THIS WEEKEND AT THE MOVIES

Tomorrow I will be seeing Martin Scorsese's SHINE A LIGHT in IMAX format. Very excited. The film has gotten great reviews (86% overall at Rottentomatoes; 93% cream of the crop). Tickets have been purchased in advance; I can't wait to have my face melted off in the Universal City IMAX theater tomorrow afternoon.

A link to Roger Ebert's 4 star review is right here:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articleAID=/20080403/REVIEWS/804030303/1001


Also opening this weekend is George Clooney's football comedy LEATHERHEADS, which has surprisingly taken a beating from the nations critics (56% at Rottentomatoes; 32% from the cream of the crop). I love Clooney, he's a class-act all the way, and the two previous films he has to his credit as director (CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND and GOOD NIGHT & GOOD LUCK) were both terrific. He went for an old-school, screwball comedy mixture of slapstick and witty banter (apparently) and some people have said the film falls flat, while others seem positively delighted by a film of this sort being made in today's movie climate. Truth be told, there aren't many people in Hollywood who'd have the power to get a film like LEATHERHEADS made. And considering how much I tend to enjoy period films and films that Clooney is involved with, I'm hoping that his latest is a fun little piece of entertainment. I suspect I will catch it in the theaters in the coming weeks.

Also, coming from Netflix, is Jim Sheridan's masterpiece MY LEFT FOOT, starring Daniel Day Lewis, who won his first Oscar for his role of a poor Irish man suffering from cerebral palsy. I saw the film once, a long time ago, but my fiancee hasn't seen it and very much wanted too. I'd been wanting to see it again for a while now, and having just seen Lewis as the pulverizing Daniel Plainview in THERE WILL BE BLOOD, I think it's a good time to watch another of Lewis' uncompromising performances. Last weekend I watched some scenes from THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS; he's outstanding in that film as well. The last 15 minutes of that movie are fucking incredible.