Movie Review: "Bridge to Terabithia"

Karen and I took the kids to see Bridge to Terabithia last weekend. I thought it was just wonderful -- I even cried during the movie, which is not exactly a common occurrence for me (the last time a movie made me cry was Hotel Rwanda, though obviously they're slightly different movies). First of all, any movie that stars kids is always a crapshoot, because good child actors don't exactly grow on trees. But I thought Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb were outstanding. It was a movie that required genuine emotions, not your typical kitschy kiddie movie, and they both delivered.

The plot was engaging and I thought it managed just the right amount of obviousness (is that a word?) in the symbolic links between the make-believe Terabithia and the real world. In other words, and I don't think it ruins the movie for people who haven't seen it yet to say this, the kids make up their own world to help them deal with the problems they face in the real world, and the movie shows this in a way that is obvious enough for kids to understand but not so obvious that it thumps them over the head with it.

Obviously this is not the "feel good movie of the year!", since Karen and I spent a good portion of the movie crying, but that's also what made it so good -- it's a movie that doesn't shy away from tragic events yet is accessible to kids.

Very highly recommended, even for adults to see by themselves.

Movie Review: "Flags of our Fathers"

I think Clint Eastwood is a wonderful director. Million Dollar Baby, Unforgiven, Mystic River, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil... the guy knows what he's doing. Of course, he has also directed Absolute Power, The Rookie, and Bronco Billy, so he's not exactly a sure thing. For all its hype, I think Flags of our Fathers is somewhere in the middle of those lists. It's a pretty good movie, but I think it's baffling to see it getting 2 Oscar nominations and there were even people saying it should get nominated for Best Picture (though once people saw Letters from Iwo Jima it seems a lot of folks forgot about Flags because they thought Letters was so superior).

The most interesting thing about Flags was the backstory of how the famous flag picture came to be taken. Of course, Eastwood knows this, so he trickles the story out in a series of flashbacks and flashforwards and maybe even some flashsideways, but I think this is one of the problems with the movie. There was so much flipping between the soldiers in battle and the soldiers back in the States that it made the movie feel disjointed. I don't mind a little artistic license when it comes to playing with time in movies (i.e. Memento) , but I thought Eastwood overdid it here.

The movie also seemed to be asking what it means to be a hero, which I didn't think was particularly novel or compelling. Not to mention that one of the characters in the movie was so obviously a hero by any standard that it kinda ruined the question.

Don't get me wrong, Flags is a good movie and certainly worth seeing. But I don't think it quite reaches greatness.