Rating: 
Summary: Great movie, somewhat empty disc
Review: Renee Zellweger ("Bridget Jones's Diary") plays a soap opera fan who loses touch with reality when she witnesses her husband's murder at the hands of a pair of hitmen (Morgan Freeman, "The Shawshank Redemption," and Chris Rock, "Dogma"). Believing herself to be a character in her favorite soap opera. she sets off on a journey to find the actor she thinks she's in love with (Greg Kinnear, "We Were Soldiers"). Zellweger got an Oscar nomination for "Bridget Jones." This is the movie she should have been nominated for. She appears as this sweet, cute, unassuming young woman, but on the turn of a dime she becomes obsessed, creepy and even disturbing. Yet you never lose sympathy for her. It's almost impossible to pull that off, but she does it perfectly. Freeman is good in practically anything and Rock has surprisingly strong acting chops himself when he manages to stay away from drek like "Bad Company." Kinnear is one of those guys who's simply way underrated -- he can play sincere or sleazy and everything in-between. There's not too much here in the way of extras, minus one star for that, but the movie itself is worth the price.
Rating:
Summary: potent action-comedy film
Review: Neil LaBute's NURSE BETTY is a potent black comedy with often-jarring action elements that make a mesmerizing movie experience. Betty Sizemore (Renee Zellweger - BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY) is a lonely waitress from a small town, married to a cheating, drug-pushing loser who accidentally witnesses his graphic murder at the hands of two hitmen (Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock). Betty totally loses all sense of reality and disappears into the shininess of her favorite TV soap "A Reason To Love". She sets out for LA to find "Dr Ravell" (Greg Kinnear), whom she has tricked herself into thinking she is engaged to. However, the two hitmen have decided to follow and silence Betty so as not to be discovered by the FBI. Renee Zellweger is ably-supported by a strong cast headed by Harriet Harris (TV's "Frasier") and Allison Janney (TV's "The West Wing"). The DVD includes commentaries, deleted scenes and bonus extended "A Reason To Love" scenes.
Rating:
Summary: unusual
Review: Interesting, blackly comic film from director Neil LaBute.The plot,if a little too contrived in places always holds the attention.Renee Zellweger is great as the girl who lives life completely out of touch with reality.The extremely graphic violence does seem out of place though.Strange.
Rating: 
Summary: Soap Suds.
Review: "Nurse Betty" holds a lot of promise. An A-list cast and an extremely irreverent director all firmly grasped the work. The always-charming Renee Zellweger plays the starring role, a browbeaten wife. Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock, two shady characters looking to obtain stolen drug money from her husband, are hunting her. Greg Kinnear is a soap opera actor whose creation Betty falls in love. With such promise, how can they go wrong? The first step would be to read the script. You see, Betty is insane. In fact, for most of the first 90 minutes of film, she is in love with a character on a soap opera. Immediately, her goal is impossible. What should be funny material results in an uncomfortable viewing experience as the heroine talks to people revealing she is off her rocker. And just to make it worse, 90 minutes in she suddenly, with very limited reasoning regains her sanity. We have no idea who she is now since all we've ever known is the "cuckoo" version. It doesn't help that Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock are out to kill her. Freeman's character is supposed to have a soft side to him but again; it is buried under the relentless killer and the viewer can't root for his redemption. Rock acts as comic relief, and would be powerful if he as well was not saturated in evil. Greg Kinnear plays the vein soap opera actor whose only crime is that he believes in Betty. And because he believes in her, he becomes a bad guy and must apologize. Yes, the person who believes in her ends up the bad guy. This film is a dark comedy, something you cannot tell from the 'comedy' looking DVD packaging. There's a lot of violent shooting and even a human scalping. The DVD transfer is nice preserving the widescreen format and the audio transfer is fine. The DVD supplements include cut scenes but having seen what made the film, I had no interest in what was excised. There are also 2 commentaries I avoided for the same reason.
