Week of 9 October 2006

Delight—The Departed—Nicholson is back. Damon is bad in a bad way. DiCaprio is good in a bad way. Wahlberg and Sheen are bad in a good way. This movie is good in every way.

Delight—Year of the Conspiracy Theory Documentary—Like it or not, Michael Moore has popularized the conspiracy theory documentary into its own sub genre. This past week included no fewer than three CTDs opening in many parts of the nation:

• Believe about Multi-level marketing,
• America: Freedom to Fascism about there being no law that says we have to pay federal income taxes and a bunch of other conspiracies like that all of the gold in Fort Knox is gone; and, finally, the best of the bunch,
• The U.S. vs. John Lennon—the U.S. really did try to get rid of Lennon. They failed, but they tried.

Dud—Hypocritical Movie Critics—Come on people, you cannot lambaste Jude Law, Kate Winslet, and Sir Anthony Hopkins one week for bad southern accents in All the King's Men, but give Nicholson a pass for his horrible Boston accent in The Departed. It's just not fair. Hmm, I wonder if there is a conspiracy against British actors in USA movies? (see above)

Huge Gigantic Dud—Texas Chainsaw Massacre—You know what? I'm tired of people making excuses for this franchise and these gory films saying that they are great horror films and you cannot expect a great story or great acting. You know what people? They aren't great. They aren't even good. You know how I know? I saw Aliens and it was great with a great story and great acting. All it takes is time, talent, and money.

Dude—Leonardo DiCaprio—Wow the kid has finally grown up. He's still a twig, but he's strong. And boy oh boy does he deliver in the emotion category in The Departed—see the look in his eyes above. A lot of people have slammed him over the years, and maybe rightly so, but it's hard to argue that he's now been in three Martin Scorsese films. Not many actors can say that.

Dud / Delight—Forest Whitaker—Why has it taken so long for people to discover Forest Whitaker? I knew he was a great actor the first time I saw him and that was in a pretty bad movie called Species. Watch out Denzel Washington and Jamie Foxx, the competion just got tougher. It's hard to picture either doing the job Whitaker did playing the ruthless Idi Amin Dada in The Last King of Scotland. He was phenomenal.

Delight / Dud—Ron Howard—Bravo to Ron Howard for beating out Clooney, Scorsese, and Nichols to win the rights to direct the film version of the London stage play, Frost/Nixon. Boo to the critics who claim this should be his comeback film after the disaster that was The Da Vinci Code. People, if they had waited to read the book after seeing the film as I did, they wouldn't have thought the movie was so bad. And really, it wasn't except for the terrible miscasting of Tom Hanks. I say, leave Ron Howard alone. He'll always be little Opie to me.