Reticent Man

Revolutionary Road  Boooooring.  This film is excellently made and very unentertaining.  I get it, the suburbs are a soul-crushing living death.  The main characters are annoying people I don't want to root for.  And they have stupid dreams that they fail to achieve.  Nothing more to say really.  The insane guy was great.  Acting 7, Story 1, Style 4. 

Revolutionary Road 3/10

Doctor Zhivago  I think my parents favorite movie, or at least my mother's.  It's an epic romance but in a weird way because the long between the romantic couple is surprisingly underdeveloped considering the length of the movie.  In place of that there are many developed characters and intertwining plotlines.  It's somewhat interesting in total, but not incredibly so.  And there's somewhat of a feeling and the end of whole sections of the movie not having meant a whole lot. Quoting the ebert review "the plot of "Doctor Zhivago" lumbers noisily from nowhere to nowhere".  Still, I did enjoy it.  Acting 6, Story 5, Style 7.

Doctor Zhivago 6/10



The Fountainhead This is a philosophical movie about a philosophy I love, so it's a little hard for me to be objective about it (get it?).  As Rand cowrote the script, it's no surprise that it plays as a distillation of philosophy, very explicitly laid out for you.  The characters are as broad as they are meant to be.  It's been called campy because of that style, but as I see the intention I didn't find it so.  The one criticism I agree with is that Gary Cooper was not good in the main role.  I read that he didn't understand the material and if it was so it showed.  The rest of the actors seemed good.  Redeeming Cooper was the presentation of the main romance.  One of the best I've seen on film.  It's a feminists nightmare, but then Rand certainly wasn't a feminist.  It was also the few scenes where Cooper's acting jived with the material... he probably knew all about being a real man to a woman.  The book, despite being so incredibly long, is actually a great story for a movie, and it was done very well here.  I had goose-bumps for most of my viewing.  Acting 6, Story 10, Style 8 with a bump for anti-feminism and another for philosophical content.

The Fountainhead 9/10

Iron Monkey  A pretty simple review.  This is a solid modern kung fu movie.  It's not a beautiful sweeping story like Crouching Tiger, nor is it as stylistic as hero.  It's just a fun, entertaining kung fu movie.  Acting N/A, Story 5, Style 9

Iron Monkey 7/10

Rescue Dawn  The main character was a fairly unique presentation that I enjoyed in many ways.  He was wildly uneven in almost every aspect, disarmingly funny one moment and also on the edge disturbing the next,  and I believe he was meant to be just that way.  Also it's done with a subtlety that managed not to take you out of the characterization.... a credit to Bale and the director.  The story is certainly intense, although I think I found it less intense than it was meant to be, which is my only real gripe with the movie.  Since there isn't a lot there, what is there needs to be particularly intense, and it fell just short.  Still, it's eight tenths of a great movie.  Acting 10, Story 7, Style 7

Rescue Dawn 8/10

Quills Held my attention, but just barely.  I have two major problems with this movie.  One is that it just wasn't terrible interesting throughout the movie.  For as promising a subject as it is, I'm surprised I wasn't titillated more than I was.  The other is that the whole tone/theme seems to change a bit from the first three fourths of the movie to the ending.  However I'd describe the ending if you asked me 3/4 of the way through the movie if that's the kind of movie I was watching I would have said not really.  That kind of thing could conceivably be a good thing if the change rocks your world, but in this case it just kind of made me say "huh"?  The good is that the acting was excellent and the other production values are good.  It was still mildly entertaining.  Acting 8, Story 4, Style 4.

Quills 5.5/10