DeNiro and Pacino form their usual powerhouse acting team in this crime thriller with a twist. The ending was so cool I didn’t even see it coming… and as anyone who reads my reviews knows, I love movies with twist endings. Call me an idiot, but they had me fooled all the way until the big reveal. The great thing about this movie is that it has great acting by both of these mega-stars, and some not-so-fantastic acting by the lock-jawed 50 Cent, a.k.a. Curtis Jackson. He’s a pretty cool guy, but he should stick to rapping and being thugged out.

This story follows a priceless musical instrument over three hundred years’ time, as it changes hands several times, travels around the world and barely escapes destruction on several occasions before being recovered and put up for auction in the present day. It’s unique in that this is perhaps the only movie I’ve ever seen where entire sections are acted out in four different languages besides English. On the DVD version I watched, no subtitles were provided in the film itself. At first I kept stopping the DVD and turning on the English subtitles (for the hearing impaired) during these parts just so I could understand what was going on. I find subtitles distracting, however, especially when the film switches back to parts where the actors are speaking in English again. I eventually just let the movie play through without subtitles and found that I was able to gather enough information about the story simply by observing the body language and mannerisms of the characters. The film includes French, German, Chinese (Mandarin), and Italian in addition to English. Besides the annoyance of the subtitle issue (I’ve read elsewhere that they were included in the theatrical version), this Canadian-made film is a masterpiece.

Another fun, violent and quite eccentric film from the Coen Brothers, Raising Arizona finds Nicholas Cage playing the same deadpan chump character he always plays. This time, he’s a redneck who has a certain penchant for finding trouble. Unfortunately he’s usually too stupid to get himself out of it again. When he and his police officer wife (played by Holly Hunter) can’t have children themselves, they decide to steal someone else’s baby. Hilarity, violence, and crime ensue. You’ll want to go along for the ride with this four on our flamescale.

Another quirky Wes Anderson film, this one is full of the usual eccentric behavior you’d expect from its characters – especially Max (Jason Schwartzman), a student at a private school called Rushmore. Between founding and/or keeping a membership in dozens of extracurricular clubs and teams while simultaneously failing out of classes, 15-year-old Max takes on a strong liking for an elementary school teacher named Rosemarie Cross (Olivia Williams). He quickly becomes smitten with her, but finds himself in competition with Herman Blume (Bill Murray), a parent of twin boys who also attend the school.

Overall, this movie was fun to watch, but even its short 93 minute duration seems to drag in some places. It’s enjoyable if you’re a fan of Anderson’s style, but it’s also very strange. Some things in the film seem to happen for no apparent reason, but of course this is typical Anderson fare. A good view is a flame rating of 3.5, says I.

I was surprised at how well Dustin Hoffman did at portraying an autistic guy, and at how big of a prick Tom Cruise’s greedy, money-hungry character was as well. After his father dies, Charlie Babbitt (Cruise) finds out he has a brother when his father’s will fails to bestow anything to him except for his classic car and his prized rose bushes. The rest of his fortune, to the tune of around $3 million, is left to a third party, whom Babbitt quickly tracks down at a mental institution. Babbitt decides to take his brother, in essence kidnapping him, only to find that his abnormal behavior is somewhat difficult to deal with.

I enjoyed Rain Man because of the development of Cruise’s character throughout the story, but also mostly because the ending was more realistic than it was happy-perfect-storybook. You get to see a relationship develop between two adult brothers and the way that each one change’s the others life. This one achieves a respectable 4.5 on our scale of greatness.

While it has its intense moments and features one of the most gorgeous starlets in Hollywood in Rachel McAdams, this film leaves much to be desired. Girl meets nice guy in airport, gets on plane only to find herself seated serendipitously next to same guy. Quickly finds out guy isn’t actually very “nice” at all. It’s a nice edge-of-your-seat kind of plot, but it loses its luster when it tries to get away with the same scare tactics of a cheap horror film.

If you can get past all the slapstick, there are some pretty good zingers in this Robin Williams flick. If you can possibly wreck yourself more or go to greater lengths than he does to keep your family from thinking you’re a bumbling fool, I’d like to see you try. With that element of physical comedy comes all the far-fetched and outlandish situations that could only happen in a movie to make a road trip as frustrating and dangerous as possible. Jeff Daniels also does a great job as a member of the supporting cast, and overall I’d have to say the film bested the low expectations I had going in. I think it’s a tough thing to do these days to have a movie rated PG be interesting enough for an adult audience but still entertaining for kids, and I think this one does a good job of pulling that off. It’s no blockbuster, but it does get 3-and-a-half flame points on our scale.

This comedy starring Johnny Knoxville of ‘Jackass’ fame is about a guy named Steve who decides to pretend he’s retarded and enter the Special Olympics. He needs money bad because one of his friends cuts his fingers off accidentally and Steve promises to pay for the operation to put them back on. I thought this movie would be more about making fun of retards, but it ended up being more about how retards say a bunch of funny stuff because they’re not that smart and they don’t know whats going on. It turned out to be more cute-funny than mean-funny, but it was still okay and I enjoyed it. Even though the acting was bad. But the retarded kids were much better actors than most of the cast including Johnny Knoxville, so it was alright in the end. I gave it a three out of five flames mainly because a retarded kid launches a water balloon at Johnny Knoxville’s crotch and that was almost exactly like Jackass where he gets squirted with a firehose in the crotch – not too original, but still pretty funny!

Wow, what a cool movie! This was a treat to watch, because I literally watch like a movie almost every single day of my life. (Blockbuster Online, baby!) I’m always thrilled when a movie with such a stylized quality and visual appeal such as this comes across my viewing area. It has a unique story and interesting characters whose lives are all intermingled, not only because they are family, but because the way past events in their lives have shaped their views of each other and of life itself. Just an overall very interesting and slightly funny film, with a kind of morbid, dark humor to it that gives it that extra punch it needed to bring it to a 4 on our awesome scale of greatness.