What's the word?

Big Names don't equal amazing movies...
Appaloosa starring Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen and Jeremy Irons
I really wanted to love this movie. Who doesn't love westerns and Ed Harris? I had such high hopes that his first stab at writing would produce an excellent film. While the clearly closer-that-a-brother friendship with Viggo's character is obvious and well played, it's Renee Zellweger's character who drags the film down. Had her character been a smaller part of the movie and the focus kept on the two men, their friendship and the things that men do in westerns the movie would have been more interesting. Jeremy Irons is great as always as the villain of the small town where the film takes place. It's beautifully filmed and has all the makings of a good movie but the equation just doesn't add up. Wait until you can redbox it or come across it on cable.

How could you forget?
The greatest trick the devil every played...
The Usual Suspects starring Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne and Chazz Palminteri
The mob, drugs, guns and misdirection...what more could you ask for? I never thought I'd like a movie with Stephen Baldwin but I loved this one. It's a great mystery with great characters that will keep you guessing up until the end. Kevin Spacey stars as the only survivor of the explosion of a boat. He tells the story of how he got to this point to Chazz Palminteri, an actor I find myself forgetting about but always enjoying whenever I come across him. This movie also features a very young-looking Benicio del Toro and Kevin Pollack, who is another actor that is good at what he does.

That's all for this week!

Mad props to Alex for making me watch the Usual Suspects and paying for my ticket to Appaloosa...without him this week's post would have been about Scrubs, which is always entertaining, but not a movie.