The Sixth Day
It does not have the legs or the wicked, violent sarcasm of "Total Recall", but it is a watchable facsimile. The action sequences become less inspired toward the latter third of the film, but Schwarzenegger has become comfortable with light comedy. This is his niche. He need go no further. The film does suffer from a bland super-villain (the homogenous villain of "Ghost", Tony Goldwyn) and the ha ha patter of the main trio of bad guys is pretty lame. There are some decent observations on technology in the future (most of which have been done before), and Schwarzenegger's wife is a comely mix of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Marcia Gay Harden. Grade: C+.
Where the Heart Is
File this under "The Dangers of Purchasing HBO." Natalie Portman stars as a young, pregnant girl who is abandoned in an Oklahoma Wal-Mart parking lot. She takes to living surreptitiously in the store, and eventually, she has her baby in aisle 6. This is a god-awful Southwestern melodrama, clearly written by a self-hating cracker. The characters have bizarre names ("Sister Husband", "Americus Nation," "Lexie Coop," "Forney Hull"), act bizarre, speak in sing-songy parables or dull idiocy, and to a person, act as quirky as their names. If this is the view Hollywood is fed as to country folk, the choice of Los Angeles for decampment makes more and more sense. Watchable, but only in the sense that a 12-car pile-up is watchable. Grade: F.
Snatch
A lifeless remake of "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," this crime caper is visually impressive, but persistently unfunny (almost defiantly so) and ultimatley exhausting. One very, very long music video. Grade: C-.
