Reviews
The Last Mimzy (2007)
A Great Family Film
There are not many movies you can take the whole family to see these days. Our ten year old son really wanted to see The Last Mimzy so we went to a sneak screening last Saturday night. I was very pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed the film as much as I did. My wife liked it even better. Our two other kids (daughter 12, youngest son 7) along with our son had a great time.
Kids will really be able to identify with the brother and sister in the movie. They seemed very real. The kids' lives at school and their relationships with their parents and teacher seemed true. This is a story about a regular family with all the ups and downs of everyday regular life.
Then, the story takes off. I don't want to give away anything about the plot because the surprises that gently unfold are what you and your family will enjoy about the movie. There are elements of science fiction and fantasy with nothing extremely intense to scare the kids. It's an interesting story told well with characters you care about. The visual effects are well done.
I liked that the movie does not talk down to kids to get its ideas across. My wife and I also liked that the language and situations were truly appropriate for a family film. My kids all want to see the movie again and the movie is definitely good enough to see a second time.
Zodiac (2007)
Disappointing
As a huge fan of Se7en I couldn't wait to see David Fincher's latest film, Zodiac. After over two and a half hours of the movie I walked out of the theater stunned
stunned at how hugely disappointing it was.
I never thought I'd say this about a Fincher movie
but Zodiac is just plain boring. The movie is way, way too long. You just don't care about the characters or about what's going on after a while. Forget about any kind of cool cinematography like you've seen in Se7en, Fightclub or even Panic Room. Zodiac looks like the exact opposite of anything that the director has done before. It seems to be purposely bland.
Zodiac seems to purposely want to grind away at you with detail after detail, underplaying events with ultra low key acting & photography. The experience for me was that I had been ground down to not caring anymore about wanting to stay in the theater. I couldn't wait for the movie to end
or for it to peter out with a whimper as it eventually does.