The Fair Jessica and I watched “The Interpreter” with Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman on hotel pay-per-view. This was an absolutely dreadful movie. Slow paced, self-indulgent, stupid dialogue and even stoopider ideas behind them. Sean Penn acted brilliantly in it, but that’s because he’s a brilliant actor. There was lots and lots of rhetoric about “believing in the UN” and celebrating the idea of the UN even as it turned out that Kidman, the film’s protagonist/idealist, was a burnt out red who instinctively resorted to violence.

Anyway, the movie isn’t worth discussing at length. But it did help me reach the conclusion that Sidney Pollack isn’t a good <a href=”http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001628/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnx0dD0xfGZiPXV8cG49MHxrdz0xfHE9U2lkbmV5IFBvbGxhY2t8ZnQ9MXxteD0yMHxsbT01MDB8Y289MXxodG1sPTF8bm09MQ__;fc=1;ft=21;fm=1

” target=”_blank”>director anymore. One can argue about how great some of his older movies were. But in recent years he’s come out with a string of self-indulgent, slow-paced, awful — or at least disappointing — movies (not so much as an executive producer). Random Hearts? Arguably Harrison Ford’s worst film. Sabrina? Also arguably Harrison Ford’s worst film. Havana? Please.

Now, as for The Firm, this is more controversial, because I know people who liked the movie. I thought it was an OK movie, despite the fact Pollack once again slowed it down. But what drives me crazy is how he rewrote the book so that Tom Cruise would be more heroic if he opted to remain a mob lawyer. All that drek at the end about the law and being a lawyer should be taught in schools as a textbook example of how ethics and morality aren’t the same thing.

It’s been too long since I’ve seen out of Africa, but my memory suggests it’s long and too indulgent of Streep’s accent stuff.

And even Three Days of the Condor, which I love, is really a very slow movie and one directed more than two decades ago.