The Couch Potato Report – January 18th, 2005
This week in The Couch Potato Report there are some Friday night lights, a movie that is called THE FORGOTTEN and a movie that should just be forgotten.
Winning, losing and the results of both are at the centre of this week’s first new release, a based on a true story football movie called FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS.
FRIDAY NIGHT’s lights shine on high school football in Odessa, Texas, in the late 1980’s.
To some people in the small West Texas town, the weekly game is the only game in town and every single game is a must win.
Can you imagine if – at the age of seventeen – everyone was always telling you that you had to win? That you had to be perfect?
These kids are told non-stop that they must be perfect. That they must win the state championship.
Do they? Don’t they? I’ll never tell.
I will tell you that director Peter Berg has given us an energetic film that will make you feel as if you are right on the field with the players.
But this isn’t just a football movie. There are real people behind each player, and an abundance of great performances in FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, especially from Billy Bob Thornton.
Thornton, who has also starred in PUSHING TIN and BAD SANTA, is the team’s coach. He is a man who knows when he has to speak and when he has to listen.
And he has to listen to everyone in the small town telling him what he should do and what he’s done wrong.
Admittedly, if you don’t like football, or sports movies, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS isn’t going to convert you.
There is more on field action that off the field drama.
I liked FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and I don’t hesitate to recommend it.
I do hesitate to recommend, or even suggest that I liked the psychological conspiracy movie THE FORGOTTEN, but since I am a huge fan of Julianne Moore, I must admit that even though I didn’t really like it, it wasn’t bad.
Yes, that is my statement about THE FORGOTTEN – it wasn’t bad.
You might remember Julianne Moore from THE BIG LEBOWSKI or THE HOURS.
In THE FORGOTTEN she plays a grieving mother whose nine-year-old son was killed in a plane crash.
At least, that’s what she thinks.
Everyone else – including her husband – is telling her she has never had a son.
She then finds a similarly traumatized father, and when they witness some very strange events as they try to figure out what is real and what isn’t.
Things start to go wrong by about the middle of the film as things turn a bit preposterous, but as I said, THE FORGOTTEN isn’t bad.
It is simply an entertaining trip into THE TWILIGHT ZONE and THE X-FILES’ territory. Since those shows aren’t producing new episodes, THE FORGOTTEN is available, should you like that sort of shows.
That movie is called THE FORGOTTEN, while our final Couch Potato entry this week is CATWOMAN, a movie that should just be forgotten.
Oscar winner Halle Berry stars as a mousy graphic designer for a cosmetics company who is killed as a result of her overhearing details about her employer’s new beauty cream.
A supernatural cat brings her back to life and brings up a new persona, and who cares?!?! This movie stinks, stinks, stinks!
The script is awful the acting is horrible and the movie will make you wish you were in the middle of an eight hour root canal with no anesthetic.
This movie does not offer a single worthwhile, interesting, or exciting scene. The action is dull, predictable, and repetitive.
Plain and simple, CATWOMAN is one of the worst films released in the last decade.
But, since I like the character of Catwoman – as seen in the BATMAN comics and portrayed on TV by Lee Meriwether, Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt, and in the film BATMAN RETURNS by Michelle Pfieffer – I feel I must say something positive about this film.
Okay, positive…well, for some people, the vision of Halle Berry in shredded skin-tight leather is positive, but no that’s not it for me,…ummm, at 104 minutes it isn’t that long, but that is still an hour and 44 minutes that I’ll never get back,…geez, what can I say that is positive? What can I say?
Oh! I’ve got it!
The most positive thing I can say about CATWOMAN starring Halle Berry is that this review is over and I will never have to watch or talk about the movie ever again.
And that is very positive!
The catastrophic CATWOMAN, the recommendable FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, and the isn’t bad THE FORGOTTEN are now available for your viewing decisions.
COMING UP IN THE NEXT COUCH POTATO REPORT…
…is the technical marvel SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW. This old fashioned tale features a reporter and a pilot who save the world from evil madman. Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie all star.
The all-star music group Metallica can be seen in the insightful documentary METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER. It starts off as a film about the band making their new album, and becomes a look at how the band needs a therapist to avoid falling apart.
There isn’t a part of the classic film WHITE HEAT that isn’t great! It is one of the best gangster films ever made and this James Cagney classic is finally debuting on DVD.
The entire run of the BBC sitcom COUPLING can also be described using the word classic, but the episodes in COUPLING – THE COMPLETE FOURTH SEASON certainly lowers the bar.
Also coming out next week is the horror film ALIEN VS. PREDATOR. This film brings the two lead villains from the ALIEN and PREDATOR series together as they battle on Earth.
Good luck to us all!
I’m Dan Reynish and I’ll have more on it, and those other releases, in seven days.
And that’s this week’s COUCH POTATO REPORT.
Enjoy the movies and I’ll see you back here next week on The Couch!
Categories