"Hairspray"

Great musical. The plot follows the aspirations of a short plus-size girl to get on a dance reality show and win the guy of her dreams in 1960's Baltimore. Not much of a plot, but the execution is practically flawless. It touches a lot of subjects: being different in body size, in skin color, in attitudes and occupations as well as parent-children relationships, and even parent-parent ones. And does it in a lightweight manner with almost non-stop singing and dancing, so the viewer is never bored, never being uncomfortable or embarrassed about what's happening in the movie. The hairdos, the behaviors are ridiculous and over top. It's still great. And even though Christopher Walken and John Travolta are cast in weird roles, it almost works.

I'm still humming one of the songs a day after I saw the movie. The only question is whether the songs will survive for another ten or twenty years, like "Grease" (10/10) or "Saturday Night Fever" (8/10). For now though we have 9/10.

"The Rat Pack"

The movie title refers to the group of entertainers, headed by Frank Sinatra, who were famous in 1950's and 60's. The movie recounts most of this period with quite a few jumps. It also focuses on the Rat Pack influence on John F. Kennedy election and the subsequent fallout of Sinatra and Kennedys due to the former's Mafia ties. The movie is rather weak. While I liked Don Cheadle as Sammy Davis Jr., I thought that both Mantegna and especially Liotta were not suited to play Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. Both are tough roles, considering Sinatra and Dean are iconic entertainment figures. The same criticism can be applied to the actors playing Kennedys as well as Marilyn Monroe. Of course, the movie is made for TV, so some amount of lackluster quality is predictable. What I liked is a bit of USA entertainment and political history that we as foreigners don't really know. That alone kept we watching the movie to the end. But it can be done much better. 5/10.

"Wall Street"

I loved this movie, when I saw it first time in 1990 in Moscow. While it is definitely a critique of the Wall Street machinations, I sympathized with the corrupt financier Gordon Gekko then and thought that overachiever-turned-criminal-turned-idealist Bud Fox was an idiot. And of course there was magnificent Daryl Hannah. :) Fast forward 17 years. The movie looks in different light now. Bud Fox's illegal janitorial hijinkses look just that - illegal. Gordon Gekko's high life has lost some of its luster. The effort to save Blue Star airlines and its unions seems rather silly considering the long history of real-life airline failure, consolidation, government bailouts and rise of low-cost carriers. This might be a better story to be told by someone like Michael Moore, but with libertarian bend. Only Daryl Hannah remains timelessly beautiful. And one-liners. "Greed is good". How true Gordon. 7/10.

"Music from Another Room"

"Music from Another Room" is a rather weird romantic movie. When 5 year old Danny helps to deliver Anna - don't ask... - into this world, he announces that he will marry her. 25 years later, fate has brought him back to deliver on his promise. Will he? Won't he? Jude Law (Danny) has balls of steel in dealing with Gretchen Mol (Anna), but even the coin with heads on both sides does not guarantee a win against a woman. (Guys, never bet with a girl, they always win!). Jennifer Tilly plays Anna's blind sister Nina with her own set of neuroses. Funky mother and father with a flair for Russian literature and "Anna Karenina" in particular round out the set. So is there any doubt that we will see a train station and a train? Though nicely weird with a few great one liners, the movie is also rather uneven. For example, it never decides which decade it is happening in. Hairdos are 60's, neighborhood bakeries are 70's, aggressive women's lib is 80's and cars are from 90's. Don't even get me started about mosaic restoration project in a church of a small (?) town in USA... Character relationship edges are similarly written too fast and without sufficient details. Now they hate, now they love, now they marry, now they don't. And I am not even talking about Anna and Denny. 7/10 for a beautiful description of true love though.

"Transformers"

Probably I should not write this post, but the current 8.4/10 rating on IMDB is just crazy. No, "Transformers" is not worth seeing. The movie is a total mess. Almost no one can act. The main character is a complete idiot, who does not raise any sympathy. The screenplay is totally hosed: it jumps around a lot of places and people without any need, introduces bunch of totally unnecessary characters, cannot decide if it is a comedy or an action movie. The fight scenes are filmed at such a speed that you can't understand what's happening and then it's over. The transformers are hugely underused - they should be stars. There are a lot of great ways of how their transforming abilities should be used in the plot and yet they are not, mostly it's the car-to-robot-to-car stuff. Horrible. Don't waste your time and money. A lot of anime giant robot movies are much better IMO. 3/10.

P.S. Yes, that was a Nokia phone and no, unfortunately the real ones don't transform into little nasty running spidery things, sorry. ;)