The Emperor's New Groove (2000)

Genre

Animation | Adventure | Comedy

Director

Mark Dindal

Country

USA

Voice Cast

David Spade, John Goodman, Eartha Kitt, Patrick Warburton, Wendie Malick, Kellyann Kelso, Bob Bergen, Tom Jones, Patti Deutsch, John Fiedler, Joe Whyte

Storyline

Vain and cocky Emperor Kuzco (David Spade) is turned into a llama by his ex-administrator Yzma (Eartha Kitt), and must now regain his throne with the help of Pacha (John Goodman), a gentle llama herder.

Opinion

Yesterday it was my birthday, and I treated myself to the film I was obsessed with when I was a kid. I was just curious to see how my old self would have reacted to this film, and I can't believe how much I've enjoyed it.

Nothing fancy if compared to Disney Classics, yet "The Emperor's New Groove" is a hilarious buddy film that just happens to be animated and suitable for all ages.

The story isn't particularly original - the ruler who has to change externally before he can change internally, the good-hearted sidekick of the villain who can't bring himself to kill the "hero" - and sometimes doesn't make sense, but it's well-paced, entertaining, easy to follow, and somewhat different.

What's different, you ask? Well, the story is told from the perspective of the ruler: the llama Emperor tells the story as if he was the innocent one being hurt by everyone, when it actually is quite the opposite. 

The characters are great. Kuzco is some selfish llama, the main character that we are NOT supposed to like, but how can you not? He's hilarious and David Spade does a wonderful voice work, he just makes the llama so much more likable. Pacha is a generous, thoughtful and intelligent peasant that makes a good team with Kuzco - and he is the only one having a romance -, and John Goodman pulls off a good performance. As for the bad guys, Yzma is a memorable, over-the-top villain, scary beyond all reason, hilariously performed by Eartha Kitt, and Kronk is a the funny and likable sidekick, perfectly voiced by Patrick Warburton.

Like all Disney movies, "The Emperor's New Groove" has a moral that has to do with true values of life and friendship. It still is visually appealing, even 16 years later, and it also features a very catchy opening song performed by Tom Jones.

If you haven't seen it yet, I really don't know what you're waiting for!

The Weekly Movie Watch Volume 89

This week I watched The Hateful Eight, Carol, Man Up.

I watch movies every week and then write down my thoughts. Read my previous reviews!
My rating is simple, Watch It, It Depends, Skip it.

The Hateful Eight -Absolutely incredible, though a bit long.

The Hateful Eight (2015)
Watch The Hateful Eight
Written by: Quentin Tarantino
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Starring:  Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen
Rated: R

Plot:
Trapped in a cabin during a blizzard, bounty hunters, a bounty, a sheriff, a hangman, a rancher, and more must survive each other.

Verdict:
This movie is incredible. The script is amazing and the acting is sublime. It's such an incredibly well made movie where everything comes together so well. I regret I didn't see it in the theater. I want to rewatch immediately but at nearly three hours, that's not so easy. The last hour wasn't quite as good as the first, with a few decisions I found odd. It lost the momentum and tension the movie had been building.
Watch it.

Review:
Showing off the 70mm film in the first few shots, the movie has a distinct and dated look. Even the credits and music mimic a spaghetti western. The music is very good.
The acting and dialog is phenomenal. How can you not like a Kurt Russell in a western? Just twenty minutes in, I felt like I was watching a masterpiece. 
A movie set for the most part in one room needs the dialog to carry, and this dialog, with the actors does. This is a one upmanship of which actor can outshine the others. Goggins always nails it and is impressive here. Nearly every actor in this could have been nominated for an acting award. This may be Tarantino's seminal work.

The distrust is palpable between the characters, and the approaching blizzard is foreboding. Nobody trusts anyone, each asking to see warrants and identification.
Kurt Russell and Samuel L. Jackson play bounty hunters headed to Red Rock. Russell has a bounty in tow, played by Jennifer Leigh cook. Goggins is proclaiming to be the new sheriff of Red Rock, though Russell claims he's a liar. The hang man of Red Rock is also in the cabin, with the stagecoach driver, the cabin's caretaker, an elderly Confederate general, and rancher.
The movie isn't without levity, with Confederate general played by Bruce Dern communicating to Jackson through Goggins, playing a game will you inform him, and will you tell him this, when the two men are standing right next to each other.
The question of the proprietor Minnie's location propels suspicion.

