This is an incredibly slow, but incredibly atmospheric movie, with the kind of great performances you’d expect from Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger by now. I don’t know if Kim Basinger does better than her recent turn in Cellular for me, but Jeff Bridges has some amazing moments in his role, even if at times he reminds me a little too much of The Dude. He should be nominated for an Oscar at least, as should the screenplay.

At some point, I hope the ending will make sense to me. I wasn’t entirely following the whole metaphor of the title and I felt like I should be feeling something on the final shot; something one day that might make me absolutely love this film (if I ever get off my ass and read more than I do, John Irving would definitely be someone I’d start with, so there’s hope for even deeper study of the story). For now, it remains one of those movies that’s definitely among the best of the year, if only for the atmosphere that’s so consistently conveyed throughout; but my lack of personal connection to it leaves it for now maybe a little low in my ranking.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 1st, 2004 at 10:32 pm in Movie Reviews, unrated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.