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originally printed 01.20.05 in the Eureka, California newspaper The Times-Standard.
A forgotten Coach Carter gets his racing stripes in the village.
Coach Carter
Faulk: A good movie with a good message. "Coach Carter" lapses at times into formula - a struggling basketball team saved by a hard-ass coach with a respect for discipline and academics, played by Samuel L. Jackson - but strong performances by the lead actors help save it from becoming lost in the flux of innumerable sports movies. Based on a true story, one of the students saved by Carter ends up attending Humboldt State University. A few clunky speeches by Jackson and a few too many perfect basketball shots keep the movie from being a true sports classic - like "Hoosiers" or "Bull Durham" - but it's still a good movie.
Rating: L
Durant: I probably would have enjoyed this movie more if the dumb-ass kid - who doesn't know how to wear a baseball hat and his girlfriend - who uses Britney Spears as a moral compass - would have kept their mouths shut. Anyway, on to the review. I haven't seen a sports movie yet where the action looks realistic, and "Coach Carter" is no different. All of the basketball looks forced and rehearsed. The movie also appears to follow the Hollywood sports movie formula but changes at the end, which saved it for me a little. Samuel L. Jackson does well, but it's not one of his strongest roles. He would have gotten the respect of the ball players a lot quicker if he would have played his roles as Jules Winnfield or Mace Windu. There's also a nice mention of Humboldt State University at the end.
Rating: L
Racing Stripes
Faulk: So this is what happened to Whoopie Goldberg - from soulful nun and rebel in "Sister Act" to know-it-all farmyard goat with an attitude. In an hour and a half worth of movie, I could find almost nothing redeeming to mention in this space. My son liked it, but his excitement seemed to have more to do with popcorn and his friends than a riveting story line. Even the protagonist - you know, the character you're supposed to root for - had nothing going for him. Maybe I was dazzled by his stripes. One thing's for sure: I wasn't dazzled by this movie.
Rating: S
Durant: This movie sucked. It made no attempt to keep parents entertained like good kids' movies do these days, like the Shreks, Toy Stories and Incredibles. The celebrity voices are recognizeable, but unneccesary. In the ads, they hype Snoop Dogg as being a voice but he only had three lines in the entire film. You know what's going to happen as soon as the opening credits are over. There are enough poop and fart jokes to keep the kids giggling, but all in all it sucked. But we'll leave it to the experts to tell you what they thought.
Rating: S
Claudia, 7: I liked the movie so much I want to marry it.
Phoebe, 4: I liked the movie. It was funny.
Gabe, 6: It was great!
DVDs
The Village
Durant: It wouldn't be an M. Night Shamalamadingdong (sp?) movie without twists and turns, and there are some good ones here. Not quite to the same extent as "Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable," but they're good. This movie puts my faith back in M. Night Shangrilah (sp?) after that debacle of a movie "Signs." One thing that got to me, though - for saying the creatures are "those we dont speak of," they sure speak of them a lot. The acting was good and the script is pretty damn imaginative. Special features include deleted scenes introduced and discussed by M. Night Shannondougherty (sp?), which I liked a lot, as well as one of the movies he made with his video camera in his backyard when he was a kid - also great.
Rating: L/T
Faulk: S-H-Y-A-M-A-L-A-N. Now that we got the spelling right, lets talk about all that went wrong in this movie: Diction - the founding villagers sure seem to bounce back and forth between modern American English and a quasi-Elizabethan pidgin. And a blind girl that sees only auras? Insert vomiting noise here. There were lots of twists, which I appreciate, but the timeless, placeless quality of the movie left me wondering if these whackos were Amish separatists or some far-flung relative of the Branch Davidians. And how many people can take a dagger in the gut without so much as an eyebrow twitch? And red as a forbidden color? How original.
Rating: S
The Forgotten
Faulk: Imagine this: A cosmic Hoover vacuum cleaner, above and beyond the authority of all earthly institutions like the measley NYPD, sucks people and memories up into the sky at will for the good of alien science. Got that? Throw in some funky wallpaper, a drunk and violent former hockey star, Lt. Dan from "Forest Gump," and you have "The Forgotten." There was some real suspense. There were some real surprises. But all in all, "The Forgotten" was unfortunately forgettable.
Rating: M
Durant: This movie is a classic case of the best scenes being exposed in the trailer. I remember about six months ago the roof being ripped off the house and the broadside van vs. car accident saturating my TV between Simpsons reruns. The movie had an OK premise, but Ive seen it before - it was called any episode of the "X-Files". The ending was also a little too convenient for my taste. Go ahead and make up whatever pun in the title you want here.
Rating: S
DVDs provided by the McKinleyville Figueiredos.
Top Five Samuel L. Jackson films
Durant:
5. Goodfellas
4. Unbreakable
3. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
2. Trees Lounge
1. Pulp Fiction
Faulk:
1. The Red Violin
2. Changing Lanes
3. Jackie Brown
4. Pulp Fiction
5. Unbreakable
XXL Drought
Week 2
Its been two weeks since weve seen a really great movie...
7:00 PM
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