VH Corner

Willem Dafoe gets fed up by his boss, Robert Redford, so he kidnaps him. Hey, this isn’t Swimming With Sharks is it?

Robert Redford isn’t really his boss, but it’s all explained in the movie in a roundabout way. The movie is odd since you get to watch the kidnapping happening over the course of a day and then you get to watch Redford’s wife and grown children back at the house for days wondering what’s going on with the kidnapping and why it happened.

The FBI pries into their lives. An old affair is brought up and happy memories are discussed. None of it is news to anyone.

I think the movie had some potential, but I think there were major plot points missing. I still don’t understand why he was kidnapped. I don’t get what the motive was and the ending was really stupid. It might happen that way with real kidnappings but I’m not watching reality here. I want to know the reasons behind things unless I’m watching David Lynch. Bleah.

Grade: D+

Before China was unified, seven states were warring. One of the state’s king wanted to become the first Emporer of China but there are assassins from the other states set out to stop that.

I really liked this movie. It told the same general story over and over again, but in different ways. The hero tells how he killed some assassins to save the state’s king. Then there’s another version of how the story might have gone. And then there are a couple more versions. I think the last one was the correct one, but it didn’t really matter. It was cool to see each different version that ended up with the same basic result.

There were a lot of bright colors in this movie like there were in House of Flying Daggers. When one person wore bright red, so did everyone else. Then in the next story it was light blue. Next it was green and then white. I liked the colors in the different story. It made all the fighting very pretty.

The girl from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers was in this movie too. It must be a requirement that she is in all movies of this fashion. She’s a bit of a loon in the movie, but I thought she provided good comic relief, even if that wasn’t her intention.

Rating: A-

Coen Brothers movie starring George Clooney has a divorce lawyer and Catherine Zeta-Jones as the gold-digging wife of his client. Can they make a romantic comedy?

I liked this movie a lot more than I thought it would. George Clooney and the Coen brothers make a good combo. This movie was a very odd romantic comedy because they made it and I liked it. You knew who was going to get screwed, yet you still hoped it would work out in the end. That didn’t stop you from laughing when everything went very wrong.

George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones had really good chemistry and I didn’t find her annoying in this movie at all, like I did in Ocean’s Twelve.

I’d recommend this movie for those that like romantic comedies that are just a bit off. It’s fluff, but weird fluff.

Rating: B+