Tag Archives: M

The Mother (2003)

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“The Mother” is another one of those many profound films about reaching the peak of your life and suddenly having nothing to look forward to. The two characters we see at the beginning, May and Toots are a couple who basically are not really sure what to do with themselves. We’re not told, nor is it spelled out for us, but the first ten minutes we see them, it’s pretty clear. And it becomes sadly clear that life has pretty much moved on without them, especially their children who greet them with less than emotional sentiment when they pay them a visit which Toots is against. “The Mother” breaks free from the formula of what I mentioned, but is still in the tradition of great films like “Harry and Tonto.” It’s pretty clear they’ve lost their place in their own family, but when May’s husband suddenly dies from a very expected heart attack, suddenly she finds she all on her own.

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Man-Thing (2005)

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man-thing-marvelThe premise to “Man-Thing” is nonsensical and is mostly comprised of bits of many different subplots that never add up to one fluid plot in a movie. There’s industrialists digging for oil in a swamp somewhere in the South and people are being killed off in the mysterious swamp. A new sheriff comes on-board and begins investigating the murders and discovers an evil force is offing the local residents… and there’s an Indian thrown around the movie somewhere, who knows? What they did drop the ball on was the plot which I found often fascinating.

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Mansquito (2005)

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This is the hybrid we’ve been waiting for, the combination of the mosquito and man that not even the best filmmakers could manage, Mansquito! I can just imagine the pitch meeting for this film at the studios. It’s comedy gold. Regardless, this is the kind of shlock drive-in movie you would have loved to see back in the fifties, though it follows along the vein of past movies plot-wise. The premise sounds cheesy even after considering it came from the Scifi channel who are now known for cheesy flicks, but it’s actually an interesting movie. I didn’t hate it. I was surprised also that Lorenzo Lamas wasn’t in this flick since he usually is in about every other Scifi Channel flick… maybe he was holding out for more money. After a new strain of disease rivaling west nile hits a worldwide epidemic, scientists are now working on a new antidote researching mosquitoes. A convicted murderer is being transferred to the lab to become a guinea pig for the antidote, but when he breaks free he raises hell in the lab and ends up being doused with experimental liquids.

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Man on Fire (2004)

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ManonFireThe remake of the 1987 obscure action flick with Scott Glenn, Denzel Washington takes the mantle this time around as Creasy, an ex-soldier whose committed gruesome crimes and is desperately trying to seek penance and is constantly haunted by the fact of his crimes. He applies for a job to guard a very important business man’s daughter since there have been a rash of kidnappings under the rule of a mysterious mob boss, but when she’s Creasy is ambushed, shot down, and blamed, the girl kidnapped. he’s now on the hunt to find her and will stop at nothing to make all the people involved suffer miserably. I’ve never seen the original film starring Scott Glenn, so advantage: Hollywood, but that doesn’t mean this movie was anywhere near a ball to watch, especially since it’s far from anything I expected. You know, like a movie with a plot? What, you say, there is a plot! Show me it and I’ll credit you.

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Miracle (2004)

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miracle_05It’s one of the most amazing stories in sports, the stuff that legends are made of, and it’s a riveting underdog tale whether you’re sports fan or not. The king was dead, there was an oil crisis and the nation was basically in turmoil, until the story of this one Olympic hockey team took the world by storm and gave the nation just a little hope that is sorely was in need of. I’m what people call “Not a sports fan” (made that up myself), so it’s never usually on my list of things to do when sports movies come out, but for “Miracle” I was intrigued. Simply for the fact that this wasn’t just a sports story, it was an underdog tale, a tale of hope in a time without it, and a tale of people coming together to take on their enemy on the ice.

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Mean Creek (2004)

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If you could snap your fingers and make your school bully disappear, would you? That is the question posed here in this chilling tale of revenge called “Mean Creek”. Sam is beaten by the school bully George one time too many, and now Sam’s brother and his friends are intent on seeking revenge on George by luring him out to the river and playing a nasty prank on him, but things go horribly wrong. Much like “Deliverance” being a tale of paranoia and the mind becoming the worst enemy after a tragedy, “Mean Creek” is a younger more contemporary tale of an incident spawning a tragedy which has dire consequences.

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My Life Without Me (2003)

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my_life_without_meThis is a beautiful portrait and character study of life and death, and is pleasantly heavy with symbolism. It also observes one persons attempt at achieving personal goals she never could do, or have the guts to do in their life. The lovely Sarah Polley plays Ann, a workaday woman who is a janitor for a school and goes home to her trailer with her husband and two daughters living a mostly simple life with her overbearing mom and life she’s pretty comfortable with. One day during work she starts getting sick and goes to the hospital where her doctor tells her she has an inoperable tumor and is slowly dying. Somehow Ann seems prepared to face death and the concept of death here, and it doesn’t take much time for her to accept her death and that her daughters may grow up without a mother, thus she begins to really live life while she begins dying.

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