"The Queen of Air and Darkness" by T.H. White (1939)

"'Uther,' he said at length, 'your lamented father, was an aggressor.  So were his predecessors the Saxons, who drove the Old Ones away.  But if we go on living backward like that, we shall never come to the end of it.  The Old Ones themselves were aggressors, against the earlier race of the copper hatchets, and even the hatchet fellows were aggressors, against some earlier crew of esquimaux who lived on shells.  You simply go on and on, until you get to Cain and Abel."

The Queen of Air and Darkness is the second book in T.H. White's The Once and Future King series.  It follows The Sword in the Stone and precedes The Ill-Made Knight.  It was originally titled The Witch in the Wood, and though the general story remains the same the author made heavy revisions to the text after its initial publication.

This book is not, by the way, to be confused with Queen of Air and Darkness, a 2018 novel by Cassandra Clare.  Both the title of that book and this one come from a poem by A.E. Houseman.

Several years have passed since The Sword in the Stone, and an adult Arthur seeks to consolidate his kingdom and suppress the rebellious Gaels.  Against this backdrop three of his knights mistakenly arrive in the Orkney Isles, where the Gaels are planning their offensive.

Overall it's a well written book that never strikes the right tone.  The chapters focusing on Arthur, Kay and Merlyn's ongoing conversation are far and away the best part of it, highlighting as they do issues pertinent to both their time and our own.  Their discussion of ethnic nationalism is particularly prescient, and mirrors some of the difficulties present in the world today.

The humorous chapters featuring King Pellinore and his two companions don't work as well, and detract from what T.H. White attempts to do in the other half of the book.  These chapters reminded me of various Monty Python sketches, and might have been more amusing on their own, in the absence of Arthur's more "political" chapters.  There's also the strange killing of a unicorn halfway through the book, which does nothing to advance the plot.  It seems to belong to another story that the author failed to tell.

On the whole I liked this book much better than The Sword in the Stone, but the jarringly episodic nature of that book is only magnified in this one.  It has a lot more depth however, and I'm willing to overlook its narrative shortcomings in favor of the lively political debate which frames its weaker half.

Related Entries:

"The Sword in the Stone" by T.H. White (1938)

"Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy (1878)

"Bleak House" by Charles Dickens (1852)

"Annihilation" by Jeff VanderMeer (2014)

"The Sword in the Stone" by T.H. White (1938)

"'But wearing now, of course, you fool.  I don't want a hat I was wearing in 1890.  Have you no sense of time at all?'"

T.H. White is an author often described as "troubled."  Though well known for the books which comprise his The Once and Future King series, he had trouble forming intimate relationships, and some of his remarks regarding children led others to question his sexual proclivities.  He was for the most part a man at home in the past, and a man uncomfortable with other people.

The Sword in the Stone exists in two versions.  The earlier version was aimed more at children, and perhaps (I haven't read it) resembled J.R.R. Tolkein's The Hobbit.  The later version is slightly more serious, and is the first book in The Once and Future King series.

In The Sword in the Stone, White's first attempt at retelling the King Arthur myth, a young Arthur ("Wart") is introduced to the wizard Merlin, his new tutor.  Merlin in this instance is a man living backward in time, who remembers what will happen but can only guess at what has already transpired.  If that description gives you a headache don't worry.  It's never explored in any detail in the book.

Instead, The Sword in the Stone offers a whimsical look at a young boy discovering his destiny.  Between happening upon Merlin and discovering the titular sword,  he embarks, with Merlin's help, on a series of transformations.  He becomes a fish, a bird and an ant, and he also joins Robin Hood on forays into the "Forest Sauvage."

I liked this book, but I had to skip over the various songs/poems which are peppered throughout the story.  They just weren't doing anything for me.  The rest of it is an easy read, even if it probably won't come across as amusing or clever to most modern readers.  It's cute for sure, but even compared to "lesser" writers like C.S. Lewis it has little to offer fans of The Hobbit or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

But maybe I'm dismissing it too early.  There are, after all, three more books in the series.  Maybe it gets better, and maybe the frivolous aspects of it aren't so frivolous in retrospect.  Perhaps when I, like Merlin, am looking back at the future of this series from the past I'll have a more favorable opinion.

Related Entries:

"Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy (1878)

"Bleak House" by Charles Dickens (1852)

"Annihilation" by Jeff VanderMeer (2014)

"Orion" by Ben Bova (1984)

Some Other Movies From 2003 (2)

For further background on the year in film please refer to the Some Other Movies from 2003 entry.

