The year was 1998. It was Christmas break after my freshman year of college, and this nice girl I had become friends with had made the trek down to Palestine, Tx to visit my family. I needed a date - something good. But we were in Palestine, so we settled for the movies. I don't remember what else was on, but based on the list of releases from January 1998, and what I know about Palestine's six screen theater, our choices were - Wag the Dog, Half Baked, Spice World, Fallen, Titanic (still out), and Hard Rain. We had both seen Titanic, I don't like scary movies, so Spice World and Fallen were out, so that narrowed the field a bit. I decided to trust Morgan Freeman.
It's not hard to see why. At the time I had only seen Driving Miss Daisy, Glory, The Shawshank Redemption, and Se7en. Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and Unforgiven were also in his recent past. I had not seen them yet, but I heard good things. So we went to see Hard Rain.
It was...not great. It turns out Morgan Freeman can't carry an entire movie by himself. But that's really the only bad thing you can say about the man.
Since then, I've been a little more careful in my Morgan Freeman selections, and tried to weed out the shows like Hard Rain and Deep Impact, that are trying to buy a little credibility with a casting coup (I'm looking at you High Crimes and Sum of All Fears!). Since then, it's been Million Dollar Baby, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, March of the Penguins, Bruce Almighty, and Lucky Number Slevin (in no particular order). Not bad, I think.
Morgan Freeman movies I haven't seen yet and would like to: Feast of Love, Gone Baby Gone, Amistad, and maybe The Bonfire of the Vanities and Nurse Betty. Prolific, isn't he?
Oh, despite the so-so movie (with a particularly horrible end - the end credits rolled to: "Flood" by Jars of Clay), Jeni and had our first kiss later that evening. Thank you, Morgan Freeman, and I'm glad you're feeling better.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment