Movies

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320 - A Royal Affair (2012) - 7.5/10 - This historical drama starts with Princess Caroline Matilda of Great Britain marrying her cousin, King Christian VII of Denmark. Christian suffered from mental illness and her time with him was not easy. Eventually, she formed a relationship with the king's physician and tried to initiate a number of reforms.


321 - The Great War (1959) - 7.5/10 - During the first world war, two Italian slackers try to evade the draft, but once they are in the army they try to get the easiest jobs and expose themselves to as little danger as possible. It's a good film with the horrors of war ever present amidst the comedy involving the two men.

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322 - Waking Ned Devine (1998) - 7.5/10 - Somebody in a small Irish village won the National Lottery and two men set out to find out who the winner is, hoping that they will share the wealth. They get a surprise when they discover that the winner died of shock after the numbers were drawn. Since he had no heirs, they decide to try and claim the prize.


323 - Dazed and Confused (1993) - 8/10 - It's the last day of school and thoughts turn to hazing freshmen, partying, and summer. I didn't remember much about the film, but it is pretty entertaining and fun with plenty of good music.


324 - Ocean Waves (1993) - 7/10 - Taku tells the story in flashback of his time in high school with his best friend Yutaka and a girl who transferred from Tokyo named Rikako. RIkako is pretty self-absorbed, but Taku comes to like her anyway, though her actions really make me wonder why. It's a good film, but I didn't like it quite as much this time around.


325 - Evita (1996) - 6/10 - A somewhat unflattering biographical musical about Eva Peron. The music was decent by itself and some of the shots were very good, but I didn't really care much for the story or the movie as a whole.


326 - Babe: Pig in the City (1998) - 7.5/10 - I don't remember much about the original Babe movie other than I liked it. This one was so-so early on, but so many absurd things happen during the film that I found myself enjoying it more and more as it went along. Babe and the Mrs. head to the city to try and save the farm after the Farmer gets injured. However, the two are soon separated.


327 - Quest for Camelot (1998) - 7/10 - The daughter of one of King Arthur's knights has to save Camelot with the assistance of a young blind man. It was okay, but nothing really special.

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328 - Mighty Joe Young (1998) - 7.5/10 - Poachers kill a female gorilla and the woman protecting the gorillas. The surviving baby gorilla is raised by the woman's young daughter and the gorilla grows into a giant. Joe is taken to a wildlife refuge in California and becomes the target of the same poacher that killed his mother. The film has nice effects and is entertaining.


329 - A Little Princess (1995) - 8/10 - A young girl raised in India by her soldier father is left in a boarding school when he goes off to war in 1914. The mistress of the school is harsh and tries to stifle creativity, but things still go well for the girl until her father goes missing and is presumed dead. This is a rewatch and I still like it quite a bit.


330 - Burnt by the Sun (1994) - 8/10 - During the summer of 1936, Colonel Kotov, a hero of the Bolshevik Revolution, is vacationing with his wife, young daughter, and friends. His wife's former fiance arrives after a 10 year absence and seems friendly at first, but has a hidden agenda involving Stalinist purges. It has nice cinematography and is well acted.


331 - Character (1997) - 7/10 - A prominent bailiff has sex with his housekeeper on one occasion. She leaves when she realizes that she is pregnant and raises her son in poverty on her own. The son has a few unfavorable encounters with his biological father over the years as he works his way up and becomes a lawyer. It's shot very well, but is done in a rather cold and dispassionate manner. The bailiff and the housekeeper fit that mold as well.


332 - Don Juan DeMarco (1994) - 5/10 - Johnny Depp stars as a man who thinks he's Don Juan. Marlon Brando is the doctor nearing retirement who takes him on as a patient. Depp is committed to his part, but Brando is very underwhelming. The film itself is also very boring.


333 - The Exterminating Angel (1962) - 6.5/10 - The staff of a wealthy hostess all find some reason to leave just as 20 guests arrive with only the major domo staying behind. The guests at the dinner party find themselves unable to leave and end up spending the tonight sleeping on couches or the floor. The days progress and they are still unable to leave, but food, water, and hygiene are all becoming an issue. I realize that this is a satire and is generally well regarded, but I didn't really find it all that interesting.


334 - Ninja Scroll (1993) - 7/10 - Jubei is a wandering ninja who works for gold. He ends up battling ninja intent on taking over ruling the country with a leader who may be immortal. It was decent, but not among my favorite anime.

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335 - The Prince of Egypt (1998) - 8/10 - A pretty nice adaptation of the book of Exodus. The songs aren't necessarily the most memorable, but it has good animation and a good story.

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336 - NGE: The End of Evangelion (1997) - 4/10 - I don't think this works as a stand alone film. It's clearly the culmination of the long running anime tv series (which I haven't watched and don't plan on watching). I knew what was going on since I've read the Evangelion manga, but I still didn't really enjoy the film. It seems to be highly regarded, but it didn't work for me.


