a musical, a Superman suicide, and some stretchy pants

I saw three movies over the weekend. Here's my two cents:

"Dreamgirls"- (4 out of 5 stars) This movie is definitely very entertaining and very visually appealing. However, I was surprised that the music in the movie wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be. There were several overly sugary ballads that I thought dragged on for too long, but there were also several fun upbeat numbers so it all balanced out. I thought the movie was cast well--Jennifer Hudson, Beyonce, and Eddie Murphy all fit their roles perfectly. However, I do NOT think that Murphy deserved a supporting actor nomination---although he played his role well, I didn't really feel like he was stretching himself that much. Overall, this is another great musical made into a movie and I'll even consider buying it when it comes out on DVD.

"Hollywoodland"- (3 out of 5 stars) Ben Affleck stars as George Reeves, the actor who first played Superman on TV in the 1950's and ended up committing suicide. The main plot concerns a private investigator (Adrien Brody) trying to discern whether Reeves' suicide was actually a murder. The film trys too hard to be like "L.A. Confidential", but never quite achieves that kind of greatness. It is an interesting story though and Affleck does a good job at capturing the disdain George Reeves felt towards his Superman role, which he felt prevented him from being taken seriously as an actor. This is definitely not an uplifting movie, but rather a gritty character study.

"Nacho Libre" - (2 out of 5 stars) This movie gets only two stars because there are only two main reasons to watch it: if you're a die-hard Jack Black fan or a die-hard Napoleon Dynamite fan (it was directed by Jared Hess, who also directed 'Napoleon'). I wasn't expecting this movie to be profound on any level, but I WAS expecting it to be funny. The quirky and ridiculous humor that worked in some magical way in "Napoleon" did not really work for this movie---instead, many of the supposedly funny parts were just embarrassingly pointless (why did there need to be a scene with Black's character rubbing poo in someone's face?). I will say though, that this movie did have a cute and uplifting theme, so you didn't feel like the plot was a total waste.


In other movie news, I'm excited to rent 'Half Nelson' and 'The Departed', they just came out on DVD today!