Atonement.
At one point, Kiera Knightley wears a really pretty green dress.
Ten Forks.

Malin Akerman is one of those odd women who looks really good as a package, but all those close-up shots of her face (when you can’t see her incredibly long, shapely legs) make her look a little like a mutant. I am not joking! She has a beautiful, if too skinny, body, and then this melted mutant head. It’s jarring. Actually, nobody in this movie is all that good-looking, though when you get just a little bit of James Marsden’s boyish grin with his one-time-I-stared-at-James-Marsden’s-teeth-for-six-hours-and-I-saw-god pearly whites, you are simultaneously fascinated and somewhat attracted. Though I doubt any mortal man or woman could withstand kissing those teeth (his lips are immaterial). It’s be melty faces from The Lost Ark all over again.

Yes, I did just compare James Marsden’s teeth to the Ark of the Covenant.
Perhaps that’s how Malin Akerman got that melty mutant face.
Anyway, as they go, it was pretty enjoyable, no real eyeroll moments, moments that seriously slapped my feminist sensibilities in the face, or moments where you could not suspend your disbelief any longer and had to sigh loudly.

For a RomCom, it was like, a 0 forker, but for a regular movie, it was more like 4 forks. There was nothing really wrong with it, and you could see it again, but it’s not going to sit anywhere near Pride and Prejudice (the Beeb version). It was uninspiring, and did not leave me with a song in my heart.

Also, I’d forgotten how much I enjoy going to movies alone.

I imagine I’d feel differently about the whole movie if I was Iraqi.

The truth of the matter is that, given the circumstances that the movie lays out, most people would walk away from those prisoners and never look back. I cried while watching it, and at least half of the crying was for the people who are never rescued by any heroic effort of anyone from any nation. In the movie, maybe they rescue like, a hundred people. In real life, I’m not sure that the Americans actually helped any Iraqis escape. Who’s willing to risk a court martial and a further disruption of their life for some people in the desert who don’t even speak English? The kind of heroics in this movie don’t exist in real life. Certainly not in any military I know of.

Oh, it’s a well-made movie, anyway. It’s funny and cynical and Mark Wahlberg does a great job. He’s really good at the kind of pathetic, wring-your-heartstrings without getting sappy thing. The shot of him working as a photocopier repairman is so human. And the torture scene makes you want to cry for the torturer, which is great directing.

So this movie pretty much slays me, and sits in that place which makes it difficult to give forks for. I’m sure twenty of you have all kinds of criticism of it, but I’d put it on my shelf of movies I could watch over and over.

Okay, so that shelf also contains:
The Indiana Jones Trilogy
The Star Wars Trilogy
Independence Day
Tombstone
Chaplin
GirlFight
Blue Crush
BBC’s Pride and Prejudice
State and Main
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

For a girl who used to think she didn’t like action movies, I sure do like a lot of action movies.
Also, Three Kings used a different kind of film and processing that gave it this dark blue cast which is really beautiful. And some of the editing is soooo perfectly spot-on.

When Sandman first appears with his power, I couldn’t help but lean over to Sam and stage-whisper “Ow… I’ve got grit in my eye.”

It was all downhill (er, uphill?) from there.
The Parker dance number was, um, the most spectacular moment of the whole movie.
Man, memo to Sam Raimi: no more movies by committee, okay?
I can’t rate it right now, ’cause I’m too tired, but I’ll write like, something about it tomorrow.
What an awesome night!

Incidentally, Curse of the Golden Flower is a great movie, and we get to see Chow Yun-Fat being all evil. It’s a lot slower than your typical martial arts movie, so if all you really want to see is ninjas kicking ass, you’ll probably have it skip the vast swathes of character and plot development that lay beautifully between the fight scenes. Excellent female characters, unbelievable sets, and Chow Yun-Fat: hoo, baby. Even old and grey and evil, he’s still a damn fine man.
3 forks.

I also very much enjoyed that parades of lean, muscular thighs, and the way those beautiful calf-guards elongated the calves. I admit it, I’m an arms-and-thighs girl; the identical six-packs were a bit, like, tacky. Also unusual for someone who sees homo-erotic tension in everything (Essentially, I think that all men want cock; yes, even you, gentle reader), I saw very little in this movie. Which seems kinda silly, given that we’re talking about Spartans for chrissakes and all of the men are parading around half-naked with no women around but we’ll let that one pass.

Politically, I have to say that there are better times than right now to make this particular movie,
and that I don’t personally believe that people of colour are evil, and that I think the Persian Empire was like, totally fucking cool and probably ‘way cooler than the Greeks. I mean,  architecturally alone the Persians whup the Greeks from here ’til Sunday. I’d like to see a really good movie about the rise of the Persian Empire.

But I’m still giving this movie 0 forks. Beautiful.

Unlike, I assume, the majority of my fucking demographic, I am completely uninterested in movies that show disfunctional/boring/annoying people in embarassing/boring/annoying situations (I AM LOOKING AT YOU SOPHIA COPPOLA, DON’T EVEN MAKE ME COME OVER THERE). I think ‘quirky’ is shorthand for ‘couldn’t write/act/direct, had to rely on a gimmick to pull through entire movie.’ I hope people who write ‘quirky’ movies all end up in a quirky hell together where they have to listen to the soundtracks of their own movies for all eternity.
Little Miss Sunshine Trailer, you get 9 forks just for the little girl’s shriek; I’m taking pity on you and not bothering to rate the rest of the trailer.

In other news, Pan’s Labyrinth was y’know, good. I don’t think it was the kind of good that will live for eternity and resonate through the decades, but it was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. Weeeellll, it might last as a classic, but I wouldn’t count on it. I’d consider it the Spanish equivalent of The Neverending Story. Some very nifty-creepy Medieval-inspired imagery, some cool Spanish rebels stuff, and a very impressive, slightly clockwork scary faun. He was my favourite. I’ll give this sucker 2 forks, only because I’m finding it all kinds of forgettable.

Lastly, how did I totally miss Mike Judge’s Idiocracy? I mean, it stars Luke Wilson, and that alone should have garnered it enough press to reach me. Anyway, it’s a great, intelligent comedy about a future where stupidity rules and “reading is for fags.” Luke Wilson’s character ends up waking up after 500 years in hibernation to a world that waters plants with Gatorade and names it’s children ‘Frito’ and ‘Tylenol.’ It’s narrated throughout by the guy who narrates big action movie trailers, and has this overblown feel to it that is perfect. In my mind, it’s up there with that other underrated social commentary comedy, Head of State.
2 forks because the climax was pretty non-climactic; other than that, it was a very well-crafted comedy, full of the kind of gags that make me laugh helplessly.