Lord of War

Leighton: ***
DVD Rental

Nicolas Cage plays an international arms dealer trying to maintain his family life without his wife finding out exactly what he does for a living and without getting caught by Interpol agent Ethan Hawke. I thought this would more of a black comedy for some reason. It ended up being more like Goodfellas swapping the drugs for guns. All in all, I thought it was pretty good. It wasn't the quirky/odd type of character Nicolas Cage tends to play.
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Mom ** PoP ***

I generally agreed with L8N. Here is a person who finds that he has a natural skill in both acquiring, selling, and delivering military arms. He includes his brother who is inwardly repulsed at this business. By the end of the film, he has lost his uncle, his brother, his parents, and his wife and child. The rule he follows is to never take sides.

Mom scored the film lower that I as a result of the scenes where the weapons were used following the close of a sale. These scenes were very heavy, but were necessary for the film to fully portray the immorality of his business.

Proof

Angela: ***, Louis: ***

Gwyneth Paltrow plays the daughter of a (formerly?) brilliant but now mentally disturbed mathematician, played by Anthony Hopkins. Her character struggles to come to terms with which qualities she's inherited from her father - his greatest strengths or his greatest weaknesses.

We felt that Paltrow's performance was really great (Nominated for a Golden Globe - Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture Drama). Her performance, along with the (at times) disjointed quality of the cinematography and the story's use of "flash-backs" and "flash-forwards" really made us share her struggle with the nature of her reality.

An added bonus was that the story was set in Chicago (and Evanston), so there was a great deal of familiar scenery throughout the picture.

Walk The Line

Lee ****, PoP ****

This story of the life of Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix), from his youth, his entrance into the world of music, to his meeting of June Carter (Reese Witherspoon) and their courtship. We are shown the sadness of his lapse into drug addiction and its effect on his health and career, and his ultimate recovery through the hands on efforts of June Carter with the added support of her family.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect of the film are the musical numbers. Both Joaquin and Reese sang all of the musical numbers. Their ability to mimic the singing styles of their characters and to blend together in the duets is mind boggling.

Casanova

Since no one else is posting anything...

Leighton: **** Bine: ****

This was a three-hour mini-series made for BBC Three in the U.K. Peter O'Toole plays the eldery Giacomo Casanova telling a young kitchen maid stories of his adventures as a young man. David Tennant (who will be playing the latest incarnation of the Doctor in the revived Doctor Who) plays the young Casanova in the flashbacks. The story starts out pretty funny and tongue-in-cheek but gets more serious towards the end. Very enjoyable, and it's great to see Peter O'Toole again. As this was a BBC television broadcast, I had to get through other means. If it comes out on DVD, it's worth renting, though.