I regret I didn't see this in theaters, even if I wouldn't have been able to see the 70mm road show version. The film's distributors spent a million dollars to retrofit theaters and train projectionists to show the movie in the native 70mm format. Vintage cameras had to be sourced, as this format hasn't been used in decades.

The looming blizzards intensifies the level of danger and the feeling that anything could happen. The camera work is notable.
The last quarter begins with a narration from Tarantino. I didn't understand why. Is it so he could continue his cameo in every film he makes? The narration as intrusive and added nothing. It's easy to tell what's happening by watching the screen. The narration does point out a plot element that may have been missed, but it still felt like the wrong way to provide that information.
The movie becomes more mystery than thriller as we try to determine who betrayed the group.
It's difficult to keep such an intense pace for three hours after an intense shootout the movie delves into a bit of backstory that I found unnecessary. It's not bad, but it really slows down the relentless pace of the movie. It never regained the intense focus from the first two hours.
The ending is bleak, and not without surprises.

This is the same film that when an actor leaked the script a few years ago, Tarantino said he wouldn't make it. I'm glad he relented.

Carol - Love, life, and loss.

Carol (2015)
Watch Carol
Written by: Phyllis Nagy (screenplay), Patricia Highsmith (novel)
Directed by: Todd Haynes
Starring:  Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson, Kyle Chandler
Rated: R

Plot:
Therese falls for an older woman Carol.

Verdict:
Carol is a love story, and it never focuses on the fact that it's a love story between two females. Mara and Blanchett do a fantastic job and the script is well written. While it feels very real, that also makes the movie a slow burn.
It depends.

Review:
This is in the same vein as Todd Haynes previous film Far From Heaven (2002), both films are set in the '50s and depict a socially forbidden relationship.
Therese is enamored with Carol upon first sight. They meet, and despite the awkwardness of their visits, Therese keeps seeing Carol. Therese is young and just following Carol's lead. Carol has a daughter and a strenuous relationship with her daughter's husband. She finds somebody she likes, and somebody that likes her back in Therese.
As Carol and Therese pull together, it pulls them away from their other relationships. Therese has no one she can talk to about it. Carol is isolating her, and in turn is becoming the person Therese talks to.
While it feels accurate, the pace is slow. Therese and Carol drift apart, and meet once again in the movie's climax. It's very well done.
I've seen all of best picture Oscar nominees save for Bridge of Spies, and this has been the most underwhelming. If you like the romance genre and love stories, I'm sure you'll enjoy this more than I did.

Man Up - More like movie down.

Man Up (2015)
Watch Man Up
Written by: Tess Morris
Directed by: Ben Palmer
Starring:  Lake Bell, Simon Pegg, Ophelia Lovibond 
Rated: R

Plot:
Jack mistakes Nancy for his blind date. It's the wrong date, but it may be the right match.

Verdict:
This movie combines and recycles the common rom-com tropes producing nothing original or interesting. There was a brief moment where it broke from reality, and not in the sense that dialog and characters aren't realistic but something actually that might make for a solid ending, but the break was only temporary. If you're expecting funny Simon Pegg, this is not the movie.
Skip it.

Review:
The first scene is Lake Bell talking into a mirror. It's not original or funny, it's just depressing how bad this movie is in just a couple of minutes. This movie could have been framed so much better. Why would I want to see a movie with weepy Simon Pegg? I want comedy. Towards the end, he's making a frantic dash to find this girl. He's dropped off at the wrong location by Sean, who had a childhood crush on Nancy, but finds someone at a teenage party for whom Nancy babysitted. It's senseless but it leads to everyone at this teenage party running down the street, following him on this quest. It's ridiculous but at least it was entertaining. It only lasted a few minutes before coming back to the mind numbing drivel that is this movie. The whole movie should have been Pegg trying to find the girl and encountering various situations and characters. That would have been utilized his talents.
Nancy's sister calls her after she has just met Jack. Jack assumes it's a rescue call, answers and tells Nancy's sister everything is okay, and he's not a psycho. How does Nancy's sister write that off?
It took so long for Simon Pegg to appear in the movie, I wondered if he was just a supporting character. I hoped he could this movie bearable. He doesn't.
Every situation is recycled from other movies in the genre. The blind date mix up may be the only unique idea in this, and that's probably from an obscure rom-com I just haven't seen.
The dialog is bad. It tries to bring a couple of things full circle in an attempt to be clever that fail. It's not particularly funny despite my expectations with a Simon Pegg movie.

