Movies: I know this is the time of the year of light entertainment or movies that fall in between the cracks, but The Big Bounce was a bit too thin. As the star of the show, Owen Wilson, might say, it kinda blowed, was lame, and barely had enough story to fill its abbreviated 88min. running time. A few too many stock shots of the beach. Not much of a caper, but if you have a little extra time on your hands, maybe.

Mystic River on some level was about as enjoyable in my humble opinion. This Oscar bait movie was well praised, is surely serious enough (you want your Greek Tragedy? oh, it's dripping with it), but it is just tooooo heavyhanded for it's own good. Examples? How about Sean Penn's gigantic tattoo of a cross on his back? It goes well with his performance in the heavily dramatic department. Next, we have Laurence Fishburne, apparently preparing for his role as a cop by watching Law and Order reruns. Laura Linney (playing Penn's wife), again wasted, suddenly has this big dramatic scene, coming out of nowhere, near the end. Kevin Bacon is boring. In fact, the movie itself is boring ... it's over two hours long, partly because the pace is so slow. Given greek tragedy is somewhat predictable, just this leads you to think "okay, when will something real bad happen? come on!"

Tim Robbins as the mental case (he was kidnapped and molested as a kid ... his wife, also nominated as for an Academy Award, Marcia Gay Harden, clearly has problems of her own, though they are only partly hinted at in the movie) probably comes off the best, especially in a interrogation scene suggesting a part of him that we never see in the rest of the movie. The movie surely is tragic ... starts with a kidnapping, follows it up (stopping briefly with some scenes of people enjoying their lives) with a murder of an innocent teenage girl, and then only gets worst in a sense. There is enough talent for it to have a good amount of things going for it. All the same, as a whole, it is lacking. A bit more restraint, a shorter running time, and perhaps fleshing out some characters, and this would have been great. As is, it's a flawed epic, which means it fits right in with many of the "top" films of 2003.

One more thing ... Ted Kennedy's accent isn't as strong as some of the actors' in this film. Small thing, but it just adds to the "this is an easy movie to make fun of" nature of the whole enterprise. Oh, not as much as Cold Mountain ... that was just too easy.

[Update: Regarding the opinions of my companions, one basically liked it, even though she felt a bit upset in doing so given how dark it was and all. She was the one who called it a "greek tragedy." Another thought it okay, but a bit too off kilter.]