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I think it's a little unfair to label the Nellwyn rip-offs of the Hobbit just because they were small. That's like saying that SM copied Buffy and Angel when she created Bella and Edward! George Lucas borrowed far more from other stories than from Lord of the Rings. And there's nothing wrong with borrowing an idea and giving it a spin of your own, so long as it has unique elements to it. There are are only about seven stories in history anyway. All stories we get these days are simply retellings of old tales.

After years I watched "dead poets society" with Ethan Hawk and Robin Williams again. I almost forgot how good that movie is. It must be set in the 50s or 60s. With the beginning of the new semester one of the best boarding schools in the US gets a new English teacher who has different teaching methods than the rest of his colleques. At first the students are reluctant to break out of their used habits but soon start to think outside the box.
It is a beautiful film about discovering who you really are and what you want to do with your life. The quote that's always hanging above all is "Carpe Diem". Although the boys have to learn that it isn't always easy to be youself because society has other expectations...

In The Road Warrior (aka Mad Max 2), director George Miller returns to the post-apocalyptic saga of "Mad Max" Rockatansky (Mel Gibson). Max, who lost his wife and son in the first film, has become a vagabond, roaming the Australian wastelands. He comes across a small band of people who have gathered around a rare treasure--a working oil refinery. After some mutual suspicion and hostilities on both sides, Max agrees to help the colonists defend themselves against a savage motorcycle gang and to try to escape with their precious horde of gasoline. As in the first film, the selling points here are the gritty, high-powered action and the equally gritty vision of a dystopian future that Miller gives us.

Tonight I watched The Good, the Bad and the Ugly/Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, the final film in the Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood "Man With No Name" trilogy, and the most complex. Both Eastwood (the Good) and Lee Van Cleef (the Bad) are around for this one, and are joined by Eli Wallach (the Ugly), who just about steals the whole movie from both of them. The three men, who at different times work either together or against each other, are trying to get their hands on a sizable fortune in gold, buried in a cemetary, while around them a Spaghetti Western version of the Civil War rages.

Moneyball

My movie tonight was an Argentine film called Carancho, which seemed to be very promising back when I popped it into my Netflix queue; it had good critical reviews and starred Ricardo Darin, who I've seen in at least 2 or 3 other Latin American films that I enjoyed. Darin proved to be a good lead once again, as did his costar Martina Gusman--they play a lawyer and a doctor, respectively, who meet at a traffic accident, fall in love, but find they must disentangle themselves from a crooked insurance scam before it costs them their lives. Unfortunately, the story was very hard to follow and the early stages of the film, at least, are not terribly compelling.

On Halloween night, Scream seemed like a logical choice. I've never really gone for horror flicks, but I do rather like this one. There's lots of self-referential humor to chuckle at, plus there's Neve Campbell's tough-as-she-needs-to-be heroine, Jamie Kennedy explaining the rules to us, and Drew Barrymore being wonderfully terrified in the opening scene.

Tonight I watched Best in Show. It's a very enjoyable comedy--one of the Christopher Guest/Eugene Levy "mockumentaries" with the usual crowd of suspects: besides Guest and Levy themselves, we see Jane Lynch, Bob Balaban, Catherine O'Hara, Michael McKean, Jennifer Coolidge, Fred Willard, etc. This one is about dog shows (in the same way that A Mighty Wind, my favorite film from the Guest/Levy team, is about folk music). Willard as the clueless sportscaster broadcasting the dog show is a stitch, and this one is pretty enjoyable overall.

While Killshot is not a film of the same caliber as some other Elmore Leonard adaptations, it's a pretty good thriller. Wayne (Thomas Jane) and Carmen Colson (Diane Lane) have their lives turned upside down when Wayne, on an unplanned visit to the real estate office where Carmen works, interferes with a pair of hoods who are there to shake down Carmen's boss. Now Armand Degas, alias Blackbird (Mickey Rourke) and his nervous, talkative new partner Richie (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are out to eliminate Wayne and Carmen. The screenplay, adapted from Leonard's novel, is a little bit choppy at times, and the producers inexplicably decided to "add drama" by saddling Wayne and Carmen with not-in-the-novel marital troubles. However, the cast is strong--besides the four already named, Rosario Dawson does a nice turn as Richie's girlfriend Donna--and Caleb Deschanel's cinematography is a plus.

Night Train to Munich is a rather good espionage thriller, set on the eve of World War II and written by the same duo, Sidney Gillat and Frank Launder, who scripted Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. When Germany annexes Czechoslovakia, both they and the British want to secure the services of Dr. Bomasch (James Harcourt), a specialist in armor plating. The doctor and his daughter Anna (Margaret Lockwood) are briefly reunited in England, but Gestapo agent Marsen (Paul Henreid) spirits them back to Germany. British agent Gus Bennett (Rex Harrison) tries to get them back, having fallen in love with Anna, but his complicated plan goes awry, and he and the Bomasches find themselves on a train for, yes, Munich, with Marsen and a swarm of German soldiers on board. Fortunately for Bennett, Anna and her father, two other people are on the train--cricket enthusiasts Charters (Basil Radford) and Caldicott (Naunton Wayne). This one is rather routine until the train journey starts; at that point, Radford and Wayne (reprising the characters they played in The Lady Vanishes) steal the film from the adequate but unspectacular leads. It's worth seeing for this duo alone, while Henreid, playing a very different character than the role that made him famous in Casablanca, is also quite good.