Vanity Fair (2004)

★★
Many lengthy novels suffer during the transition to the big screen because the filmmakers delete excess characters and shorten the plot to facilitate a reasonable running time. Vanity Fair makes a strong case that deletion is sometimes necessary. This is a film with so many characters and personal stories that it becomes overwhelming at 137 minutes, a time that doesn't pass with any noticeable speed. The movie features good acting, the costumes look authentic, and the architecture seems realistic enough, but there doesn't seem to be any drive to its story. It's basically one scene after another of sophisticated British characters and their mundane problems associated with their social status.

Vanilla Sky (2001)

★★★★
Vanilla Sky is magnificent. It is absolutely astonishing. From beginning to end, I couldn't take my eyes off it. 2001 was a strong year with some brilliant movies, which was a relief because 2000 was weak by comparison. I don't know what happened there. I loved Beautiful People and The Virgin Suicides, but few others stood out. Gladiator was good, but not that good. When 2001 came around, it was like a return to form, and all was well. Vanilla Sky premiered in December, and I never once considered that its proximity to the end of the year influenced my decision to place it at the top of my year-end list. If it had come out in January, it would have still been the best movie of the year. That's how strong it is. It has a story that's beautifully told, features wonderful cinematography and contains memorable performances and a great soundtrack that sets the mood appropriately. There isn't a flawed moment, and writer/director Cameron Crowe deserves high praise for delivering to us this ingenious creation. It is significantly better than his over-hyped Almost Famous.

Van Helsing (2004)

★★
This is one noisy movie. For almost the entire film, we're subjected to screeching, snarling, growling, thumping and yelling. When that's not happening, we get a pounding soundtrack to even things out. I had higher hopes for Van Helsing. I really liked 2003's Underworld, and I figured this movie would be of the same ilk. It isn't. Whereas last year's vampire movie depended more on style, plot, dialogue and acting, this movie is more concerned with crushing special effects and a loud soundtrack. These two qualities are so prevailing that an interesting story has difficulty emerging from the rubble.

Varsity Blues (1999)

★★★½
Varsity Blues rode a wave of predictable kiddie/teen sports movies that arrived in abundance during the ‘90s, and I think it unfairly gets lumped into that group. Reviews at the time labeled it as another entry in that genre, but look closely and you’ll see that Varsity Blues injected plenty of unorthodox and surprising plot points that not only differentiated it from the likes of Little Giants, but showed that with the right cast and crew, a movie with a traditional and derivative core can rise above them. All that is needed is to recognize that a movie can be predictable and use a little imagination to take the plot into unexpected places.

Virus (1999)

★★

For a long time, Jamie Lee Curtis had apparently given up on indie horror to work in the mainstream. After her debut in Halloween in 1978, she starred in four more horror films: The Fog (1980), Prom Night (1980), Terror Train (1980) and Halloween 2 (1981). She returned to the genre in 1998 for Halloween H20: 20 Years Later. It's strange that Curtis would snub all horror appearances for so long, then suddenly appear in two in a row. Virus is the latest film about a team that finds itself trapped by a monster. It's not an original idea, but films like this are usually fast-paced and offer impressive special effects. Of course, special effects alone can't save a movie (with a few exceptions), and that's why this movie ultimately fails as a satisfying trip to the movies.