337 - The Mambo Kings (1992) - 6.5/10 - Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas star as musician brothers who flee Cuba after problems with a mobster club owner. They make their way to New York City and take menial jobs as they try to rebuild their musical career. It was a decent film.


338 - Under the Sun (1998) - 7/10 - An illiterate farmer in 1950s Sweden places an ad for a young woman to serve as a housekeeper. This upsets the young friend that the farmer relies on to take care of his business (to his own benefit at times). The farmer and the housekeeper fall for each other.


339 - Fargo (1996) - 8.5/10 - A car salesman hired a couple of men to kidnap his wife in hopes of getting ransom money from his father-in-law. Things don't go exactly as planned. This was a rewatch and I liked it slightly more the second time around.


340 - That Thing You Do! (1996) (extended cut) - 8/10 - In 1964, a small town band hits it big with a song that gets popular pretty fast, but fame can be fleeting. It's been too long since I saw the original version, but the extended cut (with almost 40 extra minutes) is pretty good.

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341 - Geronimo: An American Legend (1993) - 7.5/10 - Geronimo surrenders and is sent to a reservation. He later breaks out with a band of men and conducts raids. He is pursued by soldiers and scouts. Wes Studi does a nice job as Geronimo and Jason Patric is also good as an army officer who tries to do his best for Geronimo and his people while following orders and keeping the peace.


342 - The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) - 6.5/10 - A railroad is being built in Africa late in the 19th Century. Things are going fairly well until two lions start killing a number of people, including the foreman. An experienced hunter (Michael Douglas) is brought in to assist the project engineer (Val KIlmer) in hunting and killing the lions, but the lions are more able and canny than expected. There is a lot of action in and around hunting the lions and being hunted by the lions, but overall I don't think it is really that interesting of a film.

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343 - One Fine Day (1996) - 7/10 - Jack Taylor (George Clooney) is a divorced newspaper reporter with a six year old daughter. Melanie Parker (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a divorced business executive with a six year old son. The two kids miss their field trip one day and the two parents have to juggle the kids and their jobs throughout one crazy day. It is a decent romantic comedy, though Melanie's son Sammy is a monster with his behavior.


344 - Police Story 3: Supercop (1992) - 7.5/10 - Jackie Chan's Hong Kong detective goes undercover and teams up with a Chinese agent (Michelle Yeoh) to try and locate the millions of dollars held in a secret account by a Chinese drug lord. The story is decent, though the draw is all of the action and stunts.


345 - The Ox (1991) - 7/10 - The 1867/1868 winter in Sweden was very harsh after two straight poor harvests. Many residents of the area have moved to America in hope of a better life. Those left behind are suffering from poverty and starvation. A farmer kills one of his master's two remaining ox in order to keep his wife and infant daughter alive through the winter. He later confesses and receives a very harsh sentence. This is a good movie, but it certainly isn't a happy one.


346 - Eraser (1996) - 7.5/10 - Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as a U.S. Marshal assigned to protect a key witness (Vanessa Williams) in a conspiracy to sell top secret weapons to terrorists. There is a ton of action with explosions, gun battles, and so on plus a nice scene with a plane. Very entertaining.


347 - Emma (1996) - 7.5/10 - A decent adaptation of the Jane Austen novel with Gwyneth Paltrow as Emma. I think that I slightly prefer the 2020 version, though.


348 - Kundun (1997) - 6.5/10 - The Dalai Lama's life from birth through departing Tibet in 1959 is covered here. The film looks great visually, but is somewhat boring as well.


349 - Sleepers (1996) - 8/10 - Four boys in Hell's Kitchen in 1967 pull a prank on a hot dog vendor to get free food. It goes wrong and they end up in a juvenile facility where they are abused physically and sexually for a year. A chance meeting 13 years later gives two of them the opportunity to get some revenge against the ringleader of the guards (Kevin Bacon). There were a number of good performances here and I hadn't remembered going in that Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, and Brad Pitt all had supporting roles.

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350 - Velvet Goldmine (1998) - 5/10 - In 1984, a journalist is assigned to find out what happened to glam rock star Brian Slade who disappeared a decade earlier. I liked the music and the costumes/makeup were all well done, but the movie and its style didn't really appeal to me.


351 - Sabrina (1995) - 7/10 - Sabrina (Julia Ormond) is the daughter of the chauffeur to a wealthy family. She grew up in love with younger son David (Greg Kinnear), but he was unaware of her presence until she returned from spending years in Paris. The older son Linus (Harrison Ford) starts paying attention to Sabrina in order to protect a business merger that hinges on David's upcoming marriage. This isn't in the same class as the Billy Wilder version of he story, but it was okay.


