Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001)

Plot: The lives of a lawyer, an actuary, a housecleaner, a professor, and the people around them intersect as they ponder order and happiness in the face of life's cold unpredictability.

As I said this week in my review of Crash, I like movies with interlocking stories, so there were moments of this I really liked. I loved the connections, I loved the fact that it moved backwards in time, and I loved the quotes used from the movie as section titles. I even liked (although not loved) most of the stories. But the dialogue... oh, man. The dialogue in several sections of the movie made me wince. NO ONE talks like that! Also, it was one of the bleakest movies I've seen in a long time. Even the stories that end up happy don't feel happy. I don't have a problem with unhappy necessarily, but this left me incredibly depressed. Too bad, because it had some wonderful moments. 3 stars.

A Time To Kill (1996)

Plot: A young lawyer defends a black man accused of murdering two men who raped his 10-year-old daughter, sparking a rebirth of the KKK.

Except for the ending, which I hardly find just, this was a fairly decent movie - well-acted, melodramatic in all the right ways. I will say I groaned through most of the summation speech, thinking, "What kind of thing is that to do to a jury?" but then there was that final statement that I found very powerful. It honestly made it worth all the previous sap. This movie is also really, really long. But still . . . pretty good. 2.5 stars.

Angels in the Outfield (1994)

Obviously aimed at younger audiences, with virtually no appeal to older ones. It didn't even have a solid plotline. Although with a plot like this, it would have been very hard to make it worthwhile. Pretty much every way that comes to my mind is really ridiculous. But, honestly, they could have eliminated some of the sappy sentimentality, not to mention the ridiculousness. 1 star.