Be Excellent To Each Other

Just watched this tonight. My good lord but it's a brilliant film. Tom Hanks has at certain points In his career been an annoying fuckhole but he's developed with age into a fine, fine character actor. And Philip Seymour Hoffman is brilliant, as is Julia Roberts. But then that's all but expected.

And, having been entirely gripped by the story and dialogue (mostly the latter, to be fair) the whole way through, and actually snorted up some popcorn with laughter at several points, imagine Mrs Chris' and my surprise to see in the credits that Aaron Sorkin was the writer...

I enjoyed it too.

And how well-timed was it as an understated commentary on how America has ENTIRELY YET AVOIDABLY created all of its current problems with the Middle East? Hmm.

I agree it's a good film, but to be honest I thought Julia Roberts struggled to keep up with the the actors around her. Then again, I do have a (possibly) irrational dislike of her generally so maybe I'm not giving her enough credit.

However, the other blemish on this otherwise excellent film is the horribly simplistic caricature of the evil russians, happily blowing away defenceless peasants. Where most of the film seems fairly sophisticated in tackling 'shades of grey' morality, those bomber pilots really seemed quite out of place.

Ultimately though it's true what you say- it's the dialogue and not the plot that makes this film groovy- and it's given me another reminder that I really need to get around to watching the West Wing.