Macbeth (2015)

Genre

Drama | War

Director

Justin Kurzel

Country

UK | France | USA

Cast

Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Paddy Considine, Sean Harris, Jack Reynor, Elizabeth Debicki, David Thewlis, David Hayman, Maurice Roëves, Ross Anderson, James Harkness, Seylan Baxter, Lochlann Harris, Hilton McRae, Scott Dymond, Rebecca Benson, Gerard Miller, Roy Sampson

Storyline

Macbeth (Michael Fassbender), the Thane of Glamis, receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders his king and takes the throne for himself.

Opinion

Of all the tragedies William Shakespeare has written Macbeth is not my favourite. By far. And I would have avoided this adaptation if it wasn't for Michael Fassbender. And I would have probably made the right decision.

In fact, Justin Kurzel's "Macbeth" is a watchable interpretation elevated by a spectacular Michael Fassbender and a magnetic Marion Cotillard.

One of the characteristics of Shakespeare's tragedies is their actuality, and Kurzel took advantage of it to tell the story of the valiant Macbeth who falls victim to an unbridled thirst for power. The themes of greed and success to be achieved at any cost are relevant today more than ever, as well as is the matter of soldiers hunted by war.

The decision to stick to the play is one of the film's strengths, as it's its fidelity to the Shakespearean drama, especially from the point of view of language, that allows the film to portray the drama so well. But at the same time it is a weakness because the purely Shakespearean dialogue is quite difficult to follow - especially for non-native English speakers -, and it shows complete lack of originality.

From the aesthetic point of view, the slow motion in the battle sequences, the desaturation of colours, and the slowness of movements recalls Zack Snyder's "300", and while they highlight the bloody path of Macbeth, they don't leave much room for feelings.

However, the cast makes it worth it. Michael Fassbender portrays the deterioration of Macbeth beautifully, communicating the evolution of his character with his intense expressivity. Marion Cotillard is sublime as Lady Macbeth and she is not overshadowed by Fassbender.

Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp Season 1 TV Review

Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp (2015-)

Created by: Michael Showalter, David Wain
Starring:  Marguerite Moreau, Zak Orth, Paul Rudd, Michael Ian Black, Bradley Cooper, Janeane Garofalo, Amy Poehler, 
                Molly Shannon, Lake Bell, Jon Hamm, Lake Bell, John Slattery, Christopher Meloni, Chris Pine

Teenage camp counselors played by middle aged actors.

Plot:
In the Netflix prequel to the 2001 movie, this series chronicles the first day at Camp Firewood.

Verdict:
This show is absurd and completely wacky. I love it. It either subverts common tropes or cranks them up to eleven. Making it a prequel is absurd in of itself since all the teenage camp counselors are played by middle aged actors. All eight episodes take place on the first day of camp which is another joke. The pacing is frenetic, and there is a human embodied as a can of vegetables, Jon Hamm as an assassin, Ronald Reagan in a tank, Chris Pine as a musician living in a haunted cabin, a lawsuit, murders, and a lot more. I've been disappointed by Netflix's most recent comedies, but this completely delivers, provided you like complete silliness.
Watch it. 

Recap
I'm providing a few highlights from the episodes, so if you want to avoid spoilers, STOP READING! =)

It's a great concept to make this a prequel. The big question is how do you make a sequel when so much time has passed. The answer is to fully embrace how much older the actors are and have them play even younger characters. This is definitely wackier than the movie, but it makes for an enjoyable series. It avoids constantly referencing the age difference, instead employing it sparingly to great effect.

The kid actors don't sell it quite as well as the adult actors in the typically awkward camp interactions. The camp counselors are the stereotypical sex crazed teens, except they are played by much older adults. It fully embraces how weird it gets when actual teenagers and middle aged adults are playing characters that are the same age.

It's a typical cheesy camp story, but it does a great job of playing to your expectations before pulling the rug out from under you.

