I Loved Valentine's Day and so when I heard about this one I was very excited to go see it and it has some of my favorite actresses and actors in it. Of course people will call this film predictable and cheesy just like all the romantic built movies, but honestly there is not one romantic type of movie that is not predictable. Of course you know what's going to happen at the end since it's called a romantic movie. I personally loved this movie, it had a lot of laughs and a couple parts where I got teary eyed. The movie has well put together characters and a very good plot. The ending just like Valentine's Day where it brought characters throughout the movie together some predictable and some were the complete opposite of predictable. I Love this movie and recommend it to anyone who likes romantic comedies or likes Valentine's Day. Who cares what the critics say they are wrong most of the time. Go to enjoy the movie, not to critique it.

After reading the book, I watched the film. What a disappointment the film was. The filmmakers have taken a book that explores the differences between women and men as well as issues of race, prejudice and class difference, and turned it into little more than a formulaic romance novel. I note that most of the reviewers who rated the film highly had not read the book. I encourage you to do so. It is such a rich novel--far richer than the film. What the screenwriter has done is purge the movie of all the more difficult issues the book deals with. Gone is Mrs. Turner's discussion of race and her prejudice against darker-skinned people. Gone is Janie's jealousy as well as the explanation for Tea Cake's violence (of course, Tea Cake's violence is gone, too, because he's supposed to be the romantic hero; romantic heroes can't hit their wives as Tea Cake does in the book). Gone are the conversations on the porch of Joe Starks store. Gone is Nanny's explanation of her reasoning for Janie's marriage to Logan Killicks. It's really too bad that the production company didn't have faith in Zora Neale Hurston's story and felt they had to over-simplify it; I'm sure the audience could have handled it in all its complexity.

Well-written book...reads like a forward-moving memoir, then in between all of this, we learn about the dreaded disease. Truly a heroic story about a woman who has continued to "outsmart" her life-long battle with diabetes, and artfully, heart-fully shares her story. Every diabetic MUST read this book. Further, it's one I enjoyed reading for the story and writing style as well (thankfully, I do not have the disease). Great book!

I Loved Valentine's Day and so when I heard about this one I was very excited to go see it and it has some of my favorite actresses and actors in it. Of course people will call this film predictable and cheesy just like all the romantic built movies, but honestly there is not one romantic type of movie that is not predictable. Of course you know what's going to happen at the end since it's called a romantic movie. I personally loved this movie, it had a lot of laughs and a couple parts where I got teary eyed. The movie has well put together characters and a very good plot. The ending just like Valentine's Day where it brought characters throughout the movie together some predictable and some were the complete opposite of predictable. I Love this movie and recommend it to anyone who likes romantic comedies or likes Valentine's Day. Who cares what the critics say they are wrong most of the time. Go to enjoy the movie, not to critique it.

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

I may be among the few who liked this one better than the previous two. It probably was never going to be possible to create an X-Men finale that was going to please everyone. I'll confess that there were a number of things in the three-film sequence that I didn't care for. But give the team an "A" for effort in at least trying to do something interesting and compelling. My complaint with the first film was that it was so safe and tame. It didn't try to take the X-Men saga anywhere new or interesting. THE LAST STAND did. For the record, my complaint with the series is that it managed to make Rogue an unessential and uninteresting member of the team. Of all the incarnations of Rogue, this one was the least powerful and the least complex. Anna Paquin did a fine job given the script they provided, but she should have been far more empowered than she was.

Most movies based on the comics suffer from a failure of nerve. The writers want to play it safe, don't want to offend, and refuse to take risks. THE LAST STAND takes a world of risks and leaves the X-Men universe shaken from top to bottom. I loved that! I didn't think all the gambles paid off. The Phoenix story was not as interesting as it has been in the past. Part of the problem with the Phoenix is that they tried to incorporate it with too many other arcs, including the "cure" of the mutant gene.

Most of all, this film, unlike the previous two, really made me care how the story ended. In the previous two, one figured everyone would be alive at the end, so in a way precisely what happened wouldn't matter all that much. But in this one once Mystique had been "cured" and Scott and Xavier killed, there was a great sense of danger. Not every one was going to emerge OK in this one. Who would have imagined that the film would have ended with Xavier, Scott, and Jean dead, and Mystique, Magneto, and Rogue stripped of their powers?

I loved the fact that they included some of the X-Men neglected in the previous films. Kelsey Grammer was excellent as Hank McCoy, but I thought Ellen Page was perfect as Kitty Pryde, who has always been one of my favorite X-Men, mainly because her power of being able to pass through solid objects (or having solid objects pass through her) made her fascinating because employing it required so much strategy. The sequence where she and Juggernaut engage one another was a lot of fun. Vinnie Jones was almost unrecognizable, by the way, as Juggernaut. Sidenote: Many X-Men fans are bothered by the fact that traditionally Juggernaut is not a mutant. Therefore, in the scene where his powers are stripped temporarily by the mutant who robs other mutants of their ability, he should have been unaffected. But on narrative grounds I can understand why they altered this in the film.

