Monday, July 05, 2004

It’s the mediocre movie rental weekend. I’ve watched two movies that didn’t wow me, which is fine - they can’t all be good.

First up was The Missing. I think Cate Blanchette is one of those actors that I’ll watch in anything because she’s good in everything. She is such a chameleon, which I think I’ve said before. It was an interesting movie and I liked it well enough. What made the viewing a challenge were the technical difficulties with the subtitles on the DVD. Every time one of the characters spoke in a language other than English subtitles came on the screen, which you’d expect. However, they stayed on even when they would go back to English and I was distracted. So I would pause to go to the menu to turn off the subtitles. I think that added easily 20 minutes to the total viewing time, I thought the movie was never going to end. The unexpected cameos were fun.

Second was Cold Creek Manor, which I didn’t like too much. I like a good suspenseful thriller, but this one was unrelenting in the tension and tone. Dennis Quaid was pretty good, Sharon stone was Sharon Stone, and Stephen Dorff was brilliant. He really plays evil very well. What I enjoyed more than the movie were the bonus features on the DVD, especially the deleted scenes and the alternate ending. I wish they had used the alternate ending as the actual ending. I was amused that I discovered that my speculation about additional factors not shown in the actual ending were in the alternate ending. Maybe I should write a screenplay.

Anyway, I can recommend The Missing but not Cold Creek Manor.