We are still in love with Netflix! Last week, it was like Netflix was loving us back - we got four movies slipped into our mail slot, instead of the usual three. The films were a varied mix, to say the least.
Bon Voyage is a French film (subtitled) about an actress who shoots her ex-lover andthen has an ardent admirer help her dispose of the body. The story takes place just at the Nazi's are invading Paris. Bon Voyage starts a little slowly, but the story is compelling, the 1940's era sets beautifully designed, and the characters are impeccably wardrobed for the period. The story has several sub-plots that give the movie a wide range of appeal through humor, romance, nostalgia and intrigue.
Russell Mulcahy's Tale of the Mummy (Talos the Mummy in Europe) is a typical mummy movie starring: Jason Scott Lee, Sean Pertwee and Louise Lombard. It has some good CGI; I especially liked what they did with the mummy's bandages, but it was weird to see the giant reconstituted mummy in his newly reformed flesh, perfectly formed except for one glaring omission. You could see how he'd be pretty pissed off coming back to life after thousands of years only to find out that he'd lost his penis somewhere along the way. The plot is stale and the dialogue could be described by the same adjective. The performances are pretty good, but you can't help but wonder how the actors are able to do it when the script is tripe. We rented it because of Sean Pertwee; his Kevin Spacey-esqe ability to portray someone becoming unhinged didn't disappoint in Tale of the Mummy, but again, nothing can overcome a trite script. We are still trying to figure out what happened to Jason Scott Lee's career. He went from Dragon and Map of the Human Heart to doing pretty much anything that falls his way.Tale of the Mummy was good for a few laughs via the ridiculous dialogue, and it didn'thurt that the DVD skipped and played one scene over and over again. When the scene repeated the first time, I asked my sister, "Didn't we just see this?" and she replied, "Maybe it was a dream sequence and it is for real this time." I replied, "If it's a dream sequence, it wasn't handled very well." About this time, it was starting over again, so we finally figured it out. The funny part is that a dream sequence probably could have worked in that scene and maybe even added some suspense to the film. Overall, we were disappointed in this film.
Shark Tale is a cartoon spoof of mob movie starring the voices of Will Smith, Renee Zellweger and Angelina Jolie. It even has a lot of the same people associated with the mob genre of entertainment doing the voices, like Martin Scorcese, Robert Deniro and Michael Imperioli. There were a few lines that made me laugh out loud, but for the most part this film didn't do much for me. Shark Tale comes from Dream Works, so it is not surprising that the animation is great, but the story just didn't reel me in (sorry, I couldn't resist ; ).
Different for Girls is a British film starring Steven Macintosh and Rupert Graves. The story is about the friendship between two outsiders in high school who lose touch and when they find each other again years later, one of them has had a sex change and the other is still living as though he was 17 years old. The story is alternately poignant and funny and it is a different perspective on transexualism. It's just a neat story, so I recommend this one.
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