Couch Potatoe

Now that I’ve told you what to read for the next couple months (or for the avid readers, for the next couple days) I’ll move onto movies.  Since freetime and I have been reintroduced, we’ve spent a bit of time watching movies lately, and here’s what we’ve learned:

Mission Impossible III

Meh.  Not great, but certainly not horrible.  Better than MI2, but this isn’t high praise.  The intrigue was quite predictable, though admittedly less convoluted than the twists of the first movie.  The action was satisfactory, but not especially noteworthy.  Cruise is still on my bad list for his anti-psychiatry rant, so I’m not objective on his performance.  Hoffman was quite entertaining, but I’m still not as enthralled with him as every critic on the planet.  I’d save this for the dollar theater.

Slither

I did see this at the dollar theater, but would’ve paid full price in retrospect.  If you go into this movie expecting to see killer slugs, hideous mutations and romantic zombies, you’ll be more than satisfied.  If you expect high drama, you’ll probably be disappointed.  Luckily I expected the former.  I mostly saw it to support Nathan Fillion (of Firefly “fame”) and he was good throughout.  I quite enjoy the horror/comedy genre.  This was similar to Tremors with better effects, or Ghostbusters with more gore.  I have to skip most horror movies due to sexual content, and Slither surprised me by taking the moral highground.  Perhaps they cut out the nudity to allow extra gore and the abundant (and often amusing) cursing.  A thoroughly amusing film, though admittedly not one for the masses.

Murderball

The best R-rated documentary I’ve ever seen.  If you haven’t heard about this one, it’s about quadriplegic rugby players.  Unfortunately these guys’ language is as rough as their fully-able associates, requiring the R rating.  But it really was an inspirational story, with a lot of insight into the life of these disabled individuals, who are far more athletic and competitive than I am.  And perhaps the best part of the movie is that Canada is the villain.  A great movie, but not for the kiddies.

Broken Flowers

The latest of Bill Murray’s dramatic works.  I support Bill in all his work (excluding the Garfield movie and Operation Dumbo Drop) and he is in good form here.  However, I feel he’s veered a little too far into artsy.  A good portion of the movie simply shows us Bill staring at things, and there’s at least 5 to 10 minutes of footage of the view from his rear-view mirror.  Sure, maybe it’s symbolic of him reminiscing about his life or regretting past mistakes, but it’s also BORING.  The Murray shown in the outtakes was hilarious, the Murray in the movie is very dull.  Perhaps that’s good acting that a naturally funny person appears boring, but it’s not good entertainment.  Bill needs to keep looking for complex roles, but also play to his talents.  I major gripe here is that this movie could have been PG if not for five words and 15 seconds involving a character named Lolita.  Lost in Translation was much the same way, and it aggravates me to no end that I can’t recommend these deep and meaningful movies to others because of .05% of the film.

Igby Goes Down

An exceedingly dark dark-comedy.  Unfortunately for dramatic comedies, they never seem to reach a high level of drama or of comedy.  The train-wreck of Igby’s life as interesting to watch, but I rarely laughed and wasn’t very moved either.  Perhaps the most interesting thing was to watch Kieran Culkin, who looks very much like his brother Macauly, in his hijinks.  Imagine watching Kevin McAllister sleeping with both his dad’s mistress and brother’s girlfriend, while running drugs becoming a hobo.  It’s quite odd.  The ensemble cast was excellent, but it just didn’t seem to come together as well as it should.

That’s it for this week’s movie reviews.  Maybe next week I’ll visit some art galleries to add some culture to my reviews.  Or maybe I’ll just watch some movies about art galleries.  

Song of the moment: “When you wasn’t famous” The Streets