The following things happened in 2003:

• NASA received the last signal from Pioneer 10, which now very, very far from Earth.
• Belgium became the second country to legalize same-sex marriage.
• The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas.
• The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was reconstituted as Serbia and Montenegro.
• U.S. forces seized control of Baghdad.
• The Human Genome Project was completed.
• Myspace and 4chan were launched.
• China launched its first manned spaceflight.
• The Concorde flew its last commercial flight.

Underlined entries were viewed on Netflix. 

Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.

Excellent

1. Memories of Murder

Parasite director Bong Joon-ho's second movie, not counting earlier credits as script writer.  Memories of Murder examines the toll that catching a killer takes on two policemen.  It's a beautifully shot film which manages to avoid the cliches normally associated with the genre.  It was based on South Korea's first recorded serial killings.

2. Monster 

Still my favorite of Patty Jenkins' movies.  Charlize Theron is captivating as a lonely woman turned serial killer, and Christina Ricci is equally good as her willfully ignorant lover.  That scene were Theron is sitting in the car, thinking about whether to kill "Daddy?"  One of the best scenes in any movie ever.

Fun Fact: That undercover cop who apprehends Aileen Wuornos (Theron) in the end is Kane Hodder, who played Jason Voorhees in several of the Friday the 13th movies.

3. Oldboy

The Korean orignal > the American reboot.  In case you haven't seen either, in Oldboy a man is imprisoned for 15 years and then released under mysterious circumstances.  His quest for vengeance is long, bloody, and well worth watching.  The director, Park Chan-wook, would go on to direct Snowpiercer in 2013.

Some Good Ones

1. Honey

Jessica Alba does her achingly beautiful thing, this time as an aspiring music video dancer in New York.  Compared to some other entries in Alba's filmography she hits this one out of the park, remaining convincing and engaging throughout.

Fun Fact: This movie was based on the life of choreographer Laurie Ann Gibson, who plays Alba's rival in the film.

2. The Core

I watched this as a double feature with the 2018 documentary Behind the Curve, about the flat Earth movement.  The two movies compliment each other well.  On the one hand you've got a highly implausible movie about a group of people traveling to the center of a round Earth to jump start the core, on the other hand you've got a documentary about people who'd probably deny that the Earth even has a core, or that an Earth vulnerable to solar winds is possible.  In a sense The Core and the flat-Earthers are doing the same thing, starting from unorthodox conclusions and working backwards to a set of circumstances which justify those conclusions.  Do the flat-Earthers succeed in this endeavor?  In scientific (empirical) terms no, but if the goal of their belief is personal affirmation then yes, they do.  Does The Core succeed in this endeavor?  In terms of the suspension of disbelief no, but if the goal of this movie is entertainment then yes, it does so as well.

Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank star in The Core, with Stanley Tucci and Delroy Lindo in supporting roles.  The acting is pretty good, even if the plot doesn't make much sense after a certain point.  I liked the beginning, the tension builds throughout, and it checks off all the disaster movie boxes.  World-ending threat?  Check.  Government conspiracy?  Check.  Disaster caused by government incompetence?  Check.  Death of red herring hero figure?  Check.  Romantic subplot?  Check.  Could checking off all these boxes mean that this movie is formulaic and uninspired?  Check.  But I do think it offers a few things new to the genre, and it's a fun ride regardless.

3. Frank Herbert's Children of Dune

TV miniseries based on Frank Herbert's book.

I'd read the novel years ago.  I didn't like it.  In my opinion it was one of the weakest, most ponderous books in that series. I enjoyed Dune, Dune Messiah, God Emperor of Dune and Heretics of Dune. But Children and Chapterhouse? Not so much.

I liked David Lynch's version of the first book. Very ambitious. I'm also looking forward to Denis Villeneuve's version of the same story. I still haven't seen the 2000 miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune, but I suppose I'll get around to it one of these days.

This miniseries? It's okay. It's a deep dive into Herbert's world, and I admire the way it doesn't stoop to explaining everything. It's a medieval / futuristic world full of beautiful people, and for the most part it works. The budget was LOW, but they did a lot with what they had.

Sad Reflection: I would have watched the hell out of a God Emperor of Dune movie or miniseries.  Sadly, given the studio drama surrounding Villeneuve's upcoming adaptation, it seems like Children of Dune is as close as we'll ever get to God Emperor.