352 - Hamlet (1990) - 6.5/10 - The production is decent enough, I guess, though I didn't really buy Mel Gibson as Hamlet most of the time. The Branagh version is definitely much better and so is the Olivier version.


353 - The Star Maker (1995) - 7.5/10 - Joe Morelli travels around to rural towns in Italy during the early 1950s. He has a truck full of motion picture equipment and charges people to take screen tests of them with the promise of becoming an actor when he gets the film back to Rome and the big studios there. This is a nice period drama with a good performance from Sergio Castellitto.


354 - Havana (1990) - 7/10 - Robert Redford stars as an American gambler who travels to Havana for a big poker game. He gets involved with a woman (Lena Olin) who is helping the revolutionaries in Cuba alongside her husband. It's not a great film, but the sets are really good and the romantic drama is passable, if kind of slow.

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355 - Shanghai Triad (1995) - 8/10 - A 14 year old boy named Shuisheng is brought to Shanghai in 1930 by his uncle to serve the mistress (Gong Li) of the head of the Tang Triad, a distant cousin of Shuisheng and his uncle. The film follows the first week of his service in which quite a bit happens, including murder and intrigue between rival gangs. The film looks great and I thought it was a nice film.


356 - The Birdcage (1996) - 8.5/10 - Robin Williams and Nathan Lane star as a gay couple where one owns a nightclub and the other is a star drag queen performer. They have a 20 year old son who is about to marry the daughter of a very conservative U.S. Senator. A dinner where the families can meet is planned and hilarity ensues. I thought it was a lot of fun and I probably enjoyed it more now than I did when I saw it 20+ years ago.


357 - The Horse Whisperer (1998) - 8/10 - A 13 year old girl (Scarlett Johansson) and her horse are seriously injured in an accident. The girl is having a hard time adjusting after the accident so the girl's mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) packs the horse into a trailer and drives with her daughter from to Montana hoping that a 'horse whisperer' she read about in an article (Robert Redford) can help heal the horse and maybe help the daughter as well as a result. It's a slow and sometimes meditative film, but it kept my interest throughout and I enjoyed it.


358 - Snow Falling on Cedars (1999) - 6/10 - In 1950, a white fisherman is found to have drowned while tangled in his net. A Japanese-American fisherman is put on trial for murder, even though the evidence is scant. The film tells the backstory of the man on trial as well as his wife and the newspaper reporter who fell in love with the wife when they were both children. There is plenty of prejudice in play and there is a good story here, but the way it is told is unfortunately very dull much of the time.

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359 - Queen Margot (1994) - 7.5/10 - The film starts with the marriage between the Catholic Princess Margot of France and the Protestant King Henri of Navarre in 1572. Tensions are high at the time between Catholics and Protestants and there is plenty of murder and fighting between the groups. There are also a number of plots centered around Margot's mother, Catherine of Medici. I think the film does a pretty good job of making it feel like 16th Century France. The acting, scenery, costumes, etc. are all pretty good.


360 - Life (1999) - 7.5/10 - Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence star as two men who get sent to prison for life in Mississippi in the 1930s for a crime they didn't commit. I hadn't seen the film in over 20 years and it's still pretty funny.


361 - Poetic Justice (1993) - 7/10 - Janet Jackson stars as a hairdresser who is still getting over the murder of her boyfriend. She accompanies her best friend Iesha on a trip and becomes acquainted with Lucky (Tupac Shakur), a coworker of Iesha's boyfriend. They get off to a rocky start, but eventually hit it off.


362 - Prisoner of the Mountains (1996) - 8/10 - Rebels from a mountain village take two Russian soldiers prisoner. One father in the village hopes to trade the two soldiers for his son, a prisoner in the Russian compound. One of the soldiers is a veteran with lots of experience and the other is essentially fresh out of training. There is some bonding with the captors, especially a shepherd with no tongue and the young daughter of the father whose son is a prisoner. I thought it was a very good film.


363 - Richard III (1995) - 7/10 - Ian McKellan stars as the slimy Richard of Gloucester, who schemes and murders his way to become King of England. The setting is switched from the 1480s to the 1930s which makes it interesting with all that goes with it. The opening section and the last third of the film were the parts that I enjoyed the most. I grew a bit bored with the middle section.

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364 - The Wedding Banquet (1993) - 7/10 - A gay Taiwanese-American man lives in New York City with his boyfriend. His mother is always pestering him to find a woman and get married. One of the tenants in his building needs a green card so they decide to get married as a means to get the green card and get the mother off his back. Then the parents decide to visit for the wedding and things spiral out of control. It wasn't as funny as I was expecting, but it was decent.


365 - The Lover (1992) - 7/10 - A 15 year old French girl from a poor family attends a boarding school in Saigon in 1929. She meets a wealthy Chinese man in his early 30s one day while she is returning to school from a visit home. They are each attracted to the other and soon start an illicit relationship, even though they won't be able to remain together in the long term.


