The X Files: I Want to Believe, Dedication, Romance & Cigarettes, Chess in Concert

The X Files: I Want to Believe was boring. Sally and I both fell asleep before the end. I missed the entire climax of the film, but I did see the kiss at the end. I read the X-Files wiki page on the movie though, so I really didn't feel like I missed anything by sleeping. It was so utterly boring. It would've been ok as a midseason non-sweeps episode of the show, but there was absolutely no tension in the film at all. I did wonder what the hell happened to Annabeth Gish and Robert Patrick's characters, but maybe Chris Carter had the sense to act like most of the last two seasons of the show didn't exist, like I have. Because they were not good. How can Fox have such a huge problem with running some shows into the ground and then cut so many others so short? Sigh. Anyway, I really feel like I should have more to say about the film, but the fact that I fell asleep watching a movie with David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, and Callum Keith Rennie says a lot. Also, thanks, Chris Carter for your very subtle point about religion with the whole stem-cell treatment. I knew that there was something missing from the movie, and inept moralizing about how religion can kill hit the spot! There were two priest characters: one was a pedophile and the other wanted to kill a sweet kid because it would have been expensive and against his morals to save him. Ugh. If you aren't able to do so well, all you do is make people who agree with you pissed off. PETA, I want to eat sea kittens even more than I want to eat fish. They will be delicious and adorable as I eat as many as I can. And then I will continue to complain about your frickin' tone-deaf attempts to be the biggest assholes on this planet. At which you are succeeding.

Dedication was the first in an unintentional Mandy Moore filmfest. I definitely didn't go through and add movies from Mandy Moore to my queue. This one is a romantic comedy with Billy Crudup being a children's book writer whose longtime collaborator and only friend Tom Wilkinson dies, and so Bob Balaban pays Mandy Moore to illustrate his contractually obligated book. Martin Freeman has a small role as an English author and competitor for Mandy Moore's love. Justin Theroux began his directing career with this. He didn't do badly at all, and he's still one of those guys that you don't know you know. This film is a romantic comedy, but the script is slightly more interesting than others, at least in the details, because the plot is extremely basic romantic comedy tropes.

Romance & Cigarettes has a great cast, and lots of talent. And is terrible. James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Steve Buscemi, Bobby Cannavale, Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, Aida Turturro, Christopher Walken, Elaine Stritch, Eddie Izzard, Amy Sedaris, and even Cady Huffman and John Turturro in small roles were not nearly enough to save this overblown mess. The musical aspects are just poorly done. I can understand wanting to get good actors, but their singing was usually terrible.

Chess in Concert is something I watched because I remembered watching this at Washington University in St. Louis back in... 1995? and hating it. I wondered if it was just the drama students or whether it was the musical itself. One Night in Bangkok is not a particularly good song, lending credence to the latter, so I was not entirely looking forward to this. But it's a musical by Tim Rice and the two male members of ABBA. Basically three people who are talented (seriously, once Tim Rice stopped working with Andrew Lloyd Webber, Andrew truly sucked) were behind it, but it's a musical about two chess matches and the cold war maneuvering behind them. But beh to this, and pretty much the musical as well. I did like seeing Clarke "Lester Freamon" Peters in it, even though he didn't really sing, but that was hardly worth the 2.5 hours of mediocre music.