1.Casino Royale - Fantastic. This and Goldeneye are my two favorite bond movies of all time. This might be better. Daniel Craig is a bad dude, and a great bond. It shows his origins and how he became 007. In that respect, he makes mistakes, is careless, rough around the edges...it's awesome. This movie was a top 5 of the year, no question. My only beef is that they didn't know how to end it. It went on too long, and there were too many twists. But overall, it was great.
2.Apocalypto - I didn't think it was as good as Gibbs did. But it was still excellent. The action and set design/costumes were as good as advertised. The blood didn't really bother me...it was a brutal society! A lot of great typology and just a great all around movie. A top 10 for sure.
3.A Night at the Museum - cute. I laughed a lot, because it was funny in a kid and adult kind of way. Owen Wilson can do a serious monologue and I laugh my ass off. Anyway, this was nothing to write home about, but like Courtney commented, it was a good escape, and very entertaining.
Still wanna see Children of Men, Dreamgirls, and maybe even We are Marshall and Pursuit of Happyness.
Update:
4.Rocky Balboa - Really good. I love sports movies, and I grew up on the Rocky movies, so this was pretty much a given. The fifth was terrible, but this rebounded quite nicely. Good story, good action, human drama, fine performances...and one of the best movie soundtracks of all time. It was a great time at the theater.
5.The Holiday - Predictable, but cute, chick flick. It was definitely a 3 act movie. In the first act, the Kate Winslet plot carries the movie. Cameron Diaz and (I regret to say) Jude Law were both TERRIBLE. But then they settled into it, and the second act was surprisingly excellent. The last third dragged a bit, and settled into your typical weepy cliches, but hey, Jack Black can pull serious off in his own crazy way. And that's never a bad thing. Good movie to score points with your significant other, while being tolerable, yea, enjoyable.
6.The Good Shepherd - Not nearly as bad as you've heard. Even better, it was pretty darn good. Now, if you don't really care about our country or how the CIA came about and things like that, this will probably be a bit dull. And it definitely is sad. But it has great performances (admittedly understated), excellent cinematography, and the intrigue and tension built are first rate. I just think that the subject matter is very interesting. And Deniro handles it very well. Angelina Jolie is a bit miscast, and there are a couple scenes that are unnecessary, but I really enjoyed this film.
Posted by jmmelton at December 29, 2006 10:23 AM | TrackBack