Open Water, Point Break, and Saved!

Open Water
First and foremost, god bless them. When you can achieve the fame and noteriety off of a film that was shot by two people, about two people, in which the obvious happens, more power to you.

Made for $130,000, Sold to Lion's Gate for $2.5 Million and grossed over $30 million in the US. I salute you.

It looked pretty good for being shot on DV. The acting by the two principals was pretty good, the local acting was horrible, and the plot was non-existant.

I'm a sucker for story, and there really wasn't one. The first 15 minutes do a pretty good job of showing how bad this relationship is -- no sex on a caribbean vacay when you're both naked is a bad thing.

15 minutes in they jump in the water. We know there are sharks. And then every 7 minutes we see one.

That's pretty much the whole movie. But you could figure that out from the ad campaign.

Point Break
Fresh off of watching Riding Giants, I decided to revisit Point Break. I vaguely remembered something about Swayze surfing a 50 year swell and I thought it would be fun.

The bigggest thing going back into this movie was "100% Pure Adreniline". I loved that quote when the film first came out.

This film has got everything Swayze towards the end of his popularity, Keanu just finding his, and a post motor cycle crash Gary Busey. Oh and John C. McGinley before he landed Scrubs.

There are several times in the film where Busey and Keanu just scream incoherently at each other and that passes off as dialogue.

Cool.

There's surfing, there's weird plot inconsistencies (Keanu is supposed to be undercover, but he's an All American QB that get's recognized immediately by the bad guys), there's early 90s thong bikinis.

This is really a 70s movie in disguise. Because this is before CSI and DNA and Cell Phones. The walkie talkies they use are bigger than bricks.

A fun romp that was Xtreme Sports before it existed.

Saved!
I've heard a lot of good things about this flick going into it.

Uhm.

It just hit too close to home. I wasn't a pregnant girl going to a Christian High School, but I did go to this all-white very protestant Church where I was viewed as a dork.

So this was familiar territory for me. And I guess that's why I couldn't get into it. I kept thinking about Alicia and Jalaine and the other girls who ruled the youth group and their football playing boyfriends.

I thought the story needed a little more help. Eva Amurri, Susan Saradon's daughter, was the best of the kid actors.

It was okay, but just not for me.