Month: December 2008

Atonement

I actually watched this a while ago, it was my Netflix a couple of movies ago.  This movie wasn’t quite what I expected either.  It was very well acted though, and I did find it interesting.  It was also rather sad.  So while not what I expected, I still enjoyed it.  I like Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, their parts were very well acted. 

The way the story was told in the movie was also interesting.  We’d see things happen through the viewpoint of one character, who would then interpret it accordingly.  Later we would get to see the actual event, and understand why the character’s interpretation was so important. 

I think this is the kind of movie you have to be in the mood for. It’s not major action, it’s not all that fast paced, but it does tell a story and I think it does it well.

Bug

I was disappointed in the this movie.  I thought it sounded really interesting and had a great premise, but then the movie itself was a let down.  Dan and I ended  up watching half of it on fast forward.  It started out slow and didn’t seem to ever really pick up.  Ashley Judd is a good actress, yet I didn’t quite connect with her character this time.  It takes over half of the movie before her character ever becomes paranoid about the bugs.  From there the movie didn’t really improve.  To be perfectly honest, I was kind of rooting for the ending that happened.  I didn’t have anything at all invested in these characters and I think the story could have been told in a better way.  And with less blood. 

They didn’t explore the psychological side of it enough. Or maybe they didn’t explore it in the right way.  I really like movies that have some type of psychological element to them, things that mess with your head or mess with the characters heads.  This movie didn’t really do that.  Yes, the characters were paranoid and that came across, but I think it could have been delved into deeper than it was. 

Bug also had some weird camera shots, and randomly interspersed pictures of bugs and stuff that didn’t really fit with the film.  The other characters also didn’t have much of a purpose at all, and I would have liked to have known more about them.  As I said, overall this film was a disappointment and not what I expected at all.