.jeri.

Well, I had a review mostly written at the end of the week last week, and for some reason, my computer got shut down over the weekend and I lost it. Boo. So I'll try to remember all the clever things I wrote before the long weekend.

One sign that the summer movie season is upon us is that I am frequenting the dollar theater more often. It's been quite a dry spell from February until May with only a few exceptions, so I'm excited to be going to the movies, and excited that I have a choice of whether to pay $11 or $2 (or $1 on Tuesdays) to see any particular movie. I love saving money. I also love the kids' combo at the concessions, which is cheap and gives one perfect portions of a drink, popcorn, and a snack-sized candy bar.

I chose to wait to see The International, which was a wise choice on my part. While I think Clive Owen and Naomi Watts are talented people, they can only do so much with a script. Actually, this was a quiet yet decent suspense movie with some good action scenes until it lost me at its end. The movie follows Owen and Watts who work together on a team trying to find information on a powerful bank that has been up to a lot of suspicious activity. It begins in Berlin and travels across the globe as the clues continue to surface. Goody for me, because I got to whisper, "I've been there!" during the scenes in Milan. I love doing that.

Watts is largely underused in her role, and if he isn't careful, Clive Owen may soon become a caricature of himself, or perhaps he has already. He snarls a lot at people and seems a little bit overly worked up, even for a man who has a past that makes him touchy. A nice introduction to the climate is Armin Mueller-Stahl, whose uncertain loyalty makes the movie more interesting.

While I was disappointed with the less-than-satisfying feeling the ending gave me, I did feel satisfied with having seen the movie. If anything, it was worth it to see some of the action scenes and the subdued chemistry of Watts and Owen. Watts was absent for the best scene, though, which involved a shootout at the Guggenheim museum in New York. I loved the echoing noises of the museum patrons and guns, and the spiralling architecture was incorporated well into the direction of the action.

Of course, it's already gone from the cheap theater, and most of you probably didn't see it. I'm not going to tell you have to see The International, but I will say that it might be worth a rental or an afternoon in front of the tv.