Pirates of the Caribbean (2003)
Starring Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightley.
Directed by Gore Verbinski.
Kilgore rates it: 4 (out of 10)

At no point during your viewing of Pirates of the Caribbean will you believe that you are watching pirates. Pirates are scary -- they do, after all, rape, plunder, pillage, and murder for a living. But these pirates execute their filthy misdeeds in strangely sterile fashion, as if playing cops 'n' robbers while trying not to get grass stains on their new jeans, and end up delivering all the menace of the Hamburglar. You also will not believe the tacked-on romance between the characters played by Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, despite their dutiful reading of lines indicating that they share a forbidden love destined to triumph across class boundaries.

You should only watch Pirates of the Caribbean to see Johnny Depp's performance as the swishy pirate Captain Jack Sparrow. Depp here reminded me of Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation -- a talented, charismatic actor running rings around a cheesy production.


The Right Stuff (1983)
Starring Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, and Fred Ward.
Directed by Philip Kaufman.
Kilgore rates it: 6 (out of 10)

The Right Stuff is okay, I guess. I mean, there are lots of moving pictures of planes going really fast and rockets going up into space and stuff hitting the ground and exploding, and the film does a good job of examining the macho camaraderie found in the ultracompetitive world of military aviation, but gosh, at 193 minutes The Right Stuff is long. I bet they could cut an hour from this movie without losing anything vital. Cutting every scene including Jeff Goldblum and Harry Shearer as NASA recruiters would be a good start.

I don't know how to evaluate the acting in biographical movies. I would like to say, for example, that Ed Harris and Scott Glenn clashed brilliantly as gung-ho John Glenn and prickly Alan Shepard, while Sam Shepard's performance as Chuck Yeager was dull and listless. But I've never met John Glenn or Alan Shepard or Chuck Yeager, so for all I know, Sam Shepard nailed his part while Ed Harris and Scott Glenn were miles off.

+posted by Lawrence @ 2/16/2004 09:53:00 PM