4. The Dreamers

Well, if you want to see Eva Green completely nude there's that.  But aside from a completely nude Eva Green I can't say that this is one of Bertolucci's better films.  It's dramatically interesting, but it doesn't seem to say as much as it sets out to say.  In the beginning there's a discussion of the French government's attempts to censor film, and in the end there's the specter of fascism, but between the beginning and the end there's only the suggestion of incest, and this isn't quite enough to sustain the viewer's interest for two hours.  It reminded me a lot of 1981's Endless Love, another movie about passions carried too far.

Mortal Fact: Bertolucci directed one more film, Me and You, before his death in 2018.

Fun Fact 1: This was Eva Green's first movie.  Talk about hitting the ground running!

Fun Fact 2: The "Minister Malraux" mentioned in the beginning of this movie is Andre Malraux, Minister of Cultural Affairs at the time and author of Man's Fate.

5. A Man Apart

Eh, why not just legalize it?  Without a black market how are the cartels going to operate?  I suppose they could just jump over to automatic weapons, prostitution, or something like that, but the War on Drugs always seemed somewhat pointless to me.

This Vin Diesel movie isn't Traffic, and it isn't Sicario, but it's alright.  I'm just wondering - Vin Diesel wearing a mask or Vin Diesel not wearing a mask, would you have trouble recognizing him one way or the other?

Some Bad Ones

1. Shanghai Knights 

Just couldn't do it. Chinese Communist Party apologist Jackie Chan tries to sustain the popularity generated by Rush Hour and fails, this time with Owen Wilson in tow. Anyone with a passing historical knowledge of the time period will be immediately irritated by this movie. 

Of course if it was funny all would be forgiven. But it's not funny.

2. The Haunted Mansion

This movie ends as you'd expect: Eddie Murphy's son lives to see his sister decapitated in an automobile accident, his father burned alive, and his mother slowly beheaded with piano wire.  He then learns that his body is inhabited by a demon king who will "bend others to his will."  OH WAIT.  That's the plot of Hereditary.  Sorry.  In The Haunted Mansion Eddie Murphy outwits a ghostly butler and rescues his partially reincarnated wife.  Yawn.

3. Out of Time

Is this movie really bad or was I just not feeling it?  Not sure.  Denzel Washington does "morally compromised" better than anybody, but Out of Time seemed obvious from the start.  The minute they start talking about insurance and visiting the doctor... yeah, I had it pretty much figured out from that point on. 

4. Underworld

Boring, talky vampires with a collective leather fetish battle sweaty, bearded werewolves for reasons even they don't understand.  Kate Beckinsale is of course easy to look at for two hours, but that fact alone doesn't make this movie good.

A... Fact: There are five movies in the Underworld series, with plans for a sixth.

5. Hawa

So... this woman gets raped by a ghost multiple times - once in front of her children - and she continues to stay in the house?  Uh... okay.

If nothing else this Indian horror movie borrows from the best.  The Shining, The Exorcist, Poltergeist, The Entity, it's all there.  Oh, and the ending is memorably bad too.  Is that guy in the end supposed to be God?  Or her father?  I have no idea.

6. The Adventures of Ociee Nash

Hey, it's Keith Carradine.  Aside from him this movie features a precocious young girl doing tomboyish things and learning how to be a lady.  AND HOW DARE Mr. Carradine force a gender identity upon his young daughter!  Shame, I say!  Shame!  Then again, it was the early 1900s, so it was probably for the best.

So Bad It's Good

1. Final Examination

Where to start with this movie?  The acting?  The script?  The countless continuity errors?  Certainly the acting is the worst (i.e. the best) part of it, right down to the lead actor's monotone delivery of every.  Single.  Line.

How Deep Into the Rabbit Hole are You Willing to Go?: Check out director Fred Olen Ray's filmography.  Then check out both star Brent Huff's Wikipedia page and his filmography.  Most of those films don't even have Wikipedia entries.

Related Entries:

Some Other Movies From 2002 (2)

Thoughts on Zack Snyder's Justice League

Some Other Movies From 2001 (2)

The Boys (I Know I'm Late to the Party)

"Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy (1878)

Leo Tolstoy.  We all know who Leo Tolstoy is, right?  He wrote War and Peace, and he is regarded alongside Dostoevsky as one of the two giants of Russian literature.  He became a Christian anarcho-pacifist later in life, and his thinking influenced both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

I read War and Peace some time ago, so I can't say much about it.  I remember allusions to Napoleon, and characters reflecting on Tolstoy's theory of historical determinism.  I remember liking the novel, if not loving it.  It is of course famously long, but my objection to it wasn't its length but rather my difficulty in engaging with the story.

