I will mark The Painted Veil as the best movie I may have *never* seen. A friend and I talked about how much we each love (500 Days) of Summer, and she said I needed to see The Painted Veil, her second favorite movie. She and I have very similar tastes in pop culture, so I told her I would give it a chance. I remember seeing the preview back in 2006 and thinking it was just another typical romantic period piece that I would probably find boring. I was more than pleasantly surprised. This movie was incredible, and I’m so grateful my friend and I had the conversation we had, and she encouraged me to see it.
Continue reading The Painted Veil (2006)
Category Archives: Naomi Watts
The Impossible (2012)
The Impossible is flat-out the best movie of 2012. I went into the movie thinking it would be one of the ten best of 2012, but I didn’t think it would crack the top five, let alone take over The Dark Knight Rises. As I’ve stated many times, a great movie has an advantage over other great movies if it is based on a true story. Not “inspired by a true story” or “based upon true events” but “based on a true story.” A great movie can lose a lot in my book if it turns out that much factual information is exaggerated or incorrect. Remember The Titans went from being in my all-time top 25 to fall out of the top 150 because of how factually incorrect it had been. Rather than winning the state championship on the game’s final play, as depicted in the movie, the TC Williams Titans won that game handily 27-0. And while I haven’t sought out any discrepancies between what was shown in The Impossible and what happened, I haven’t heard anybody say that the events were untrue.
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Eastern Promises (2007)
Eastern Promises was David Cronenberg’s follow-up to his critically acclaimed breakout directorial hit, 2005’s A History of Violence. A History of Violence was a bit overrated, and William Hurt receiving a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination for his ten minutes of screen time was a bit of a joke. However, Viggo Mortenson was terrific in his role in that movie, and his work in Eastern Promises is stellar.