Movie Micro-Reviews: Edition 45

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring	100	What can I say. The mood is perfect. The story hangs together. The characterizations are charming and thrilling. The effects enhance and draw you in, rather than amaze or distract. Fantastic. [I cannot believe I’ve never Micro-reviewed this in the blog before! As often as this movie plays in my house? Well, I guess I haven’t sat and watched it in quite a while…]
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen	66	Originally reviewed in Edition 34 Better than the original, for me. More story. I liked the supernatural elements (very Japanese). And the kids took me for Father’s Day, so that helped. Not so good: visually confusing – too much motion, hard to tell good robots from bad; too rude/crude in parts.
Fifth Element (The)	76	As a comedy this works really well. It's "Stargate" played silly. And it's silly and fun. I appreciated Chris Tucker much more this time. Lots of laughs from our audience.
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers	98	The Ents are not silly! The orcs are mean. The slightly lower rating is for confusion they could have worked a bit harder to clear up. But still near perfection! Originally reviewed in Edition 5
Book of Eli (The)	91	This is what a post-apocalyptic sci-fi story should be like! OK, there are a couple of kinds of endings such a story can have, and they chose one which was very satisfying. Denzel Washington was exceptional. Gary Oldman was frightening. Don’t let someone spoil this movie for you. See it for yourself – if you can handle the violence. P.S. Mila Kunis is not “Jackie” – and by her last scene could be a young Angelina Jolie.
Night at the Museum 2	50	Not nearly as good as the first, but a bit funny. I like Hank Azaria. Amy Adams has great eyes. It did have a lot of the things we saw at the Smithsonian, which was cool.
State of Play	80	This was a well constructed mystery. I liked all the performances, was caught up in the story. Good one!
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil	76	I like everything Kevin Spacey does. This is not true of John Cusack, so I was pleasantly surprised. Very atmospheric – I want to visit Savannah. Though I think the romantic subplot didn’t add much, the rest of the story fit well.