The awkward kid challenges the resident bully to a burping contest. I'd assume he'd win as thats how things go, but he loses terribly. In the culmination to his story line where he finally admits to the girl he's been eyeing that he likes her, and she's been eyeing him, she replies she doesn't like him like that. You expect them to live happily ever after,but he's shut out completely.

Don't worry, he may have fallen into toxic waste, but he'll be okay... kind of.

A child actor runs to the bathroom, having her first period. When she exits, she's an adult actor. While camp movies often fall to the dramatic, this stays silly. There's even toxic waste and a government coverup. The guy that falls into the toxic waste comes back as a talking can of vegetables, and that is played straight.

Knife fighting, undercover agent Jon Hamm, the Falcon.

With an ensemble cast and many story lines, it never feels slow. It's wacky and a lot of fun. The guest stars are great. Chris Pine is a reclusive would be rock star living in a supposed haunted cabin. Jon Hamm dresses as Weird Al while undercover for President Reagan. His knife fight with Christopher Meloni is awesome. Hamm's resolution to the story line is illogical and absurd. He claims he was on the camps side the entire time, but can't refute that he did murder a few people. His response is to just go with it.

Michael Cera is a lawyer. Cera takes the toxic waste case, goes to trial a few minutes later, and wins the case when he gives the judge a blank floppy disk he claims is evidence. It's enough for the judge to declare the defendants guilty. It's hilariously ridiculous. The entire first season is one day of camp. Realistically, it makes no sense, but that's the conceit of this series.

President Regan in a tank attacking Camp Firewood.

President Reagan attacks the camp. While a rock ballad from Chris Pine can't stop the threat, the freedom of the press can. This show is just as silly as it sounds, and it's awesome.

THE TWILIGHT BINGE #012: WHAT YOU NEED

S01E12 – What You Need

“Pedott is an enigmatic sidewalk peddler with the uncanny ability to give people the item they will soon desperately need—before they even know why they'll need it. He gives Lefty, a washed-up ballplayer, a ticket to Scranton moments before Lefty gets a call offering him a coaching job in Scranton. Fred Renard, a violent, bitter failure of a man, demands Pedott give him what he needs. Frightened, Pedott produces a pair of scissors. Renard is mystified...until a hotel elevator door closes on his tie and scissors prove very handy. But Renard wants much more.”

“You can't always get what you want,” sang Mick Jagger back in 1969, before going on to add, “but if you try sometime, you find, you get what you need.” It’s kind of hard not to hear that tune playing in the back of your mind every time this episode rolls around. Of course, What You Need appeared a decade before The Rolling Stones warbled out their similarly themed hit, so maybe they actually had Serling’s story playing in the back of their own minds while writing the lyrics. Hey, it’s the Twilight Zone; stranger things have happened.

Airing on December 25, 1959 (Rod Serling’s 35th birthday by the way), What You Need is a holiday-appropriate morality tale about those who give freely and those who take by demand, mixed with a dash of the old monkey’s paw for good measure. The taker, in this instance, is the noirish no-goodnik Fred Renard, a man who thinks life owes him everything and hasn’t gotten around to paying up yet. The giver is the mysterious peddler Mr. Pedott who, much like Henry J. Fate from Mr. Denton on Doomsday, seems to have a little bit of everything in his magic case. Well, almost. As Pedott tells the increasingly belligerent Renard, “The things you need most I can't supply. Serenity, peace of mind, humor, the ability to laugh at yourself… patience.”

With dialogue like that, it’s obvious What You Need isn’t trying to be clever and bury its message in subtext. Although it’s got another one of Serling’s patented twists at the end involving a pair of slippery shoes, overall the episode is a pretty straight forward tale about the need to find solace in interior peace rather than to keep vainly seeking the fleeting comforts of this world. Of course, the call to seek inner peace is a platitude easier placed on self-help book shelves than it is to actually put into practice. That’s why Saint Leonard of Port Maurice, a 16th century Franciscan friar remembered primarily for his evangelistic preaching (which is probably why he doesn’t get a lot of attention these days), offered a few suggestions on how to obtain peace of soul. 

1. Form no attachments to anything but God. Everything else should be viewed as to how it relates (or doesn’t) to the creator.

2. Trust in Divine Providence. God’s “mind” is bigger than the universe so there’s a good chance he knows what he’s doing. Have faith in that.

