Last week we watched two very different movies: Inside Man starring Denzel Washington and Clive Owen and directed by Spike Lee; and Brothers Grimm starring Matt Damon and Heath Ledger and directed by Terry Gilliam.

Inside Man was a delightful heist story with a great twist. The players were fantastic and the time-shifted scenes of witness interviews added a great touch of intrigue. I found the side-story with Jodie Foster’s character completely unnecessary – it was obvious that the banker (played by Christopher Plummer) had a lot to lose from the heist, even if the specific thing to lose wasn’t blatently stated. The over-the-top “problem solver” character played by Jodie Foster really didn’t move the story along as much as the director probably thought it would. Even so, this was a great film.

The Brothers Grimm was disappointing. Watching the film you can tell the script had real promise but everything went very wrong from the second scene. The first scene was really delightful (it was the adventure in the barn recreating then destroying the local ghost) but after that it was pretty dismal. We found most characters were over-acted to the point of not being funny, and the entire movie turned out to be a mash-up of odd scenes adapted from classic fairy tales but sculpted around what cast members happened to be handy at the time. The only redeeming part were the wonderful costumes. If you also lost 90 minutes to this tragedy then you have my sympathies.