My movie ratings page

I guess it makes sense to post things in a place where the people interested in the subject can find and read them. I prefer rottentomatoes.com rather then movies.yahoo.com or imdb.com because the critics are a little more exigent and reveal many truth and subtle aspects about the movies.

So, I've decided to rate movies on rottentomatoes.com and here is my personal web page.

I'll try to rate mostly the movies that draw my attention somehow. I'll mostly rate the distinguishably good movies that I thing worth seeing. Sometimes I might also rate the intriguingly bad movies in contrast to the positive reviews from the critics.

Hope you'll enjoy my movie reviews and recommendations!

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Why such bad reviews from the critics?!

I saw a few days ago Pirates of the Caribbean 1. I liked it, so I wanted to see the sequel. A quick look on the reviews warned us that it is not much to expect. The preparation for the Pirates of the Caribbean 3 "It is a disaster".
But the movie has a good box office against the all the critics:

For instance, one of moviedom's most influential critics, Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum, put the smackdown on "Pirates," calling it "a hellish contraption into which a ticket holder is strapped, overstimulated but unsatisfied, and unable to disengage until the operator releases the restraining harness." Schwarzbaum gave the film a dismal D+ -- and look what happened.

What did the critics expected from the second part…a documentary about the pirate’s condition?! It usually helps me a lot to decide upon a movie starting from the critics’ reviews, so I trust them.
It was a first exception: Scanner Darkly. Interesting technique, great acting, incredible image editing but still, a movie that could last 20 minutes instead of 100. Not exactly something I appreciate. But it has nice reviews on Rottentomatoes.

Now, the second exception: The "Dead Man's Chest" has awful reviews but I’ve found it marvelous. I wonder if the critics watched objectively the movie or applied rule: "the sequel must be worse". The rules is true, disappointingly true about sequel of the "Lord of the rings", "Matrix II", "Harry Potter"... and perhaps many others. But this time, I think the sequel was so great. To me, was better then "The Curse of the Black Pearl"

"Dead Man's Chest" brings fantastic imagination. I loved to see pirates dealing with mythological forces rather then robbing ships. (Tia, the witch is kind of a Hermes and Dutchman reminds me of Poseidon)

Right now, I must say I can not have the same trust on what critics have to say about movies...
I read about an interesting declaration of Keira:

If kissing Depp wasn’t enough, Knightly also kisses Bloom during the film! She does, however realise how damn lucky she is saying: "It's like, wonderful, I can have feelings for both of these very beautiful men."

How else could it be, but having feelings for both?

Will is honest, brave and self-confident.

Jack Sparrow: So what's your plan?
Will Turner: I row over, search the ship until I find your bloody key.
Jack Sparrow: And if there are crewmen?
Will Turner: I cut down anyone in my path.
Jack Sparrow: [turns to Gibbs] I like it. Simple, easy to remember.

Jack Sparrow is Machiavellic, funny and surprising.

Elizabeth Swann: It's real!
Norrington: My God. You actually were telling the truth.
Jack Sparrow: I do that quite a lot. Yet people are always surprised.
Will Turner: With good reason.

Will Turner wins Elizabeth’s heart playing the handsome hero. *Captain* Jack Sparrow seduces her being mysterious and tempting:

Jack Sparrow: [To Elizabeth] One word love; curiosity. You long for freedom. You long to do what you want to do because you want it. To act on selfish impulse. You want to see what it's like. One day you wont be able to resist.

I think that curiosity characterizes the modern girl. The tale of the princess doing nothing but waiting to be rescued and loved is deprecated. It seems that the actors needed to make a declaration about this non- conventional fairy tale approach:

"I couldn't ask for a better kissing scene with Johnny Depp actually, I think my 14-year-old self was yelping with pleasure," the 21-year-old actress said. "It was fantastic! What more can a girl ask for? I've got Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom and I get to kiss both of them. It's wonderful!"

The declaration is 10 times more "yelping" if you read what Johny Depp has to say about the scene:

"Any kind of scene like that whenever you're doing that sort of thing, it's always unbelievably awkward, especially having met Keira when she was 17 years old," the 43-year-old actor said. "But regardless of that it's always awkward so you kind of just make light of it; she was a good sport and we just kind of did what we had to do, that's the gig.”

I can’t wait for the "Pirates of the Caribbean III". "Savvy?"

“Stick it”, the movie, and what is the feminine artistic gymnastic in reality

A good movie for the feminine artistic gymnastics and teenagers ! It has nice humor, the heroine performs remarkable, and all the characters are so nice! The main thing about the movie is bringing some focus on the problem that gymnastics has nowadays.



It is pretty true the fact that artistic gymnastics is loosing its popularity among teens. What is performance gymnastics? A sport for kids and teenagers that dedicate their time to work hard! For what?
Ludicrous movements, the jury being conservative on evaluating new figures, or the jury giving marks that the public disagrees. The evaluation of the gymnasts is somehow influenced by the previous performance of the gymnast. The popularity of the coach or the popularity of the gymnastic school is also a disturbing factor.

I liked that the movie explicitly pointed out all these problems.

Will gymnastics survive? “Stick it” suggests that this sport is somehow asynchronous with the teen’s aspirations. I am a big fan of feminine artistic gymnastics and very proud of the medals that my country had won along the time but I think this sports needs to change and evolve somehow.

The 2006 European championships from Volos, Greace brought a surprise on the team’s podium. Italy won the gold at the teams competition for the fist time. This sounds like a good challenge for the traditional winners.