I'm happy to say that I enjoyed Anna Karenina a lot more.  This is perhaps because Anna Karenina makes a moral point rather than a philosophical one.  It also does so without preaching to the reader, instead illustrating a set of perfectly commonplace circumstances and then observing how various characters react to these circumstances.  Where War and Peace felt bogged down in historical details, Anna Karenina felt very immediate, in that one wouldn't have to change its characters or their settings too much to make the story feel modern.

I feel obligated to say that Anna Karenina is the novel that finally decided me in favor of Tolstoy.  Up until finishing this book, I wasn't sure whether I preferred Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.  But having read Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov not long ago, I can now assert that Tolstoy is better.  With Anna Karenina Tolstoy took the novel into the age of modernism, and its characters feel very fresh, and very much alive in 2021.  Dostoevsky, by contrast, never quite feels comfortable with his female characters, and characters such as Grushenka, to be found in the pages of The Brothers Karamazov, resemble nothing so much as stand-ins for women the male characters should be interacting with.

But to return to Anna Karenina, in it a married member of the Russian aristocracy falls in love with a cavalry officer.  Around her the other members of the aristocracy attempt to interpret and to orient themselves in respect to her scandal, with the author using them as a way of gazing into the society of his time.  Communism waits in the wings of this society, as the upper class scrambles for power and the lower class begins to assert its rights.

I enjoyed this book almost all the way through.  I loved the subtle way it shifted from one character's point of view to another's, and also the way it points out its characters' moral inconsistencies.  I felt like every character in this novel was a living, breathing person, and their actions always made sense - even when I didn't agree with their choices.

What I didn't like about this book was the very, very end, which occurs after Anna and her lover's fates are decided.  Instead of ending the book there, Tolstoy adds an extended reflection on both the essential goodness of God and the limits of rational thinking.  This section of the novel seemed out of tune to me, and it wasn't in keeping with Anna as its central character.  I suppose you could link the ideas of God's goodness, the failure of rationality in encountering this goodness, and Anna's desire to be loved together, but that seems like a stretch.  Linking these three ideas together also feels like rationalizing, and moreover the very kind of rationalizing that Tolstoy seems to be arguing against.

Even so, I think Anna Karenina is by far the best of the classic Russian novels.  I didn't enjoy it (if "enjoy" is the right word) nearly as much as more recent Russian novels like Master and Margerita or The Gulag Archipeligo, but it remains undeniably great, and rewards the effort required to get through it.

Related Entries:

"Bleak House" by Charles Dickens (1852)

"Annihilation" by Jeff VanderMeer (2014)

"Man's Fate" by Andre Malraux (1934)

"The God Machine" by Martin Caidin (1968)

Some Other Movies From 2002 (2)

For further background on the year in film please refer to the Some Other Movies From 2002 entry.

The following things happened in 2002:

• The Sierra Leone Civil War ended.
• The Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City, Utah.
• The FIFA World Cup was held in South Korea and Japan.
• Switzerland and East Timor were admitted into the United Nations.
• The SARS epidemic began in China.
• The great Richard Harris passed away.
• The Queens of the Stone Age released Songs for the Deaf.  A great album.

Underlined entries were viewed on Netflix.

Linked entries can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.

Excellent

1. Talk to Her (Hable Con Ella)

It's hard to explain what this movie's about without giving something away.  Let me just say that it's one of Spanish director Almodovar's films, and it might be my favorite.  In the beginning a reporter begins a relationship with a female bullfighter, and from that point on this movie takes a sharp left turn into some serious weirdness.  If I had to reduce this movie to a theme it would be a search for intimacy, or our search to establish relationships with people who might be unable (or unwilling) to reciprocate our affections.  In terms of plot and narrative symmetry it's a deep dive, and I'll probably watch it again in the near future.  The camera work is also amazing.

Fun Fact: Geraldine Chaplin is in this.

2. The Way Home

A young Korean boy learns to appreciate his grandma and her way of life.  It's one of South Korea's highest grossing movies, and critics everywhere loved it.

On a more personal note, I thought I lived in a very rural part of Taiwan, but then I saw this movie.  At least we have electricity.  And running water.  And stores.

 Some Good Ones

1. The Sweetest Thing

Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate and Jason Bateman: 3 actors/actresses who've been in much funnier movies.  The Sweetest Thing attempts to inject more sex and toilet humor into the rom-com genre, but despite a couple funny moments the results are decidedly mixed.  Then again it was the early 2000s, and movies like The 40 Year-Old Virgin were built upon movies like this one.

