“As I tweeted yesterday, the movie watching plan for this week is: Stone, Hereafter, Conviction, and Red. I think I went thru about a dozen different possible schedules before settling on the most time and cost efficient one. Luckily, Stone got added to the Fenway this week, so today I double featered that with Hereafter. That way I have tomorrow open for Halloween shopping with my BFF. And today’s tickets earned me a freebie I can use for Red during the week, plus the AMC freebie I’ve been sitting on which can go towards Conviction. w00t.
I realized I never really do double features at the Fenway, which strikes me as kinda odd. You’d think with all those days I end up with nothing to do, I’d fill them by going back and forth the whole two blocks to the theater. But I guess it tends to make more sense to me to double up when I hafta go outta my way a bit. The only time I actually remember doubling at the Fenway was before I lived over here. I think it was Crank and The Illusionist, and it was my last summer movie trip of that year.
Anyhoo, so Stone started things off today. Yay Edward Norton! So happy this one actually made it to the theater. His previous one, Leaves of Grass, didnt expand wide enough before the DVD release. But you should check out the DVD because it was quite good. Had a done a write up on it, it woulda earned 4 rock hands. I digress. Stone, unfortunately, not so great.
I’ll be honest. The trailer didnt particularly sell me. The only reason I went was because of Norton. Robert DeNiro was bonus points, but his movie choice of late hasn’t been so hot *cough*cough*Everybody’sFine*cough* And it seems the majority of Boston had the good sense to stay away. There were 6 of us in the theater–prolly the smallest crowd I’ve ever seen at a weekend show, even if it was just a matinee.
The movie just didnt go anywhere. The structure was bad, pacing poor, story boring. The opening scene just lost me, I still dont quite understand its significance, and it just kept fallign from there. There were feeble attempts at character development that made no sense. I couldnt understand anyone’s motives, or even what they were actually doing for that matter.
The cast was good, but the movie was just so beneath them. DeNiro is capable of soooo much better, no wonder he just phoned it in. I can see why Norton took the role. It is very different from what he’s done before (arguably there’s a fair amount of his American History X role, but not quite the same). And while the cornrows and accent/slang thing were a bit distracting, he did pull it off. It just seems like such a waste. Surprisingly, I did love Milla Jovovich. Her character was the type that shoulda annoyed me, but she had me under the same spell as her leading men. Makes me wonder what she coulda done with a more superior film.
Stone – \m/ \n