Back home and back to watching silly rom coms with Bella, like Music and Lyrics (2007) with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. I give a C+ and imdb gives it a 6.8/10.0. The plus sign only comes from the highly entertaining music video that starts the movie off – the rest is highly predictable and slightly irritating.
I did see an very good romantic comedy on the plane called Prete-moi ta main (2006) or in English, I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single. I give this one a B+, although imdb gives it only a 6.9/10.0 (but only out of 304 votes). Despite just a couple cliched scenes (his The Cure phase), this movie is mostly refreshingly original and surprisingly funny. It’s about a guy with a heckuva lot of sisters and who is henpecked into trying to fake a wedding to get his sisters off his case. His would-be wife is played by the coolest of cool, Charlotte Gainsbourg. If I came back as anybody, I might choose to be her (Isabella Rossellini has gotten too old. sorry Iasabella.)
On the plane I also saw a lavishly beautiful, but essentially dull and depressing movie: Curse of the Golden Flower (2006). Talk about incest and misery and poison. That’s just a plain old C (imdb 7.0/10.0)- and I loved Crouching Tiger! Give that one a pass.
The third film I saw on the plane, (yes, three! and that’s not all…) was a decent one called Clean (2004), starring Maggie Cheung. This one takes place in London, Paris, and ends in San Francisco, and Cheung speaks English, Chinese, and French all (apparently) fluently. I give it a B (imdb 7.0/10.0): not very fast-paced, but well-acted. In some ways, it feels like a character study of a heroin addict. This movie was under the category “Favorites,” which was a surprisingly good list: True Lies, Minority Report, oops can’t remember the others.
The fourth – well, I didn’t finish this one but it was called Stomp the Yard (2007). It was one of those cheeseball looks at the hard-knock life of a guy whose brother gets shot in a gang-related fight. Very much like an after-school special, but the dancing was insanely hardcore street breakdancing. For those scenes alone, I plan to watch the whole thing again some time. All things considered, I give it a B- and on imdb it has a 2.4/10.0 rating. It is in imdb’s bottom 100 movies. Oops.