3. Welcome suffering when it comes. Not a popular suggestion, for sure, but hard times are probably the best opportunity to experience solidarity with Christ. 

4. Don’t try to do more than your situation allows. You don’t have to single-handedly run the church council, feed the city’s poor, visit every prisoner, etc. etc.

Okay, so a lot of that isn’t easy either. It’s admittedly much more expedient to try and find contentment in earthly things. But seeing how that approach worked out for Renard in tonight’s episode, maybe trying things Saint Leonard’s way is the better method in the long run.

Twilight Tidbits: At one point, Renard opens up a newspaper and lays it out on the floor. Blink and you might miss the ominous headline which reads, “H-BOMB CAPABLE OF TOTAL DESTRUCTION.” We last saw that exact same paper being read by one Mr. Henry Bemis in Time Enough At Last.

TV RECAP: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 3 Episodes 13 & 14 ("Parting Shot" & "Watchdogs")

AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D's third season has felt the most disconnected from the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not necessarily because it's had fewer tie-ins (it's about even with usual, so far) but because the series has doubled-down so much on its own mythology (the Inhumans, HYDRA's "secret origins," Maveth/Hive) that it's largely traded in its previously-ubiquitous references to the bigger events being depicted in the MCU films for references to bigger events that aren't being depicted anywhere - which leaves things feeling a touch on the awkward side.

Case in point, the last two episodes have been all about the supposedly global-scale panic being caused by the continuing emergence of new Inhumans; which we're assured is happening largely through news reports and regular cast members talking about it - some of which is cleverly staged but most of which has had the effect of making it seem like the series is rushing to establish that "No, really, it's suddenly a really big problem" in order to hit a crossover-point with CIVIL WAR.

Anyway...
PARTING SHOT:

Not much to be said here, other than that it's a pretty solid episode hurt a bit by its need to function as a backdoor pilot for the MOST WANTED spin-off. The basic caper stuff all works, and the one-off (I think?) Inhuman villain who can control his own shadow is a fun effect, but the big "emotional" goodbye for Hunter and Mockingbird I never quite bought.

One infrequent weakness of the series "one foot in fantasy" approach to its spy-games storytelling is that problems seem to become untenable because they need to without much real consistency: Given that Coulson has already parachuted into a portal to another planet on a whim this season, it feels contrived that, now that we need these two characters to leave for another show, he suddenly arrives at a paperwork problem (Hunter and Bobbi, framed for an attempt on the Russian Prime Minister's life, can either end their tenure as field agents or disappear into the wind) that he doesn't have a gadget or an owed-favor for fixing.

The "spy's goodbye" business at the end was a good scene, a testament to how far the cast has come as performers (and, maybe, a tease at the supposedly more oldschool-espionage flavor to be expected of MOST WANTED?); but it breaks down once you remember that the two central players being payed final respects to aren't even members of the original cast, have only been around for a season and half and for about 1/3 of that time we thought at least one of them might be a villain.


WATCHDOGS:

So, here's the thing about me and the Mutants/X-Men thing: My favorite aspect about the whole "superpowers-as-minority" thing is the part that's the most bullshit when you get right down to it.

For all the platitudes about how it's an MLK/Malcom thing, adding powers basically makes it into Objectivism by proxy i.e. an inferior majority of normals trying to hold back the self-realization of their betters either out of jealousy or because they fear the upheaval that the presence of superior leaps-forward are bound to bring - and like Objectivism, it's equal appealing (if you fancy yourself marginalized because of your not-just-different-but-better-ness) and appalling (if you're in touch with you basic humanity.) "Watchdogs" is AGENTS' slow-build for The Inhumans as the MCU-brand Mutants getting to part where this becomes explicit, which means I dig it but then grumble at myself during the commercial breaks.

As the title implies, it's an intro-episode for the MCU version of The Watchdogs. In the comics, they're an ultra-conservative right-wing militia outfit who figured prominently in the "Captain America: No More" storyline, so it makes sense they'd show up now reconfigured as the militarized arm of the growing anti-alien/superhuman movement that's expected to drive the plot in CIVIL WAR. In an amusing bit of writing, their new origin is being "Alt-Right" (read: wannabe neo-nazi dorks who know they'd get their asses kicked by legit skinheads) internet trolls who've been outfitted with military-grade hardware by outside benefactors - so, GamerGaters who do their own SWATing, basically. Clever.