2. The Sum of All Fears

Here's a thought: why is it always Nazis attempting to resurrect the Third Reich, or to create a fourth?  Why not a group of conspirators attempting to resurrect Imperial Japan?  Or would that topic be too sensitive?  And why?

Anyway, in 2002 it was Ben Affleck's turn to play Jack Ryan.  In The Sum of All Fears Ryan is caught between U.S. and Russian leaders on the brink of nuclear war, and as usual Ryan has to uncover a conspiracy before the world ends, or before the President is killed, or before the Lambada - also known as "the forbidden dance" - becomes popular once again.  Critics at the time - among them Tom Clancy - were not loving this movie, but I thought it was OK.

3. Whale Rider

I was teaching a group of Paiwan kids today, and one of them started talking about how his ancestors beheaded people, and why they don't do so now.  Life is fun that way, and when you look around you realize that we're surrounded by tribal cultures, wherever in the world we happen to be.  If this isn't immediately obvious it's because they choose to keep to themselves, as I suppose "we" do in our own way.

Whale Rider follows a Maori girl as she contends with a headstrong grandfather.  I really enjoyed this movie, even if it didn't end the way I wanted it to.  Something in me wanted that girl to vanish in the end, just so her grandfather could learn how much that kind of pride really costs.  The whale, in other words, seemed like a cop-out.

Another thing I liked about this movie was Cliff Curtis.  After seeing him play such a hateful individual in Once Were Warriors it was nice to see him play a caring, concerned father in Whale Rider.

Fun Fact 1: Rachel House, one of Taika Waititi's collaborators, is in this movie.

Fun Fact 2: The director, Niki Caro would go on to direct North Country, another overlooked movie.  In 2020 she directed Disney's Mulan reboot.

4. About a Boy

Every time I see Hugh Grant I think about that time he got caught with a prostitute.  No judgment here - provided we're all of age everybody's human - but I can't help but remembering.  

Fame is a funny thing.  You could be Hugh Grant, you could be that handsome, and still feel isolated enough to go messing around with hookers in L.A.  Again, everybody's human, and he's probably a much happier person now.

In About a Boy he plays a womanizing bachelor who befriends a young boy.  And who is that young boy?  Nicholas Hoult, who is much better known in 2021.  It's a decent movie - even with the overbearing narration - and the ending isn't as predictable as you'd... predict?

5. Ghost Ship

Sure, dumb title, but it's a good movie.  It borrows a bit from The Shining, it borrows a bit from The Thing, but this film about a haunted ship was well put together.  Critics at the time hated it but it worked for me.

6. Dahmer

Jeremy Renner stars as the famous serial killer.  It's not exactly action-packed but it's an engaging character study.

The Kind of Exploitation Picture Hollywood and Hong Kong Don't Seem to Do Anymore

1. Naked Weapon

Maggie Q parades around in a series of skimpy outfits while assassinating people.  Wire work and cgi aside, what Naked Weapon really reminded me of was 70s films like The Killer Elite or Switchblade Sisters, movies that knew they were bad but realized that a certain amount of shock value goes a long way.  A lot of the dialogue in this movie is terrible, but Maggie Q is beautiful and the fight choreography is pretty good.

Fun Fact: Maggie Q's costar in this movie, Anya Wu, is married to one of Confucius' descendants.

Bad, but Does That Surprise You?

1. The Santa Clause 2

I was only halfway paying attention to this, but let's see what I can remember:

A. Santa Claus (Tim Allen) has to find a Mrs. Claus (i.e. get married) or he'll lose his Santa powers

B. He has around a month to do so.

C. Elves make lame toys that no actual kids would actually want.  Those shitty jumping dinosaurs and old timey trains might amuse Amish kids, but what about kids longing for a Sega Dreamcast?  A PlayStation 2?  A Nintendo GameCube?

D. There's some kind of "league of legendary beings" which consists of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Sandman (NOT the Spider-man villain), Father Time, the Tooth Fairy and a black woman who I THINK is Mother Earth.  Could this "league of legendary beings" stand up to the Avengers?  To the Justice League?  That's a blog post for another day!

E. Santa's son got onto the naughty list.  Uh oh.

F. Conveniently enough for Santa, while he's dealing with his son's naughtiness he realizes that the principal of his son's school is smokin' hot.

