Joaquin Phoenix

Well I would like to start out by saying happy birthday to one of my favorite actors of all time, Ms. Julia Roberts.  She turns 44 today.  I was going to review one of her movies, but I know that I would be far to bias in my review.  I just love her work, and she can do no wrong in my book.  Ok, sorry about that.  Now onto our other actor celebrating a birthday today.

Joaquin Phoenix in Buffalo Soldiers 
Photo courtesy of http://www.allstarpics.net/0618313/012003184/buffalo-soldiers-2001-pic.html

Happy birthday to the man who "quit" acting, Joaquin Phoenix.  He turns 37 today.  I chose to do a movie that it seems no one knows about.  It's called Buffalo Soldiers and was made in 2001.  No, it has nothing to do with Bob Marley's song of the same name.  It's actually about Ray Elwood (Phoenix) who runs a black market for everything and anything, including homemade heroin (scandalous!), and his struggle with a Sgt. Lee whom they call "Top" (played by Scott Glenn).  Anna Paquin plays Phoenix's love interest who is also Glenn's daughter.
On with the movie.  I just don't know where to start with this movie.  The storyline was different and interesting, but the added romance was unnecessary.  The storyline also got became a little difficult to follow at times, but it was overall interesting.
The acting on the other hand...  It was painful to watch.  I thought that Phoenix was suppose to be a good actor, but I guess I was wrong.  Granted he did have some good scenes but those were sparse.
I wanted to like this movie, but I found it hard to like it.  Phoenix character was undeveloped, along with everyone else's characters, and the ending to the movie was a little hard to believe.  And with that, I raise my lighter to light the candles on Joaquin's cake.

I give this movie 1 ½ cakes out of 5.  It could have been 2 ½ cakes but the bad acting by Anna Paquin and others became distracting and brought this movie down.

Salma Hayek

Salma Hayek in 54
Photo courtesy of http://www.salma-hayek.net/photos/displayimage.php?pos=-54

A very happy 45^th birthday to Salma Heyek!  My question is, what made her want to do 54?  Is it just because she wanted to sing and “dance” in a movie?  If that’s the case, I guess she picked the right movie for that…  Her “dance” scene was my favorite scene in the movie.  She was trying to teach disco to some lame kids who wanted to dance if they ever got into Studio 54.  I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that that never happened for them…  She can do some comedy, which I had no idea.  And I also had no idea that she could sing!  The only problem was, with her having an opera singer for a mother, you would think that she could sing a little better…  Granted in the movie we only heard her sing for a little while.  I mean she was good, don’t get me wrong, but lets just say she isn’t going to win American Idol any time soon… And with that, I raise my lighter to light the candles on Salma’s birthday cake.

 And for those of you bold enough to watch this movie for yourselves or are just curious about what it was about, it was the rise and fall of a young employee of Studio 54 who was our narrator.  This film was rated R for sex and drug use.

I give it 1½ cakes out of 5.