I borrowed a bunch of DVDs from my brother in Philly. What's wrong with that guy that he doesn't have DVDs that I'm interested in that are less than two hours long? Das Boot (Director's Cut), Apocalypse Now Redux, and The Seven Samurai, which I've seen before, clock in at over three hours!

I've already watched Pulp Fiction and Boogie Nights, both 2 and a half hours, and tonight I watched A Beautiful Mind, Oscar Winner for best picture in 2001. Bleah! I actually wasn't thrilled with "Boogie Nights" either, but I can cut that one some slack for a good effort, it certainly wasn't bad. But a two and a half hour subject matter, "Boogie Nights" is not.

No, my ire is saved for "A Beautiful Mind" because it did win the Oscar. In general, Hollywood is not my taste, so chances are that anything coming out of Hollywood is not going to score high in my book. But I thought that "the best" film out of Hollywood in a given year could at least elicit a nod of approval. But it's with a sneer that I say I can see why "A Beautiful Mind" won the Oscar.

The first hour of the film was mush that barely kept my interest and I was going to turn it off if it didn't get my attention soon. Now I'm not one to turn off a film in the middle, but at 2 hours and 15 minutes, I'll learn. And it did get my attention, it started getting interesting with the story twist. That lasted about 40 minutes, and then the film degenerates until it reaches the Hollywood schlock ending with music straight from "Field of Dreams" (except that it worked in "Field of Dreams"), and my finger down my throat.

Talk about a sawdust cake. So superficial. With a pretty good but not brilliant performance by Russel Crowe, who I like. There's really no reason why we should like the character, and all the suggestion and innuendo that he's a genius has to be taken on faith because it sure isn't explained. Even the breakthrough moment when he hits upon the theory for which he eventually won the Nobel Prize in Economics is unnoteworthy. Leading up to the scene, he's portrayed as a crackpot. So when it happens, it just looks like more of him being a crackpot.

Show me a beautiful mind and I'll throw a tomato at it.