Rating:
Summary: Dreamers in love with an image
Review: After the cold cynicism of director Neil LaBute's last two movies, "In The Company Of Men" and "Your Friends And Neighbours", I wasn't expecting anything as genuinely touching as "Nurse Betty". Betty (Renée Zellweger), a waitress in Kansas, is married to a crooked car salesman named Del (Aaron Eckhart). Del is cheating on her. Betty, unaware and far too nice to ever cheat on him, is in love with a doctor on her favourite soap opera. One night as Betty is watching TV, two professional criminals turn up to the house and kill Del for trying to play them on a drug deal. Betty, watching through the door, goes into a state of shock. Fantasy and reality twist in her mind, and she blanks out the murder and decides to head out to LA to find her soap opera doctor, whom she believes is her ex-fiancée. The problem is, the car she takes is the car which Del stored the drugs in. So the criminals, Charlie (Morgan Freeman) and Wesley (Chris Rock), follow her trail across America. Betty, in love with the fantasy of a doctor, thinks only of him and meanwhile Charlie begins to think only of Betty, after seeing a photograph of her and building up a fantasy version of her in his head. Even though Betty is the one who is "crazy", they are really both on the trail of their dreams, in love with people they don't know. The film manages to avoid any clichés and creates characters we really do care about, and Renée Zellweger's performance is pitch-perfect. It's an engrossing story with many different levels, and definitely worth watching. Meanwhile I'm eagerly anticipating LaBute's next offering!
Rating: 
Summary: she'll cure what ails ya!
Review: Renee Zellweger shines as Betty, a downtrodden diner waitress who finds escape in a soap opera. Her husband Dell is a used car salesman who is awful to her and cheats on her. One day, Betty borrows a car from Dell's lot, not knowing that he has hidden drug paraphernalia in the trunk. Two thugs come to the house and murder him, which Betty accidentally sees while watching her soap opera. This sends her into post-traumatic shock syndrome, leading her to believe she was once engaged to her soap opera's star David and that she is a nurse. She drives off to California to find David with the two thugs after her. And so begins an odyssey into a young woman's mind and what she believes is possible, when before she thought nothing was. It is cleverly written and acted, and Zellweger portrays the sweet innocent Betty perfectly. Another stand-out is the relationship between Chris Rock as the sardonic sarcastic thug and Morgan Freeman as the older wiser and much-in-control thug. The script is by far the most original thing to come out of Hollywood in years. You will enjoy this movie no matter what your usual taste in films is. It's a winner!
Rating:
Summary: "Where am I? Purgatory!" "Worse, you're in Texas!"
Review: Those 2 lines to this movie are classic from both Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock who had great chemistry as the 2 hit men. But the rest of the movie really shines because of Renee Zellwegger's performance. I mean I fell in love with her totally in her performance as Betty: a young, charming, beautiful woman who's inspiring to be a nurse, and who's in love with a soap opera doctor. After her husband is brutally killed in her living room, and I mean brutally, the shock changes Betty into thinking she needs to get back with her ex-fiance(the soap opera doctor). This leads Betty to going out to Hollywood, and unknowingly carrying stolen goods the hit men are after. Very funny movie all the way, but it is a dark film as well. Still this is one of Renee's best movies of all. There is doubt to her beauty and her charm which really shines through with evey movie she does. She makes you fall in love with her instantly.
Rating: 
Summary: I want 2 hours of my life back
Review: For two hours I kept telling myself that the movie will redeem itself somehow. After all it has a great cast. I was wrong. I am not sure if it was aiming for black comedy, but the end result was random, poorly written, and aside from 2-3 funny one-liners absolutely depressing. The only truly funny character in the movie is Rosa, and half of her lines are in Spanish.
Rating:
Summary: unremarkable movie, remarkable DVD features
Review: There is something wrong when both the worst and best parts of a DVD are to be found in the special features section. So it is with the case of "Nurse Betty." I am ambivalent at best about the actual movie. It left me feeling mildly entertained yet somehow slimed. I always like Morgan Freeman. It is amazing that he made me feel something for the horrid character he plays here. Likewise, I believe Greg Kinnear is one of the best male actors out there--but he is largely wasted in his role here (although his "bad acting" in the soap scenes is priceless). The largest problem I have with this movie is that there is no one to really like (with the possible exception of the reporter played by the guy who played Michael J. Fox's dad in Back to the Future). All of these characters are unredeeming. Even Betty, who spends most of the movie just being nuts, sells her soul in the end. The movie is just kind of pasty and tasteless. This brings me to the special features. The one thing I truly enjoyed about the DVD--which actually took me a few minutes to stop laughing over--was the "soap opera episodes." The opening sequence on each of them is just hysterical. However, that said--the deleted scenes are just wretched and disgusting (I guess the movie could have been a whole lot worse). The "flap" scene is one I wish I had not hit play for. All in all, "Nurse Betty" is a piece of wasted time I wish I could have back. I do not recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: Fans of soap operas and big box office movies, this one is not for you. Nurse Betty is for the fans of Jarmusch and Tarantino, who will appreciate this one of the best movies after Pulp Fiction. Enjoy this story that is so bizzare that it could almost be real!
| 
