Cookie's Fortune (1999)

Thinking about visiting the south?  Watch this movie instead.  You will get a 2-hour review of many things Southern.  In one way or another all these deliciously quirky characters are connected or related.  Watch to the end to find out how.

Glenn Close is a know-it-all-busy-body.  Julianne Moore is her socially-challenged sister.  There are so many other great names, let me try a list a few - Liv Tyler, Chris O'Donnell, Charles Dutton, Patricia Neal, and Ned Beatty.  Even Lyle Lovett and Courtney Vance have great cameos.

The first hour is chock full of character development.  Be patient.  The second hour clips right along and is stuffed with twists and turns.  Stay for the pay off.

Watch this movie with someone who fishes.

Next

Little bit action thriller. Little bit romantic comedy. Little bit sci-fi. Little bit present day Minority Report. That said, it is a fun movie to watch with all the thriller cliches. Tough-as-nails FBI agents, Russians with a stolen atomic bomb, freight dock shoot-out, and a man-hunt in the belly of a cargo ship.

In the middle of it all is Nicolas Cage as the uber cool Vegas magician with Jessica Biel as his dream girl, both figuratively and literally. Julianne Moore plays the dedicated if not obsessed FBI Special Agent chasing after Cage.

While this is not the tightest of scripts or plot lines, it can be fun to watch if you do put too much thought into it. For instance, there are no trails where you can walk to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back on the same day - inside the park or on any of the reservations. But suspend belief for that part of its a fun set of scenes.

Watch this one with someone who won't be bothered by fact that you are never sure when you are seeing what really happens or what Cage sees as a vision of what happens - Next.