Rollin' right along

Joyride (1996)
Tobey Maguire as the bored and disillusioned teenager
Wilson Cruz as the slightly less disillusioned teenager
Adam West as the dude that pimps out his daughter
Anne Hathaway as the pimped out daughter
Benecio Del Toro - smart, quirky detective or stoner detective?

Here's a tip: if you are going to go to the trouble of casting some fairly good actors in your movie, make sure the actress that plays your hit woman has better acting skills than a porn star. Dear God, she has got to be one of the worst actresses of all time. She completely ruined what could have been an interesting movie about bored teenagers who, fed up with being made to feel powerless, get in way over their heads when they steal a hit woman's car; with a dead man in the trunk. I literally spent the last half of the movie ticked off at the actress' terrible, terrible acting.

A side note: I had no idea how small Tobey Maguire is. Apparently once he became a fairly big star, directors did him a favor by using favorable angels. I checked imdb, and he's only 2 and a half inches taller than Elijah Wood. He even looked like Wood in this movie.

And I have nothing more to say about such a disappointing movie.


The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)

Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes
Nigel Bruce asWatson

This movie is an absolute classic. I've seen a lot of Sherlock Holmes movies and television series, but in my mind, while I do not think this is the best Holmes movie, Basil Rathbone played the best Sherlock Holmes. His intensity, aloofness, and apathy to anyone but the mystery is fascinating to watch. In fact, I am surprised at how well the acting is in a movie that is seventy years old. While I do not care for Bruce's Watson, I do have to admit that he held his own with Rathbone. Overall, though, even despite the acting, I thought the story was a bit uneven. Rathbone is the only reason to watch it.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

Michael Caine as Scrooge

This movie surprised me. First, for some reason I had thought I'd seen it before; turns out I hadn't. Second, it is much better than I thought it would be. I had a wonderful time watching this movie. None of the songs are that good, and I found it disturbing watching Michael Caine performing sappy kids' songs with muppets, but overall, this movie is incredibly charming. Even on an adult level this movie was a pleasure to watch, not to mention very funny. Definitely better than Muppet Treasure Island.

Phenomenon (1996)

John Travolta
Robert Duvall
Kyra Sedgwick
Forest Whitaker

This movie was much better the first time I saw it in the theater more than a decade ago than it was last week. John Travolta plays a man of below-average intelligence who experiences some type of strange phenomenon that causes more parts of his brain to activate than the average human. The only part I found interesting is the way certain people start treating him because he becomes more intelligent than them. In the beginning of the movie he plays chess with the doctor, played by Robert Duvall, and he is no match for the doctor. The night the phenomenon occurs, he easily beats him. It was interesting to see that, for a moment, the doctor was upset. It wasn't due to the usual annoyance a sore loser displays; he was upset to have been beaten by someone he considered of inferior intelligence.

There was the usual story of people becoming scared of him, blah blah, etc. It annoyed me that for someone so intelligent and more understanding of human behavior, Travolta's character didn't understand why. The acting was actually pretty good; it was the script I found lacking. The writer clearly had no concept of how someone so highly intelligent would behave, act or understand people. The movie tried to show that raising the man's intelligence did little more than raise his confidence, yet it didn't ring true. Overall, this feel good movie felt pretty shallow.