I can understand why so many fans of the comic disliked the final movie in the trilogy. It was a sharp departure from most of the various versions of the X-Men saga found in so many of the comics and cartoon shows. But I was ecstatic to see them try something really different and risky. They didn't take the safe route. And I personally found the story far more interesting than the first two films precisely for that reason. Yeah, I wish Rogue had been conceived differently in the trilogy and I wish the Phoenix story had been handled better, but I realize that because there have been so many permutations of the X-Men, everyone is going to contruct their own private version. This isn't quite the version I would have come up with had I the ability to cherry pick the elements I like, but this one managed the most important task: it made the story interesting.

First of all I was shocked that I could find a collection of ALL the four X-Men movies I was looking for in one set. I was assuming all this time that I would have to buy Wolverine separately. Each movie looked fantastic in its blu-ray transfer, and it has renewed my interest in the X-Men series. The boxset was delivered to me lightning fast, not to mention it was a very reasonable price for all four of these movies. The only thing I was slightly dissappointed about was that the casing for Wolverine was the slim casing while all the others were standard blu-ray design. I would've preferred them to be all the same size. But whataya gonna do? That's up to 20th Century Fox! ;) Overall, I'm quite happy with this experience.

Few films released last year have the quiet sensitivity in writing (Allan Loeb), direction (Susanne Bier), cinematography (Tom Stern), and acting (Berry, Del Toro, Duchovny) as this gem of a movie. Taking on a subject of grief after a sudden traumatic death and the way it affects family and friends would seem like a tedious subject for a two hour film, but THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE proves again that care and devotion in telling a difficult story with restraint and tenderness is far more compelling that many of the 'big' movies that fill the theaters with more superficial topics.

Brian Burke (David Duchovny) is a generously warm man to his beautiful wife Audrey (Halle Berry), their son Dory (Micah Berry), and daughter
Harper (Alexis Llewellyn) as well as to his longtime, childhood friend Jerry Sunborne (Benecio Del Toro) who is constantly struggling with an addiction to heroin. Brian is suddenly dead as the film opens and the friends are gathered at the Burke home for the funeral. Audrey is devastated by the abrupt loss and quietly bears her shock in order to be present for her children. During the reception Audrey suddenly remembers she has not informed Brian's best friend Jerry of his death and sends her brother to fetch him for the services. We meet the wasted Jerry, the shambles of his heroin-addicted life obvious in his tiny apartment, and yet when Jerry hears the news of Brian's death, he is profoundly shocked: Brian is the only friend he has. Jerry makes himself presentable and attends the funeral and despite the fact that Audrey had always considered Jerry a 'weight' on Brian, the two offer each other a zone of connection that cannot be filled by any other. Slowly Jerry becomes part of the Burke household and his role in offering love to the children and solace and protection to Audry results in changes in Jerry's life that provides one bit of evidence of the redemption that can occur from shared grieving. 'Things', such as those items lost in a fire at the Burke's in the past, are simply 'things': interpersonal connection, hope, and the 'light from within' are what truly matter.

Berry and Del Toro give finely nuanced performances in these difficult roles, further establishing their credentials as being two of our finest actors in film. But the entire cast of this film is pitch-perfect and under the direction of Bier communicates powerfully with the viewer. The extraordinary camera work concentrates on extreme closeup views of eyes, hands, lips and tears and allows the viewer an intimate relationship with these characters. Johan Söderqvist provides a subtle musical score that underlines the story without calling attention to itself. For this viewer this is hands down one of the finest films of 2007. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, March 08

One thing for sure about "Die Another Day": the writers well understood (and paid tribute to) the great Bond movies of the past. The end result is a movie that, while not perhaps as great as the films it honors, certainly takes its place as one of the best modern Bond films made.

Nearly every previous Bond classic is represented here: there is, of course, the acknowledged nod of the head to Dr. No and the famous bikini sequence. But you don't have to look very hard to see many other references. There are depressuring fights on a plane ("Goldfinger"), a great car chase on ice sequence ("The Living Daylights"), Bond leaving the service as a rogue ("License to Kill"), diamond weapon in the sky ("Diamonds are Forever"), the list goes on and on (I would even venture to say there is a tribute of sorts to the foolishness that went on during Roger Moore's Bond days; the unbelievable wind surfing stunt Bond pulls about halfway through is exactly the sort of silliness that Moore did all the time).

Cynics might say this is true of any Bond film nowadays; they are so derivative they resort to stealing from themselves. But I don't think that's the case here. It's pretty clear the writers knew what they were doing when John Cleese even quotes some of the great "Q" lines from the past in his excellent sequence where he provides Bond his new Aston Martin (and now we've come full circle there as well, returning to the car that made Bond famous).

I'm not a big Halle Berry fan, but she's very good here. More to the point are the villians. Toby Stephens and Rick Yune are terrific, as so is Pierce, who ironically is hitting his stride and seems totally comfortable in a role he's soon to give up.

If you've enjoyed the great Bond movies in the past, you're sure to appreciate this one. Even those new to Bond should have fun with the action and adventure.