Fracture and Dead as a Doornail

Actually, the one movie I want to write about isn't in the title of this post-and it's The Whole Wide World with Vincent D'Onofrio and Renee Zellweger. It's the story of Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan and others) and Novalyne Price, English teacher and all-around nice person. I mention this movie because I watched Conan the Barbarian on TV last week and was reminded of just how awful a movie it is and how wooden Arnold Schwarzenegger's performance is in it. He looks right for the role (and does a reasonably better job in it but his co-stars Grace Jones and Tracy Walter really help) but as I've said before, he's as wooden as a plank of maple siding. So, if you really want to hear a good Conan story you should watch this movie (which ostensibly about the love story that did and didn't happen between Novalyne and Robert) because there is one scene where Vincent D'Onofrio tells a Conan story by firelight-and that one scene is so much better than anything in either Conan movie that it made the rest of the movie worthwhile. I'm not always fond of romantic dramas (let alone romantic comedies) but this was a very good movie-Vincent was wonderful and Renee was not as annoying as she can be, which is saying something.



I also saw Fracture, with Ryan Gosling and Anthony Hopkins. It was very good, considering I figured out fairly soon (not right away) the trick and saw sooner than he did (apparently) how Ryan was going to get Anthony. The story is that Anthony Hopkin's wife is having an affair-she comes home afterwards and he shoots her. He cleans himself up and calls the police. The hostage negotiator shows up, talks himself into the house, sees his girlfriend dying (because she isn't dead) and decides to beat up Hopkins. he also neglects to mention this to the Assistant District Attorney who has the case (and one foot out the door to his posh new job saving corporate criminals). So when the gun doesn't seem to be the one that shot her and the confession is ruled as inadmissible due the idiocy of the police, Hopkin's goes free of the charge of attempted murder. This is actually the point at which I figured everything out-I'm sure there are others out there smarter than I who got it earlier, but this is the point where I saw how the rest of the movie was going to go. But you don't see a movie like this for the intricacy of the plot (it wasn't THAT intricate) but you see it for Hopkins and Gosling and they were both very good. Hopkins does an excellent job of playing the control-freak and the rube who doesn't know the rule of law (guess which one he really is) while Gosling does a great job as the Assistant DA with a 97% winning record who is ready to go to the corporate life-or is he? Does he want that life just for the money or the ADA's job because he wants to put away the bad guys? While I saw the end coming a mile away, it was still quite fun to watch-I actually found myself grinning at one point. To see two actors who can do their jobs this well (and it's clear they were having a blast doing this movie), well-that's always a pleasure.

I also read Dead as a Doornail-this was my quick break from Spin State and The Watchman (more on those later). Yes, it's Southern vampire story and yes, it's pretty lightweight. But Charlaine Harris is very good storyteller and the story was fun and a little creepy and sometimes you can't ask for more than that.