The Hurricane (1999)

Directed by Norman Jewison (UofT grad, Jesus Christ Superstar, Moonstruck, In The Heat of The Night, The Thomas Crown Affair- the original)

Starring Denzel Washington

Good movie, though a bit long. Denzel’s performance is the best part. When the movie came out there was a bit of controversy about it not being historically accurate, but that never really deters me from liking or not liking a film. I will say that the movie does come off a bit two dimensional in constructing it’s myth of Rubin Carter’s life. Most of the characters are either evil or good with few falling in between (which doesn’t leave much room for nuance). I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing because great meaning can be derived from mythical struggles between these forces, but this movie, however, spends more time trying to canonize Rubin Carter than it does attempting to say anything particularly insightful about race relations in America.

Watch It on TV


88 Minutes (2007)

Starring Al Pacino, Ryan from the OC, Leelee Sobieski, Judging Amy, baseball player from Angels in the Outfield, generic cop actor and other terrible people.

Insanely Idiotic Premise: “A thriller about a college professor who, while moonlighting as a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI, receives a death threat telling him that he has only 88 minutes to live. In narrowing down possible suspects, he frantically seeks to communicate with a problem student, an ex-girlfriend, and a serial killer on death row.”

Alternate description of the “Plot”: “Dr. Jack is a shrewed womanizing Forensic Psychologist and professor working with the FBI in Seattle. A tortured past makes him great at what he does. Jack’s past is returning to pull him on another roller-coaster as a killer that he helped to put on death row approaches the last minutes of his life. “

A terrible, terrible movie. There is nothing remotely good about this movie. It’s just ludicrously bad. I don’t know what is worse, the fact that Pacino read this script, talked to the director and still decided to make this movie… or that even after seeing the finished product (assuming he watched it) Pacino decided to reteam with the same director and drag Robert Deniro into it as well with last years’ Righteous Kill, which I am still curious to see, but now hold out even less hope of it being remotely watchable.

Please God Skip It - maybe watch ten minutes of it out of morbid curiosity, but honestly not worth the whole running time (which is unfortunately longer than 88 minutes.

The Reader (2008)

Directed by Stephen Daltry

Starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Feinnes

Pretty good movie. Nothing mind blowing. I actually thought it wasn’t very good about half-way through watching it, but a few good scenes towards the end salvaged it from being a just plain bad movie. She’s good, but I can’t believe Kate Winslet beat Anne Hathaway for the Oscar with this.

Nothing special- I wouldn’t go out of my way.

Murder at 1600 (1997)

Starring Wesley Snipes, Diane Lane, and Alan Alda

Synopsis: “He’s a D.C. cop on the outside. She’s a Secret Service agent on the inside. Tracking a White House homicide to the First Family’s front door.”

Very entertaining, but a pretty bad movie overall. Pretty much what you would expect from the description.

Watch it on TV