by Ron Howard, 2001.
Starring: Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly, Russell Crowe, and Ed Harris.
Rating: 5/10, 5/10.
You know what? I’m not going to even bother writing a review of A Beautiful Mind. I’m too pissed at it for getting all those Oscars. What I’ll do is refer you to my review of Philadelphia. I feel almost exactly the same way about both films (though Beautiful Mind isn’t anywhere near as bad an offender, it still offends), only disregard specific details and for "homosexuality" and "AIDS" read "mental illness."
One more note before I go, though. I’ve heard a lot of people raving about the musical score for this film. The score is crap. Abject, disgusting, worthless, mind-numbing crap. I hated it. Like most Hollywood scores these days, it showed no understanding of how music in film should be used. It dragged the entire film a notch or two down in my eyes. Music like that should be banned. People should learn from Mulholland Drive and all of Angelo Badalamenti’s work, or from the work of Danny Elfman (for a different mood). Or look to (I’m sticking with recent films here) Requiem For A Dream and American Beauty. I’ve had it up to here with identical sounding, soaring, overdramatic strings. Can we please get over it?