366 - Hedd Wyn (1992) - 9/10 - Ellis Evans was a Welsh farmer who was known locally for his poetry, having won a number of competitions and showing promise in the national competition. He was a pacifist during WWI, but agreed to join the British Army to keep his younger brother from being conscripted. This movie tells his story, starting from just before the outbreak of war. It is a very good anti-war biopic.


367 - Fly Away Home (1996) - 7.5/10 - Anna Paquin stars as a 13 year old girl whose mother dies in a car accident. She goes to live with her father (Jeff Daniels) in Canada, though she hadn't seen him in many years. She finds a nest with wild geese eggs and raises them after they hatch. Since they don't have a mother to teach them how to migrate, the girl and her father use ultralight aircraft to show them the way.


368 - The Other Side of Sunday (1996) - 7/10 - Maria is a Norwegian teen growing up in the 1950s with a priest for a father and a strict religious upbringing. She rebels in her thoughts against the dour approach of her father and wants to be free to be happy, wear makeup and earrings, and listen to music. The film shows her journey as she tries to escape the strict code her church and father expect her to live by.

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369 - Anna and the King (1999) - 7.5/10 - Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-Fat star in this version of the story about a British woman who travels to Siam in the 1860s to teach the king's children and becomes attached to the king as well. It was pretty entertaining. It also has a pre-Harry Potter Tom Felton in the film as Anna's son Louis.


370 - Dracula (1992) - 6/10 - The film has good visuals, makeup, costumes, etc., but I didn't really care much for the film itself. I liked the book a lot more than the film.


371 - Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) - 9/10 - An aging chef lives in a big house in Taiwan with his three adult daughters, having raised them alone since their mother died 16 years before. Time is moving on, though, and the daughters each have new men in their lives and their relationships or work opportunities may take them away from home. We get to see plenty of Chinese cooking and meals shared by the family as they struggle to communicate with each other. It's a very nice film with romance, humor, and lots of food.


372 - Henry & June (1990) - 4/10 - The sexual adventures of Henry Miller, June Miller, and Anais Nin in Paris. Henry Miller is working on his book "Tropic of Cancer" during his stay there. If you missed the last sex scene, just wait a couple of minutes and there will be another one. I don't think it's a very good film, though it definitely strives to be 'art'.

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373 - Hoffa (1992) - 6.5/10 - Jack Nicholson stars as Jimmy Hoffa in this biopic. I think that he does a decent job in the role, but the film itself is less interesting as it jumps from one part of Hoffa's union life to the next, though Danny DeVito's character gets to take center stage on his own from time to time, though usually on Hoffa's business.


374 - The Grandfather (1998) - 7.5/10 - An old Spanish Don returns to Spain early in the 20th Century after the death of his son. He lost his fortune while in the United States and is poor now. He is at odds with his son's widow and she now controls all of the family's properties. The Don also learns that one of the granddaughters is illegitimate being the result of an affair and he tries to discover which one it is. The film is pretty good and I liked the grandfather and the two girls, though why the filmmakers chose to have the voices of the 14 and 12 year old girls dubbed by a 30 year old woman and a 66 year old woman is beyond me. It sounds odd, though I got used to it eventually.

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375 - The Bandit (1996) - 6.5/10 - A man who was a mountain bandit in his youth is released from prison after 35 years. He discovers that it was his best friend who turned him in, stole his gold, and stole the woman he loved. The bandit goes off to Istanbul in search of his former friend and woman, but it is a big and daunting place. He gets help from a low level drug dealer. I liked the movie, though I thought it was kind of amateurish at times and moved at too slow a pace.


376 - The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) - 7/10 - Michael Caine and the Muppets star in a decent adaptation of the Dickens classic.


377 - Michael Collins (1996) - 7/10 - Liam Neeson stars as Irish revolutionary Michael Collins in this biopic. It's not bad and Neeson does a good job. I didn't really care for Alan Rickman in his role, though.

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378 - Angela's Ashes (1999) - 7/10 - The movie starts out with misery piled upon misery - a drunk father who wastes most of what he brings in at the pub, kids dying and living in very poor conditions, having to go back to Ireland into an even worse situation, etc. It got better eventually and I liked the parts with the teenage Frank McCourt.


379 - The Celebration/Festen (1998) - 6/10 - A family and friends get together for a big party at the small hotel which the family owns out in the country. They are celebrating the 60th birthday of the father, though one of the daughters recently committed suicide. At the party, some unwelcome accusations are brought forth and there is quite a bit of family drama playing out in front of everybody. This film seems to be highly regarded, but I didn't care for it that much. The style it was filmed in didn't really work for me and I didn't really care for any of the characters or the strange way that most of them behaved.