Reviews – Movies: Y
RATINGS KEY
0/5 – Terrible. Not worth the eyestrain.
1/5 – Bad. Only watch it if there’s nothing else on TV.
2/5 – Okay. It’s not bad, but it’s not good either.
3/5 – Average. Rent it and watch it once.
4/5 – Good. Worth watching a few times (or even buying).
5/5 – Excellent. Watch it, buy it, quote it, love it.
Young Adam (2003)
4/5 | Reviewed 9.13.06
Ewan MacGregor plays an enigmatic drifter who finds work on a coal barge, and Tilda Swinton is the unhappy wife of his employer. While their mutual attraction grows, the drifter discovers the body of a young woman floating in the river—but does he know more about her fate than he’s letting on? It’s a quiet movie, telling the story mostly through images rather than words; visually and musically, it’s a lovely film. Topic-wise, it’s downright chilling; once we learn about the drifter’s connection to the dead girl, his character shifts gently from seductive, sympathetic young fellow to conflicted-yet-calculating self-server. One minute you hate him for being so selfish, the next minute you empathize as he tries to do the right thing. There’s nobody named Adam in the movie; the title is a Biblical reference to the first man and his struggle with temptation. And, though you can’t always sympathize with the drifter’s temptations, you learn to understand what makes him tick; like a Ruth Rendell story, this is a chillingly intimate character piece that allows you to crawl inside a “villain’s” head.
Young Guns (1988)
1/5 | Reviewed 10.19.06
Damn my Kiefer Sutherland obsession—if it wasn’t for him, I would never have sat through this dreck. (And if it wasn’t for him, my giddier female relatives wouldn’t have sat through this dreck some seventeen years ago, when I was old enough to figure out how to get past my mother’s viewing restrictions by hiding in the hallway to watch the TV, but still young enough to have years and years of nightmares thanks to a ten-second clip of Terry O’Quinn eating lead from a machine gun. But that’s another story.) I didn't have high expectations for this; I just wanted some decent eye candy and some decent gunplay. Sadly, this flick fails to deliver on either count—with the exception of Kiefer Sutherland, who brings the hotness and turns in an excellent performance that lifts the film from no-star to one-star territory. (Props to Terry O’Quinn, too, who seems entirely incapable of not doing the best job possible with whatever roles he’s given.) Despite his admirable efforts—and despite a not-bad storyline that could certainly have been fleshed out into a good movie, if anyone had bothered to do so—Young Guns comes off as an incoherent and cheaply-made mess. The stars might be young and hot (well, they were at the time—as if anyone can look at Charlie Sheen these days and not think “webcam balls!”), but that alone won’t carry a film. If you’re a Kiefer Sutherland fan, check out YouTube and Google for film clips and screenshots; it’s not worth sitting through the whole thing just for him.
