psychprofessor

I knew this movie was a "downer" and knew the basic outline of the story from reviews I had read. Still, I was unprepared for the shocking ending. This is one of those movies that I'm glad I saw because it was a well-done, well-acted, beautifully filmed movie. Having said that, I will add that I had to watch a "feel good" movie afterwards so that I could go to sleep when I went to bed.

"House of Sand and Fog" is powerful. There are no bad characters in the movie, so you can't really put the blame for the turn of the events on any particular character. The movie is disturbing precisely because you come to like all the characters, and the events seem both plausible and almost inevitable given the personalities involved. I didn't care much for Ben Kingsley in "Ghandi," an overpraised movie in my opinion (I mean, how can you award an Oscar in costume design to a movie in which everyone is wearing white diapers?), but he definitely deserves accolades for this performance.

This is a "must see," but I'm not sure you'll like it.

My wife asked this early in the movie. She's not a Jim Carrey fan, or a fan of nonlinear movies, so she left early on to do something else. At the beginning of the film, there were four of us watching it: My son and his wife, my wife and I. By the end of the movie, it was just my son and me.

I was trained initially as a biopsychologist, so the basic premise of this movie really appealed to me. Is it possible to erase a person's memories of some person or events? If so, how would it be done? By the way, the name of the memory-erasing outfit in the movie is Lacuna, Inc., or something of the sort. Lacuna is a hole, like a hole in your hearing, or a hole in your memory.

I thought the acting was great in the movie, particularly Carrey and Winslett, both actors I like to watch.

All in all, I found the movie haunting and wouldn't mind watching it again, something I rarely do with movies. After all, there are so many I haven't seen that I don't want to waste what time I have left in life revisiting movies I've already seen--unless it's "The Usual Suspects," or "Brazil," or "12 Monkeys," or . . . . What the hell, it's obvious there are lots of movies I would want to see again, and again, and . . . .

I also really liked "Adaptation," which I gather is by the same writer. If you like movies that'll make you think, check this one out.

Was this really the worst movie I've ever seen? Well, darned close to it. I really don't know where to begin in criticizing this mess.

First of all, I haven't seen anything funny yet. I taped this from HBO and have been watching it in 30-minute segments while I do the treadmill. At least I haven't been wasting my time totally while watching it.

I learned from reading the reviews that this is the third movie in a trilogy of movies of bad taste. Now I'm not immediately turned off by bad taste. I really liked "There's Something About Mary" and "Caddy Shack," for example, both of which contained many tasteless gags, some of which were repeated in "American Wedding."

All I can say is that if this one's at all similar to its predecessors, I'll avoid the earlier ones like the plague. Actually, the plague would be funnier than "American Wedding."

Did I say I didn't like this movie?