The Hawk is Dying

Starring Paul Giamatti, Michael Pitt, and Michelle Williams, The Hawk is Dying is a 2006 drama directed by Julian Goldberger. In the film, Paul Giamatti plays a vehical upholster named George whos true passion and obsession is falconry. His goal is to train a hawk with the help of his autistic nephew Fred (played by Michael Pitt). Although all of their attempts thus far have failed, they capture a red-tailed hawk and George thinks that this is going to be the one. Unfortunatly, after Fred drowns in a freak accident, George starts to spiral out of control becoming more obsessed with training the new hawk.

Giamatti is one of my favorite actors working today, so the movie gets a little extra bump in my book for simply having him in it. With that being said, it's not a great movie. I found it fairly interesting and didn't once consider switching to something else but, it's really only worth checking out for the lead performance. It's a slow paced and morose film, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it just falls a little flat. 

Overall, not bad. Not great. Just an OK movie. 
2.5 out of 5

Cloud 9

I took a little vacation but now I'm back, and today's movie is another entry in my Tales from the Bargain Bin series. Cloud 9 is a 2006 sports-comedy starring Burt Reynolds, Gabrielle Reece, D.L. Hughley and Angie Everhart. In the film Reynolds plays Billy Cole, a washed up sports promoter who comes up with a get-rich-quick scheme involving women's volleyball. Cole's idea is to recruit a group of strippers to form a sexy volleyball team. While they're aren't any good at volleyball, Cole's plan is to have them make appearances at bachelor parties and such to rake in some quick cash. At first everything goes according to plan but it isn't long before the girls want to become a legitimate volleyball team and Billy starts to feel bad about exploiting the woman. So with a bit of training and hard work the team starts to turn it around. They make it to the championship and, in classic movie underdog fashion, the former strippers win it all. 

While this isn't a great movie or one of Reynolds' best, it was actually better than I expected. A decent amount of the comedy works, the characters are likeable, and at just around an hour and a half runtime it moves at a decent pace. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone but, if you're a big fan of the late Burt Reynolds or if you just really like sports movies then you may find this one worth checking out.
I give this one a 2.5 out of 5.