KQ's quick movie guide

I saw a TON of movies over the last few weeks and will now provide to you, my reading audience, a quick summary of the flicks.

Master and Commander -- Russell Crowe in britches. YES! He waves his sword, clambers onto the rigging and raises the mizzenmast or whatever. Who cares. His hair is flowing and he is in tight britches. Actually, this was quite a good movie with an excellent character study between Crowe's commander and the ship's doctor played by Paul Bettany (one of Crowe's hallucinations in "A Beautiful Mind.) There is one bloody, icky battle scene. The doctor has to perform surgery on himself. Ew. Other than that, it is great.

Last Samurai -- I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. Tom Cruise is pretty good but Ken Watanabe, the Japanese actor who plays the Samurai, is amazing. Tom's hair stays perfectly shagged throughout many months. What is up with that? There is no sex. There is a lot of drinking. The ending is not really believable. But the photography is great.

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King -- Oh. My. God. I am so in love with Viggo Mortensen, who plays Aragorn. His flashing eyes, his floating hair. This movie rocked. I only became a LOTR fan very recently but this movie was amazing. The special effects were incredible and the bond between the characters was very believable. A few too many battle scenes for me, though. I got a little bored. Also, the movie is so long that I had to go for a refill of snacks in the middle of the movie and I took several bathroom breaks.

Monster -- This is an independent movie starring Charlize Theron, about serial killer Aileen Wuornos. I knew a lot about this case from living in Daytona Beach, Fl which is where most of the action took place. This movie was quite powerful and sad, and Theron does a fantastic job. She became Aileen Wuornos in all her hyperactive, paranoid and sarcastic glory. The love between Theron's character and her girlfriend, played by Christina Ricci, is really quit touching. Not an uplifting movie though, so don't see it whilst depressed.