Some brief movie reviews

On Friday we went and saw the "Lemony Snicket" movie. It was very good, really more suited to Halloween-time, and Josh and I really enjoyed it. It was sometimes a little hard to forget that it was Jim Carey playing the Count but for the most part, it was a well paced movie, had fantastic prodution design, the story was dark when it needed to be, and it didn't end all neatly tied up and happy at the end.

On Sunday we went and saw both "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Spanglish." (yes, I know theatre-hopping is punishable by death in some communities, but we felt that, at $8.50 per ticket, it was worth the risk)

First, "Phantom."

Now, opera isn't one of my passions, and although I do like classical music, I sometimes think a lot of opera is very shrill and difficult to understand. "The Phantom of the Opera" isn't like that. We have seen "Phantom" on stage twice, once before we had kids and the second time when they were around 14 and 9. The second time we sat all in the fourth row; you could see the actors sweat! Not only were the seats wonderful, but the show was wonderful; the music soars, and the sets and the costume are beautiful. The production itself was fantastic, even the kids sat the entire show mesmerized with their mouths hanging open.

There's nothing like a stage show. A stage show is a Production; it's real, it's live, with people singing and dancing right in front of you, in our case sometimes only twenty feet away from us. "The Phantom of the Opera" on stage is magic.

So, very nearly, is the movie.

All the wonderful music is there, plus the beautiful costumes. The design was lush and expanded in the way a movie can be that a stage cannot. The story was easier to follow as it wasn't completely done all in singing. If you saw the stage production and loved it, you will love this movie. If you know anything about it but haven't seen it on stage, the movie is still wonderful, and you will love it anyway. I will definitely be buying this one when it arrives on DVD.

Now "Spanglish." Adam Sandler movies can be stupid, or stupidly funny. This movie is neither. It's a sweet movie about a family who invites a non-English speaking mother of one daughter into their home as a domestic and how that mother is strong in so many ways when it comes to herself and raising her daughter. I enjoyed it and not once did Sandler make rude noises or make stupid faces.

We also saw the trailers to some other movies I want to see ("White Noise" and "Darkness" look good) and some trailers I have absolutely no interest in. "Meet the Fockers" is most definitely one of the latter. A bomb if I ever saw one, but what do I know? I didn't much care for the first film "Meet the Parents" either, but it made a ton of money and so of course they had to make a second film, and it too will probably made a big pile of dough. Either way, I will be passing on this one, even the DVD release of it.

More on DVDs later.....