Movie Reviews - U
U-571: I had really expected this to be a good movie, it was entertaining, but I'd hesitate to call it good. It was really predictable & overplayed the tension - like the actor's tension was more important than what was going on in the movie... I guess that means I think it was overacted? I dunno. If you want to see a good WWII submarine movie, see Das Boot.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Great cold war movie about the every-day dreariness behind the iron curtain. I especially liked the gloomy ending, very non-hollywood. Life is filled with sad endings, I wish people had more of a pallate for them in the movies.
Unbreakable: The slow pace of this movie just about made me scream. Ok, I understand that some movies have an intentionally slow pace for effect, but this movie didn't need it. For example, there's a 5 minute scene where Bruce Willis figures out he can lift more weight than he thought. It just didn't need to be so damn long. I dunno, maybe I'm just an impatient media glutton.
Uncle Buck: I don't know what to say about this movie. I have to tell my "driver school" story though. A few years back, I got a speeding ticket. It was a sunny California day, and I was headed to Santa Cruz down highway 17. The cop said I was going "80+". He wrote me a ticket, gave me a speech, got back in his vehicle, and pulled-over another car before I could even figure out what was going on. In order to keep the ticket off my insurance record, I agreed to go to a day of traffic school. It was essentially one day of jail - I was stuck in a hotel conference room with a dozen others and couldn't leave - a day down the toilet. A strange thing happened there though... Throughout the day, the "instructor" played the movie Uncle Buck on the video player. Every time we got back from a break, we'd see another 15-20 minutes of the movie. I wasn't sure if it was some kind of way to keep us coming back (after all the movie is so compelling!), or if there was some kind of subliminal "drive safely!" message contained within Uncle Buck. Maybe it worked, I haven't had a ticket since then.
U turn: I wasn't expecting much from this movie. I thought it would be "Oliver Stone does Pulp Fiction", and it was... but it was done well. Sure, all the characters were wacky, full of hidden secrets, and somehow linked to each other. Sure, some pretty unbelievable things happened. Sure, there were enough double-crosses and plot twists to scramble your brain. But in the end, it all came together. It all sort of made sense, and everybody got what they deserved (well, almost everybody). It was definitely an Oliver Stone movie... (I loved the twister scene near the end - YUK!) Anyway, this movie was entertaining - not awesome, but pretty good.