saw a couple of awfully good movies this weekend.
undercover brother. sharp movie about race relations. deftly picks on that funny phenonmenon of how everyone seems to want to be black! this flick did a sweet job skewing black and white stereotypes and their perceptions of each other, but I would have been even more amused if they had skewed some asian ones too. no matter. this worked wonderfully.
the verdict: run run to see this! this is coming home with me on dvd.
the sum of all fears. I went into this movie with some fears of my own: Ben Affleck is the new Jack Ryan? My loyalty to Harrison Ford would remain stalwart, thank you very much. No little upstart would be able to carry off such an action movie the way Indy could! And indeed I was right — Ben played Jack Ryan with the articulate and knowledgeable way that Tom Clancy’s novels have always deserved, and not the thrill-a-minute fests that Air Force One demanded. Sum of All Fears treated a very frightening issue — the threat of nuclear war — in a taut and tense way that brought the reality of the fear home. The relationship between the young Ryan and Morgan Freeman’s character (which was not in the book) was an effective device in pulling the audience in and driving the story along. The way the film was shot out after a bomb goes off gave the movie an eerie feel, starkly portraying the possible in a frightening manner.
the verdict: nuclear war is scary. refer to NBC movie Fail Safe for another illustration. run, RUN to go see this. this is also going into the DVD collection.