Emily's Movie Reviews

On Sunday night, Juli, Chad and I went to see “Derailed”. The basic plot is that these two people start an affair, but the first time they go to a hotel together, they are attacked, and then the attacker starts blackmailing the guy. And there’s several other layers of scam going on as well. So this sounds like a great movie idea (I love scam movies), but in this movie it just never came together. You could see the twist coming an hour away. And the end was terrible (if you care, stop reading now, I’m going to give it away), like they just gave up caring about the movie and said, okay let’s just kill everyone off in a big, bloody shoot-out. But wait, one of them isn’t dead yet... so we can have one more over-dramatic confrontation scene... and then finally it’s over.

But on the plus side, the movie did have Xzibit playing the role of Dex, a thug with ideas about using rap to sell tea... or tuna? I don’t remember. But whatever, Xzibit is funny, so any movie with him is okay in my book. Derailed: C+

Yesterday (Monday), my private student was kind enough to burn me two DVDs, one with Robert Koltai’s film “Sose halunk meg” (We Never Die). I don’t any way to describe it other than a coming-of-age story set in the 60s in small-town Hungary. It follows Imi and his vivacious Gyuszi bácsi (“Uncle Juicy”) over a summer adventure involving coat-hangers, horse-racing, travel, booze, and women. I’ll have to watch it again before passing a final judgment, but for now: Sose halunk meg: A.