In the comics, the Watchdogs turned out to be unwitting pawns of The Red Skull. Here, the top-baddie at first seems to be Titus Welliver's returning Agent Blake; who's hacked-off about being permanently injured by Deathlok in Season 1. I like that turn, but the secondary reveal that he himself is being jerked-around by HYDRA (so bad Inhumans using Inhuman haters to kill good Inhumans) feels like twist-overkill.

Anyway, their presence in the episode-proper is mostly about laying out foundation and establishing connections (they've got their hands on "Nitramine," the implosion-bomb tech from the first season of AGENT CARTER); wrapped around a story about Mack being interrupted while trying to hang out with his brother on his weekend off - and yes, they do both the "family member who has no idea I'm a spy" angle and the "family member is angry about issue I'm on the other side of professionally" angle. As checklist cliches go, they work well enough.

More interesting is the non-worldbuilding C-story about Simmons wanting to learn how to do more active Agent stuff because she's got survivor's guilt about how often she has to get saved. Nice bit of lampshade hanging, and it looks to be leading into a May/Simmons thread which should be interesting for a few episodes (at this point I feel like the writers are making a lot of decisions based alternately on "Who hasn't had any extended interaction yet?" and "Who would Tumblr most like to pretend is fucking?" - not sure which this would be.

We also get to see the seeds being planted of what will, presumably, be AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D's side-contribution to CIVIL WAR, with Daisy getting impatient about anti-Inhuman bigotry and getting big into using her powers (and S.H.I.E.L.D. backup) to knock around and threaten the Watchdogs while other Agents want to be more conciliatory and understand the other side... we've all seen/read an X-MEN story at least once so you get where that's heading, especially since they've already got an "Inhuman cure" plot thread cooking in the background. My question: If we're going to do "Daisy almost goes rogue because S.H.I.E.L.D won't let her be militant enough," do they pull the trigger on bringing Jaiying back in some way?

You've Got Mail (1998)

Genre

Comedy | Drama | Romance

Director

Nora Ephron

Country

USA

Cast

Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Parker Posey, Jean Stapleton, Greg Kinnear, Steve Zahn, Heather Burns, Dave Chappelle, Dabney Coleman, John Randolph, Deborah Rush, Hallee Hirsh, Jeffrey Scaperrotta, Cara Seymour, Peter Mian, Sara Ramirez, Jane Adams, Michael Badalucco, Veanne Cox, Reiko Aylesworth

Storyline

The owner  of a large bookstore chain (Tom Hanks) starts putting the owner of a small local bookstore (Meg Ryan) out of business. The two of them can't stand each other, but what they don't know is that they have been corresponding over the internet for a while without knowing who either of them are, and they are falling in love. 

Opinion

If you know me, you know that romantic comedies are not my cup of tea. I mean, who would like to watch an unrealistic story about ordinary people finding love in a hopeless place? Not me, I know who. But sometimes I make exceptions, especially when the movie is a classic and basically everyone has seen it. Last night being one of those, I finally watched "You've Got Mail". And it wasn't as bad as I thought.

Sure, the film is sugary, and the stereotypical chick flick but it's quite enjoyable, and it is ultimately worth the time because of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan beautiful chemistry. 

The story is predictable and sappy, but nobody would ever expect to find deep psychology in a romantic dramedy. It sure does feel like a type of story you have seen before, but for once it isn't as unrealistic as they usually are. Hating someone in person, but having a different relationship with them through the internet is more than possible if you don't know who the other is. Sometimes we tend to perceive someone as if they were their jobs, and seeing things from a different perspective can be very helpful.

Anyway, the romance doesn't develop properly until the last half an hour, and Tom Hanks's character is just so cruel. I mean, you find out that the woman you have fallen in love online is your rival in business, yet you still decide to destroy the only things she cares about, her mother's bookstore. And only after doing that, you try to befriend her? It's an awful thing to do.

Tom Hanks gives another solid performance as Joe Fox, but I wouldn't say he is at his best. And his character is too unsympathetic for most of the film. Meg Ryan is delightful as Kathleen Kelly, and like I mentioned before her chemistry with Hanks is wonderful. Is it better than "Sleepless in Seattle"? I don't know, I haven't seen it.