George Clooney

Intolerable Cruelty (Widescreen Edition)
$9.99
I saw this movie in the theater, and it was one of the very few I've ever considered walking out on. I'm not that hard to please. I'm willing to suspend disbelief. I'm not that demanding. But I could not get into this one at all. Right from the beginning, there were no characters I cared a bit about. Maybe the acting was great. But if you hate the leads, what's the point?

Time has (thankfully) dulled my memory of the details of this film, so I just remember it as mean-spirited and terribly uninteresting. If there were someone I was cheering on, maybe I could take it. (Who could really imagine this with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, as another reviewer mentioned. Really?). My friend and I were about to leave the theater when a totally random line (someone singing "I wish I was a Kellogg's cornflake") made us laugh, and we sat out the rest. I really wish we hadn't. Maybe I'd find something to like in it a second time through, but the first impression has really kept me from coming back to this one.

Michael Clayton (Widescreen Edition)
$14.98
This is a dark, brooding, moody corporate thriller about a lawyer who works as a "fixer," a roving troubleshooter who does everything from going after runaway housewives to fixing high stakes corporate lawsuits when problems crop up. In this case the story revolves around the case of a corrupt agribusiness company that is fighting a multi-billion dollar class action suit stemming from their marketing of a dangerous pesticide which it manufactures and has concealed evidence of its harmful effects.

George Clooney is utterly convincing as the conflicted fixer who wants to get out but who desperately needs the money to pay off his gambling debts, and Tom Wilkinson is possibly even greater as the brilliant but wacked out attorney who is defending the agribusiness company. When he goes off his medication and has a psychotic break and temporarily goes AWOL, it's Clooney's job to find him and get him back on his meds. I'm not familiar with the woman who played the company's chief counsel but she is excellent too. All the main leads do a fine job, in fact, and the slow pacing allows the story to unfold unhurriedly as the suspense builds to the satisfying climax.

It's a suspenseful and intense movie from beginning to end. Overall a good flick and especially if you're a Clooney fan you'll want to give this one a look.

Burn After Reading
$14.98
I had never heard of this 2008 Coen Brothers comedy. If it did play the theaters it must have had a short run. And I don't remember publicity of any kind. But it was on cable TV and when it listed the cast of characters, I knew I had to see it.

First of all, there is Frances McDormand. I've loved her performances ever since I saw Fargo years ago. In this film she plays the role of an aging gym instructor who doesn't have enough money for the cosmetic surgery which she is sure will help her land a man. She's looking for love through the internet and the men she meets are all losers. Another gym instructor, and her friend, is Brad Pitt, playing the part of a rather dense golden haired trainer. One day they just happen to find a computer disk which looks like it has some secret CIA information on it. The disk actually belongs to John Malkovich, who has been fired from the CIA and is writing a book about his experiences. Whether the so-called secret information on the disk is actually real is always a question mark. Malkovich is married to Tilda Swinton, a thin society type who is having an affair with George Clooney. Clooney is quite a womanizer. Even though he thinks he is happily married, there are several women in his life. Frances McDormand becomes one of them.

The plot is so faced paced that I had no time to think. But I did laugh a lot. Every scene is stretched to its outrageous edge. There's gunplay and murder throughout and most of the characters meet their end in some serendipitously outrageous way. The conclusion is fun and satisfying even though most of the characters have been killed off.

I am not one for comedies. But I loved this one. Highly recommended.

Marrying George Clooney: Confessions from a Midlife Crisis
$16.95
Written with passion, clarity, and economy of word, I finished this remarkable book in one sitting. Filled with deep perceptions, a comparison with the holiest of works is well within range, the way Amy Ferris expresses at least a thousand insights, or so it seems, all eloquent: calling cards for living in an otherwise complicated world...

More so, and lovely for this writer, is her ability to sweeten such songs, sans seriousness, and in turn, assure a sense of calm and silence. Twin sisters of wisdom, calm and silence, each awesome, needed, but nearly impossible for even the best of writers to express.

That Amy Ferris is able to do this, seemingly without effort, is an astonishing accomplishment, and nothing short of a grand hallelujah is in order for a work that celebrates the innermost workings of the human heart...