TheCowSays

This movie was pretty good. I, of course, will have to grade this segment by segment: The first segment wasn't very good. It was dumb and raunchy (with an bizarre amount of nudity.) Does Madonna seek out bad roles? Nothing really seemed serious or funny enough for you to really care about what was going on, and the conflict is resolved with so little effort, that you wonder why they even bothered creating it, and why Madonna would waste her time. Lily Taylor is completely wasted in it. Still, it's moderately entertaining mostly because of all the gimicky wipes, bad humor, and a dumb, feel-good attitude. 4/10 The second segment tried a little harder to creating an interesting situation, but, alas, it was a big dull dud. Nothing else to say. 2/10 The third segment was really good. It was packed full of good humor and some funny (and disturbing) surprises. I can't say much more about it, except to say that it was really, really good. 9/10 The final segment ended the movie well. The long takes got kind of annoying and distracting, but overall it was pretty good. The first half of the segment was kind of dull, but the second half was pretty interesting, and it ended the movie on the perfect note. 8/10 Overall, despite some dull parts, this movie was good enough to recommend. However, I wouldn't watch it again. 7/10

This is one of those movies that everyone probably forgot about a few years after it was made (I bet Shakespeare in Love and Forrest Gump will soon follow.) It's great, and doesn't deserve to be forgotten. It should be in the top 50 on this list. This is probably the best movie I've ever seen that has such a slow moving plot. People compare it to American Beauty, though they're really quite different. Ordinary People has a much better message and is less plot-driven than American Beauty. The characters are excellent. Everyone in this movie deserved an Oscar, especially Mary Tyler Moore, in what is, by far, her strongest performance (and pretty much what is her only major serious performance.) Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton's few scenes are the highlights of the movie, although the rest of the movie is also wonderful. If you want to see an emotionally manipulative movie that uses simple, unoriginal Hollywood ideas that have been used a billion times, go see a movie like "Pay It Forward," but if you want genuine emotion and a good message, go see this movie. I hope I've made the point I was trying to make. 10/10

This movie was really good. It was so close to being classic. I read Ebert's review, and I totally agree when he said that: "It crash-lands with an ending of soppy moralizing, but until the end, it's smart and merciless in the tradition of the original story." The ending was just awful. It just didn't fit with the tone of the story at all. But before that, it was compelling, often hillarious, and wonderfully twisted. I especially loved Sarah Michelle Gellar and Selma Blair's performances. They were cast well. If it'd had a twisted ending that didn't try too hard to prove that "no, you should not be like Katheryn", I would give it an A, but the ending is always extremely important in how you view a movie (and this had an awful ending), so I give it a C+.