All the Pretty Horses (2001, VHS)

ALL THE PRETTY HORSES is a good story put to film but it feels a little different from what I expected because of Billy Bob Thornton's unique directing style. The story itself is a gritty coming-of-age tale about a young man's journey into another world and what he finds there. Matt Damon goes with his best friend into Mexico to work as a cowboy. The two buddies meet a somewhat disturbed young loner whom they come to care for but of whom they are wary because of his erratic behavior. When Matt and his friend find work at a ranch, Matt falls in love with the beautiful daughter (played by...

"All The Pretty Horses" is a journey that tries to evoke what it might have been like to travel in the old West. Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, Matt Damon stars as John Grady Cole, a young rancher in 1949 Texas forced to leave the land he works when his father dies and his mother sells the ranch to somebody else. When he is forced to leave, he and his friend, Lacey Rawlins (Henry Thomas), embark on a journey through Mexico. As they prepare to cross the Rio Grande, though, a teenager named Jimmy Blevins (Lucas Black) asks to tag along, and the men say okay, even though they have their..

Mr. Axel Foley, on loan to the Beverly Hills Police Department from someplace in the midwest, came to my hospital room today to question me about Herbert Scrawcrunch's unfortunate demise. He was really quite a charming Black man, just approaching middle age. I would have taken to him immediately if he hadn't broken out in this braying laugh at the most inopportune moments. His superiors really should speak to him about it. I offered him some espresso with a twist, and then a banana from the lovely fruit basket Ann Miller had sent and I thought he'd never shut up. It appears that the police...

When you decide to make a movie out of a popular novel, you are bound to run into some criticism -- is it faithful to the original text? Is it better, or worse, than the source material? The most important question, however, in my opinion, is why the book is worth adapting into another medium. The power, emotion and message of each version should be similar. For example, while David Fincher may not have included every page of Chuck Pahluniak's text of Fight Club, he didn't change the message of the story, the reason the story was being told in the first place. By the story, of course, I don't.