bgoulding2 Reviews

Two for the Money (2005)

loads of male attraction, no love interest and near zero reality

[2/10 · 24 October 2005]

Great if you like the sound of Pacino's voice (I do a bit) and the sight of Matthew's torso. But Resso is as much a fizzle as is the story line... Gambling can be a great high just, more often it is a home wrecker. But this story line captures neither... might just have been about the triads making money in back streets of Hong Kong, it was all foreign to me. The cheesy ending was recognizable enough... a desperate effort to get back to minimum Hollywood standards of what is expected of good guys. There are other problems with the story but there is little point in going through these in light of larger issues.

Overall, fans of Pachino will go see this movie just as surely as fans of the Rolling Stones will buy an album "sight unseen". I just wish he would find better projects to work on... he's not going to live forever and every maestro wishes to have had one last masterpiece which gets left undone. In that sense, this movie is less a waste of viewers time or producers' cash, but of Pacino's talent.

BG

Tara Road (2005)

Insider

[2/10 · 24 October 2005]

Movie is full of over-acting... Irish actors play absurd people, characters that soap TV series dropped 10 years ago... even Maeve B (author) looked stiff as a board in her first cameo scene... the US characters were better but the story needed a big finish... so what was it that went on around the table in Kenilworth Square???? someone tore up a piece of paper and everybody around the table says "wow!".... it isn't possible to tare up a piece of paper and make everything alright, not in law, not in real life, not in Ireland and not in a fantasy B movie. If it were on the telly, we all would have changed channel. "Circle of Friends" wasn't bad at all so that will have to be Maeve's high point I fear.

I didn't leave the cinema so it gets a 2/10.

BG