NOTE: the following are some movie reviews that I wrote a few weeks ago and didn't manage to post, so the movies might not even be in the theatre anymore.
OK, now for a quick movie wrap-up for my new reviews section. I have seen three movies in the theatre in the last couple weeks.
First, despite what the Antispamist might tell you Something's got to Give is not a good movie. It survived on Jack Nicholson's antics for the first half of the movie, but after that not even Jack could save it. I also like Amanda Peet, but again...not enough to save this boring movie. This movie is a definate chick-flick. I found myself wondering if it was ever going to end.
The Last Samurai wasn't nearly as bad. Although Tom Cruise didn't do anything to improve this movie he also didn't manage to ruin it.
Return of the King is an excellent movie. There was some controversy over Peter Jackson leaving some stuff out from the book, but I think he did a good job (better than he did with Two Towers). I would have liked to have seen Sauron, but I can wait for the extended edition DVD for that. People also complained about the "Scouring of the Shire" scenes being left out, but I don't think this was a bad thing. The movie is allready 3.5 hours long, Scouring the Shire would have added at least another 15 minutes. In the book this part showed how much Pippen, Merry, Sam and Frodo had grown (physically & mentally) from their adventures in Middle Earth. They came home and took control of the Shire and earned much respect from their fellow hobbits. In the movie the foursome are mostly ignored by their fellow hobbits upon their return. I wish there had been a happy medium. I would have liked to see the hobbits get excited about the foursome's return and maybe show Merry and Pippen showing off their swords or battle wounds. This would have only taken a couple more minutes and would have conveyed some of the message from the book. One thing I did wonder about that might have also been left poorly explained in the book (can't remember): Aaragorn decides that they should attack Mordor and then all of a sudden he has a huge army at the gates of Mordor. It took Frodo, Sam and Gollum much much longer to travel the same distance.
Since writing those reviews I also saw Big Fish, which I enjoyed. Definately Tim Burton's best movie since Edward Scissor Hands...if not better (its been a while since I watched ESH). So I would give it a good, which is betther than the not bad that Last Samurai got but not up to the damn good that ROTK got.
Also, I am having a problem with a couple NICs not working. The problem is described in the Dell 1400 community forum, so if anyone has any suggestions either post here or reply to my message in the forum.