More Movie Reviews

Anaconda: Search for the Blood Orchid: Hmmm... not scary, not even a little bit--unless you are afraid of snakes. I don't like snakes, but this movie was so predictable! I suppose the gargantuan anacondas were a little too fakey for me to be afraid of them. I'd seen this plot a thousand times before in other movies: scientists discover rare plant that only grows in one place; need money to finance expedition; drug company ponies up the money; explorers go to heart of darkest continent (in this case, the jungles of Borneo) to retrieve plant; trip goes awry when boat sinks (plane crashes, car dies, etc.); scary monster starts stalking group; people die; crazed lunatic in group gets too greedy and strikes out on his/her own... etc. etc.

Mercury Rising: Older Bruce Willis flick in which he plays a renegade FBI agent responsible for protecting an autistic child. Willis does have a great screen chemistry with children, and he was good in this movie. I was watching this on the USA network, so there were too many commercials, but it was a decent movie to waste some time watching on a boring Thursday night.

12 Monkeys: Another Bruce Willis flick from 1995 in which he plays a time traveler named James Cole sent to the past to try to stop a deadly virus from spreading over the planet and wiping out 5 billion people. In his future, people are forced to live underground, and he is some kind of criminal forced to take on this mission. He gets sent back to 1990 where is locked in a mental hospital. He meets Jeffrey Goins (Brad Pitt), the son of a virologist.

Brad Pitt is a brilliant actor! See him in this movie, and you will be convinced. I never really thought of him as a great actor before, but he is here.

So, after much back-and-forthing through time, Cole (Willis) becomes convinced that he is insane, and that the "scientists" who control the time machine are just parts of his brain. However, his psychiatrist from 1990, Dr. Railly (Madeleine Stowe), realizes he's telling the truth. But alas, at the end, you don't know how it's really going to turn out--will the virus be released? Will the drama play out again? This movie is about perceptions of reality, the fluidity of time, and déja-vu. I liked this movie. See it if you like post-apocalyptic films, Bruce Willis, or Brad Pitt. You won't be disappointed.

Bell, Book, and Candle: Ok, this Jimmy Stewart/Kim Novak vehicle was on the Turner Classic Movie channel and I had to see it because it was supposedly about witches in Manhattan. Now the movie was made in 1958, and was in 1954 when Gerald Gardner (the father of Gardnerian tradition witchcraft) published his book "Witchcraft Today." I certainly didn't expect to see the "truth" of what the Craft really is, but I was having a hard time keeping from laughing. Kim Novak was convincing; however, she was made to be this sexpot anthropologist from a family of witches (who supposedly were not "human") out to snare poor hapless Jimmy Stewart. In fact, she was ensnaring him because of his fiancée, whom she held a grudge against. Of course, Novak got more than she bargained for.

Seeing Jack Lemmon mumble a few words and make a few gestures to cause a car horn to go off was quite amusing. In this film, male witches were called warlocks, which, as anyone knows, is totally not the case. Male witches are male witches. "Warlock" means "oath-breaker," and anyone styling themselves as such would just be silly, unless they want to be known as an oath-breaker.

Did you know that a "real" witch can't cry and will float if shoved into a body of water? She will stop being a witch if she falls in true love. Uh, yeah, right.

Jimmy Stewart was 50 years old when this movie was made; Kim Novak who was 25. After this movie, he played family men. I guess he'd had enough of the romantic male lead roles.