Movies

Watched a few movies on the telly in the last few weeks, some better than others:

Terminator 4: Watched that in our hotel in Westport - it was free - Just as well. I would have been very annoyed at paying good money for such rubbish. The fact that the quality of the picture was very poor didn't help. Even Christian Bale didn't manage to lift this movie out of its messy plot.

Swingers: Apparently it's the movie that put Vince Vaughn's name on the map. All I'll say is that he's put on an awful lot of weight since then. It was OK, but it didn't really do it for me.

Solaris - the original Russian movie. Very slow, very heavy, but makes a lot more sense than the Hollywood remake with George Clooney.

Goodbye Solo - saw that in the IFI a few weeks back. Very depressing - set in an industrial town in North Carolina, it's about an elderly man who is thinking of killing himself. A Senegalese taxi driver befriends him and tries to get him to connect with life again. Most of the shots are in the taxi, at night, so it's very dark - literally. The reviews were good, but it didn't work for me. "...a celebration of life" (Screen Daily's review quote on the website)? Not the movie I saw!

Raising Arizona - now that's a great movie - about Holly Hunter, an ex-cop who finds she can't have children and Nicolas Cage, her husband, an ex-convict, who will do anything to satisfy her need for a child. Completely mad - it's the Coen Brothers of course.