, but that's OK, he's still fascinating to watch). John C. McGinley is John C. McGinley-good. Rachel Leigh Cook is very good, and actually great and very moving in one scene in particular. It's really not a bad movie at all.