The English Patient -- 1996 -- R

This won best picture in 1996 over Evita. Talk about a slow burning fuse. It took forever for anything interesting to happen in this film, despite all the war stuff, and people getting blown up occasionally. The beginning was intriguing enough: plane shot out of sky with two people in it; one survives all burned up. Sure, want to know who they are. The film moves through two different plots: one for the guy with the burned up face before his face got burned up in the past, and the other for the nurse who is caring for him in the present (1944). Anytime you feel like checking the runtime on a movie, there is a pacing issue in my opinion. However, this is also the type of film to ensure all loose ends are tied up and somehow it leaves you with a satisfied feeling when it's all over. 

Another love triangle for the main storyline, it involves an illicit affair and how to (or not to) handle it. This time, both lovers are all over each other at the expense of the husband. Personally, this is never a plot I can get behind just because I don't think it's right, no matter how much you push the "meant for each other" envelope. I believe the decisions and promises you've made outweigh any "meant for each other" feelings you think you feel in the future. If you stick to your decisions and don't let lust carry you away, you will find you've been with who you were meant for already. So, bottom line: slow film, big drama, good drama, nice conflict, good story, but just not fond of "adultery is right" films.

Mrs. Winterbourne -- 1996 -- PG-13

This was a fun little romantic comedy with a slew of funny moments, a great plot, and nothing too annoying about it. It follows a young, pregnant girl who has nothing running into a nice guy on a train. She meets the nice guy's wife who allows her to wear her clothes (because the girl's clothes were wet), and even lets the girl try on her wedding ring. Shortly thereafter, the train crashes killing most of the people on board.

So she ends up with this guy's family who think she is their daughter-in-law that they never met. She tries in the beginning to come clean, but never has the chance. It is a film that actually stay interesting throughout without those annoying "ok, let's get this thing going again" moments.

The characters are developed really well, and you get a true sense of who they are and feel for them by the time the end comes around. It can be said that maybe she gets off a little too easy for the deception in the end, but it is forgivable because the family is setup very well to forgive, and let's be honest, there really wasn't time to dwell on it.

So, in the end, it was a good little comedy.

Evita -- 1996 -- PG

In 1996, this film was nominated for a dozen Oscars including best picture. It lost most of them against The English Patient. The English Patient!!! This movie was robbed. It won best song to which Andrew Lloyd Webber quipped, "I'm so glad the English Patient didn't have a song in it."

I admit to loving the musical long before I saw the movie. I've seen it on stage and have both the original recording as well as the Broadway version, so I am obviously going to be a critic of this one. The movie version was incredible. That which would translate was translated, and tht which wouldn't wasn't. They brought back some material that was cut from the stage that worked incredibly well in a new context.

One big change was the movement of "Another Suitcase in Another Hall" from the mistress of Peron to being sung by Eva. While some criticize this move, the mistress was nothing more than a mirror of Eva, and giving that much time to a non-character is ludicrous in a film. It worked on stage since it gave the actress playing Eva a break. The context it was placed in in the film worked very well though.

The new song continues to bring tears to my eyes every time I hear it. The actors do an amazing job with it, and allow that suspension of disbelief even though they sing through the whole thing. That's an accomplishment. The power surging through this story as it comes to the end is wonderful. It should have won Best Picture. It was robbed.

The Mirror Has Two Faces -- 1996 -- PG-13

Been a slow movie week for me. Oh well.

I've kind of wanted to see this one for a while since this "theme" song "I've Finally Found Someone" played a part in my wedding, and what I found was a film that was not that bad. The premise was fairly unique in that we have a guy who is tired of shallow relationships, so he places a personal ad asking for a woman with a Ph.D and over 35. He noted looks are not important.

So Babs' sister answers the ad, and he checks her out. She is giving this speech in class about how love should be platonic to truly work out and sex kills. He leaves early, satisfied with this and misses that the sex part is good while it lasts. They enter the relationship and we get a lot of tension surrounding the idea that they are in a relationship without any of the physical stuff. Well, this tension comes to a head about the time he leaves for a European conference tour, and we move into the final half hour of the film.

I felt the development of the lead characters was pretty good, and you could really feel the emotion in what was going on. The obstacles here were purely psychological which often makes for an entertaining film in my opinion, since it requires some fairly decently developed characters to pull off. You might say the psychological obstacle was a physical one...ha.

We were not without flaws, however. Since this was a film dealing with the purely psychological matter of love without the physical, the entire film was chatter. Nothing really happened at any point visually. It could have easily been a play. Bridges' performance during the post-wedding scenes was just weird. He smiled almost the entire time. And it wasn't a natural smile; it was this weird, freaky smile of a serial killer waiting for the right time to take out his victim. 

A typical romantic comedy usually has a separation of the lovers followed by the climax where they make up and live happily ever after. This one has a separation, a climax, another separation, and then they come together. It makes sense in the plot, but it threatens to drag out the ending. The same goes for a scene where the loose end of her sister's husband is tied up (I'm not into spoiling these things). That one scene nearly ruined the entire film and her character for me. I'll grant it was a film trick to build tension, but in my opinion that was the wrong kind of tension to build.

So, if you like a romantic film that's a little off the beaten path, more psychological than physical, and doesn't involve another up and coming female star, this one works fairly well. I'll say it's not a complete waste of time.

Amityville: Dollhouse -- 1996 -- R

And so we depart even further from the original story by rewriting the story even more. Like the previous installment, this one works much like a bland horror flick, as opposed to anything connected to the Amityville tales.

In this seventh installment of the series, a guy has built a house on the site of the original Amityville house. Let's remember that this place blew up at the end of 3-D. Well, according to this story, the house burned down while the Martin family lived there (nevermind that this is the first time that name has come up). Well, Mr. Martin decided to reuse the original fireplace in the construction, and behind this house is a mysterious shed that was never opened during the entire time it was under construction. In the shed is a miniature of the Amityville house.

So the daughter has a birthday party and somehow a truck rolls forward over the bicycle present and completely destroys it leaving dear old dad no choice but to give her the dollhouse. The movie is a bit freakish, though not scary, with stuff going on in the dollhouse being mirrored in the real house. To say it isn't scary is kind of an understatement in that it's frequently amusing.

Like the sixth film, it just stands as mediocre. It's not good; it's not bad. Just flowed along until it was over.