I saw "Walk the Line" this weekend.

It was fantastic.

The acting was top notch, and it actually managed to rise above the cliché biopic structure that so many movies have fallen into lately. That was the biggest problem I had with Ray. Sure, Jamie Fox turned in a fine performance, but it was essentially the same movie that I've seen so many times before. It was "artist is misunderstood and mistreated can't catch a break, gets famous, finds some sort of addiction and beats it (or not)"

But Walk the Line was different than most biopics for a few reasons.

First of all, the story focuses more on his relationship with June Carter than his rise to fame and drug problems. It's really a love story and a story about a tortured man. It's a story about how artists put their personal pain into their art.

The other thing was the acting. Joaquin Phoenix actually acted. And well.

Another problem I had with Ray was that while Jamie Fox was fine as Ray Charles, a lot of the time he was focusing on doing an impersonation of Ray rather than actually ACTING.

Joaquin and Reese sang and played their own instruments. What I liked even more is that they didn't particularly look like the people they were playing. Hell, listening to the soundtrack, Joaquin didn't even really SOUND a whole hell of a lot like Johnny Cash. That helped the performance more than it took away from it. It helped because watching the movie felt like seeing something original.

When I watched The Doors movie, I felt like I was watching Val Kilmer impersonate Jim Morrison for 3 hours. I felt like Oliver Stone was simply filling the gaps between recreating live performances I'd already seen with bad rock clichés. When i watched Ali, I felt like Michael Man was just recreating news footage and fight footage I'd already seen with Will Smith impersonating Mohamed Ali. I didn't feel like I was watching anything new.

Another thing I liked about this movie was that it didn't feel the need to tell EVERYTHING that happened. I basically centered on one aspect of Johnny's life. This freed it up to really spend some time on creating something interesting, rather than trying to fit an entire life into two hours. Walk the Line pretty much focuses on Johnny Cash's life from his childhood to right before he got REALLY famous. It goes up to the point where the general public's perception of Johnny Cash kicks in. Just as he was starting to develop the whole "Man in Black" thing.

it's not that the rest of Johnny Cash's life wasn't interesting, because it was. I'd love to see a movie about Cash in the 70s and 80s. I'd love to see a movie that gets into his fights with the industry and his civil rights battles and his addiction to morphine and all that other good stuff.

But that's another movie. Walk the Line did exactly what I needed it to do. It took just enough from his life to stay interesting and moving without overwhelming the audience with every story and every battle Johnny Cash went through.

And it was awesome to finally see Reese Witherspoon do something interesting. It seems she's been locked in this Elle Woods character for a long time. It's been since Freeway and Election that I've seen her do something really different and challenging. While I did enjoy Legally Blonde quite a bit, it didn't exactly seem like a really tough roll to play for Witherspoon.

So I was glad to see her do it, and I hope she keeps up with interesting characters and rolls. Only time will tell on that one. I also thought she had a very pretty voice.

Joaquin Phoenix surprised me with his ability to really capture Cash's presence both on stage and off. He had the intimidating and tortured thing down, as well as the deeply emotional and sometimes very funny way Johnny interacted with others.

Another thing I really liked about it was that it didn't try and impress you with his achievements. It wasn't about "Johnny Cash was super amazing and you should worship him" (although, that statement IS true)... it was really just a story about a man and a woman. It wasn't about fame or innovation or any of that. It was about a people dealing with life.