The Shipping News (2001)

Starring Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, and briefly Kate Blanchette, this is another doozie Sarah rented from the library. I must admit, I am starting to get this sick curiosity about the strange movies she digs up, and with such a cast so recently that I had never heard of.

I was into this movie at parts. It starts off pretty bad, Kevin Spacey gets it on with this woman (Blanchett) who obviously knows how to work a man to meet her needs. They have a child, and then she runs off and drowns when her boyfriend drives them off a bridge into the water.

Spacey is kind of a loser, a cross here between is role in Usual Suspects and American Beauty, less confidence, more limp. Spacey then has an unexpected visitor right at that time, an aunt he never knew who is coming to grieve his dad, her brother. Or so it seems.

They move to escape their past, and all sorts of weird things happen in the little podunk town they end up in. A family history of piracy, incest, and a house that is held down by steel rope. Right in the middle it starts to get good, Spacey seems more like someone who has finally found his way, he is interested in Moore, and he gets a job that gives him confidence. But then the movie takes an artistic turn, and ends with a blown over house, and some cheesey parrallel between a local newspaper and their lives.

Pass on this one. It isn’t even worth it if you really like Spacey. It is especially hard to watch the old aunt, (from the James Bond movies) as this bitter old confused woman.

Here are some similar arcade posts

• Hitch (2005)
• Superman Returns (2006)
• Silverado (1985)
• Hostage (2005)
• The Transporter (2002)

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