K8-2

I haven't read the novel, but what I can say about Practical Magic is that it's a perfect example of a very well edited trailer that was highly successful in its goal of making the film look cuter, smarter, sexier and more entertaining than it actually was.

Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock were fine, though it might have been interesting to see them cast against type in reverse roles - Sandy as the Bad Girl, Nicole as the Good Girl. They are both best in this film when they are flirtatious, sarcastic, drunk and hungover, but I think one emotion which neither one of them is terrific at expressing is fear (Bullock's a little better in this department). Unfortunately, because the film is trying to balance light comedy with dark forces there is call for a lot of gasping and swooning that is highly unbecoming to two such talented eyelash-batters. And most of the gasping and swooning is done with a complete lack of humor.

Also - a contrived ending in which all the women in the town who have previously taunted the Owens sisters for 20 years with cat-calls of witchery and projectile garden vegetables are suddenly interested in coming over to their house to help them perform an exorcism. Why the sudden change? It's insulting to sum it up with "there's a little witch in every woman." Hundreds of years of fear cannot be overcome by a single telephone call. It's absolute silliness to watch these women prance around, embracing witchcraft when they have expended so much energy denouncing it.

Overall this is a fluffy, erratic and unorganized movie whose success is wholly dependent on the attractiveness of its two adorable stars (both, in this case, well-heeled in the latest neo-bohemian fashions).

I love Hal Hartley's work, partially because in his efforts to place style just a bit higher than substance he's yielded some really interesting results. Language, pointedly written and used as quick barbs with portentous spaces between them, can say a lot when paired with simple, lovely imagery. That's his forte. He paints a visual picture of ordinary suburbia with the resonance of a Hopper painting. He makes gas stations, cheap diners and run-down houses into poetry. And the people who live in them walk amongst these ordinary places like anesthetized automatons waiting to be de-thawed by feeling. It's fun to watch them wake/warm up.

Henry Fool is so completely different from his other work to date. It is an epic, certainly - it's LONG. The stylistic language remains but it is longer, softer, more philosophic and thus often more alienating. I think the film suffers a little from its scope - is it about Henry or is it about Simon? Is it making a value judgment about a life lived AS poetry or as a life lived THROUGH poetry? Is pure inspiration as noble as pure success?

I liked it, but I walked away from it exhausted and with no lingering images to grab onto. In comparison to his other films, so much is said, felt and expressed - and so many ideas are thrown about and examined - maybe I'm just in a state of shock from the sudden change.

Plot aside, Thomas Jay Ryan is an intense, sensual and exciting actor. Somebody put him in more films, please.

What a disappointment!

I may be particularly amnesiac or dense, but I've seen the original Halloween several times and I never in my 24 years noticed any reference to Michael Myers being Laurie Strode's brother. To this day I'm still extremely confused as to where this came from and I wonder if maybe it were invented as a plot device only AFTER the original film was released.

Anyway, as far as this sequel is concerned...it's fun seeing Jamie Lee Curtis up on the screen again, I'll grant the film that much. But it's severely flawed.

First, it's far too short. Second, it has a highly predictable ending (my definition of a predictable ending: if I tell the lead actor what to do and they somehow hear and obey me, then I was successfully able to predict it and it was thus predictable). Third, the comic relief is hokey. Fourth, there aren't enough cast members for Myers to kill off. Fifth, it's overly simplistic - so much so that I was entertaining more exciting notions of one of the supporting players in Laurie Strode's daily life actually being Myers without her knowing it (sadly, I was wrong). Sixth, there continues to be little if any examination of WHY Myers is crazy and evil and WHY he kills random people. Seventh, NO DONALD PLEASANCE! I think he's dead, correct? Which is very unfortunate for the franchise, as he was actually ten to twenty times scarier than the murderer himself. And eighth, the media blitz about Michelle Williams of Dawson's Creek becoming the next Scream Queen, when in fact she had probably less than 5 minutes of screen time in the film.