G. While Santa is away from the north pole trying to get laid/married, his elfin underlings create a faux Santa Claus out of toy components.  Whoa.

H. The faux Santa turns out to be a fascist who wants to invade Poland... or maybe just put ALL the kids on the naughty list.  The horror!

I. In an attempt to wrest control of the north pole from the true Santa (thus making him the "anti-Santa" in truly biblical fashion), he in turn creates an army of toy soldiers.  And as it turns out these toy soldiers are far and away the most memorable things in the movie.  Why?  Because THEY ARE FREAKING NIGHTMARE FUEL, if anything in any children's movie ever was.  Really, they're worse than the rabbits choking inside the tunnels in Watership Down.

J. Santa (predictably) saves the day just after faux Santa commits suicide in his bunker.  Or maybe he's captured by north polar communist partisans, and executed by firing squad.  Either way, the movie doesn't end well for him.

2. Mr. Deeds

Product placement?  Yup.  Jokes that fail to land?  Yup.  Boring, irrelevant romantic subplot?  Yup.  Occasional funny moments?  Yup.  I can't blame Adam Sandler for this one.  He knows who he is and he knows what he's about.  Besides, the dude is RICH.

Fun Fact: This movie is a remake of the 1936 Frank Capra film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.  The "greeting card poet," Mandrake Falls and most of the plot were borrowed from the original.  The original was, however, more a commentary on the need to maintain small town values in the wake of the Great Depression.

Some Bad Ones

1. Star Trek: Nemesis

Hey, it's Tom Hardy!  This was his third movie and his first major role.  He plays a younger clone of Captain Picard, leading a team of Romulans against the Federation.

Aside from that, yawn.  This movie is boring.  I was never that into the Next Generation version of Star Trek, and this movie reminded me why.  Talk, talk, talk, arbitrary explanation, talk, talk, talk.  You could say that each crew member of the Enterprise is outfitted with his or her own suit of plot armor, to be removed only when a death makes something more dramatic.

I think that at its best the Star Trek universe offers a more science-based conception of the future, but that scientific basis is nowhere evident in this film.  The bioweapon that Tom Hardy's character wields, the transporter technology, holograms, faster than light travel, faster than light messaging, artificial intelligence, cloaking technology - it all seems to operate in the most random manner possible, seemingly bending to the will of whatever the plot wants it to do.  By the end of this movie even something like Star Wars, with all its futuristic/archaic technology, comes off seeming relatively plausible.

Fun Fact: The critical and financial failure of this movie nixed plans for a fifth Next Generation film, and prompted the J.J. Abrams reboot in 2009.  I suppose I can thank this movie for that.

2. Drumline

Zoe Saldana and Orlando Jones are MUCH better actors than the rest of the people in this movie.  Really.  So much so that it's distracting.  They'll say something, and then some other actor will say something, and the difference in delivery will take you right out of the movie.

I also have trouble understanding why the school marching band - ANY school's marching band - is such a big deal.  I get that they all want to do a good job, but the hazing?  The waking up at 4:30 in the morning?  The obsession?  I don't know, I'm just not seeing it.  Maybe this is some Southern thing that I've never heard about, but where I come from the school marching band was never that big a deal.  Especially not, you know, compared to football.

According to the internet almost everybody loves this movie except me.  Maybe there's something I'm not getting.  Maybe it really is that ridiculous.  Maybe I've seen Whiplash too many times, and this movie suffers by comparison.

3. Crossroads

Yes, we're all sympathizing with Britney Spears lately, and no, she's not a good actress.  Once again Zoe Saldana gives the best performance in a movie full of bad performances, this time with Dan Aykroyd as Britney's mechanic father.  Nothing says "star vehicle" like road trip, and in this one Spears embarks on a road trip to meet her estranged mother.

Fun Fact: At the time this movie was often compared to Mariah Carey's Glitter.  I can attest to the fact that Crossroads is a much better movie.

Ugh.

1. A Walk to Remember

Mandy Moore and... some guy star in this Christian faith-affirming romance.  I despised every person in this movie, and Mandy Moore most of all.  I kept wishing they'd all wake up in a barren warehouse room somewhere, with Jigsaw's doll staring down at them, telling them that their day of reckoning had arrived.  Alas, this never happens.

I deserve an award for sitting through most of this movie.  I really do.

Related Entries:

Thoughts on Zack Snyder's Justice League

Some Other Movies From 2001 (2)

The Boys (I Know I'm Late to the Party)

Some Other Movies From 2000 (2)