Saw Syriana on Tuesday night. There were tons of people at the Metreon theatre in SF and it surprised me. Then we ran into our friends, Seth and Mia, at the same movie and they told us that the New York Times was giving out $5 tix for their subscribers for this theatre only.

Syriana was very good. Stephen Gaghan the writer and director also wrote the script for Traffic which Stephen Soderbergh directed and I really liked that film, so I had high expectations.

I had heard that you really have to pay attention to what is going on because it's difficult to discern relationships and backgrounds. This was true but I liked it that way because it kept me very focused and tuned to what was happening. For what was mostly a talking heads movie it was shot quite beautifully.

Syriana - ***1/2 out of possible *****

(Giving it the stars reminds me that the Netflix stars system sucks. You cannot grade a movie by the half-star. There are SO many films I'd give a 2 1/2 or 3 1/2 stars.)