**Rerun's Movie Reviews**

[Poppylicious]

We saw Attack the Block today.  Brilliant!  Aliens invade a South London council tower block and the local naughty teens try to save the day!  A bit scary, a bit funny, reminded me of the kids I work with ... not sure if it will get shown in the US, or be a popular film over there, though.

[HouseOfDialysis]

I wait for movies to hit Netflix. I'm such a slacker.

[Poppylicious]

The Hangover Part 2 brightened my day today.  Although I didn't think the couple behind me were going to ever shut up (but they did).  Funny, but not as funny as The Hangover.  Well worth seeing, just for the monkey alone.

 

[cattlekid]

Glad to hear it was at least decent.  Plan on dragging DH out to see it later today, if only so I can stare at Bradley Cooper for a while.   

The Hangover Part 2 brightened my day today.  Although I didn't think the couple behind me were going to ever shut up (but they did).  Funny, but not as funny as The Hangover.  Well worth seeing, just for the monkey alone.

 

[Poppylicious]

Blokey wanted to see Green Lantern yesterday, so see Green Lantern we did.  I'm not really a fan of superhero films, but this one was okay (particularly because Ryan Reynolds has a cute nose) despite my sudden belief halfway through that I'd left the front door keys in the front door when leaving the house (I hadn't).  If you do go and see it, be sure not to jump up and leave as the credits start ...

This afternoon we watched Kung Fu Panda (recorded off the tellybox yesterday) ... Awww, it was cute!

[cariad]

Gwyn and I watched Good Hair off Netflix. It is a documentary by comedian Chris Rock about black women and their hair.

It was at times amusing but what was more was that I came away from it feeling like this was a world you just could never make up. It never ceases to amaze, the things I never knew that I did not know and never thought would have so many layers and dimensions to explore. 90 minutes long and not one minute wasted. Nicely done. I do so love a window into the microcosms that exist all around us.

[okarol]

I just saw Midnight in Paris with my younger daughter. She had seen it before but was happy to go again and I am glad we went. I loved the street scenes in Paris, and the music and the story was clever.
 

[MooseMom]

I just saw Midnight in Paris with my younger daughter. She had seen it before but was happy to go again and I am glad we went. I loved the street scenes in Paris, and the music and the story was clever.
 

I am not a fan of Woody Allen, and I'm also a bit tired of Owen Wilson (I don't think he's the best actor in the world), but I read good reviews of this film and decided to see it.  I loved it!  I thought it was extremely clever and was more fanciful than I anticipated (I avoided reading about the plot in the reviews). 

[paris]

I just saw Midnight in Paris with my younger daughter. She had seen it before but was happy to go again and I am glad we went. I loved the street scenes in Paris, and the music and the story was clever.
      

I would see it with the Three Stooges in it just so I could watch the street scenes.     

[cariad]

We watched Julia Sweeney's one-woman show Letting Go of God, a recommendation from Aleta and Carl, who knew that Gwyn and I would appreciate its humanist/rationalist message. It was such fun! One or two bits went on a touch long, but on balance, a superior work of theatre and very funny. Gwyn and I adored God Said Ha, which was also quite funny even with the severe disadvantage of being about her brother's brutal encounter with cancer.

[Poppylicious]

Hmmm ... we saw Horrible Bosses today.  It was so-so (made more pleasurable because of Jason Bateman) but lacked any oompf.  The funniest bits were the out-takes as the end credits rolled. 

[Poppylicious]

Captain America ... was groovy.  I wasn't expecting to like it, but like it I did.

Harry Potter on Thursday ... Yay!  Hopefully there won't be crowds of annoying teenagers in the cinema because they'll all have seen it weeks ago.

 

[galvo]

Saw 'Hanna' yesterday. Good fun. What a toughy she is!

[cariad]

We finally saw Waiting For Superman, all about the hot mess that is our public school system. Very interesting, but also depressing and unabashedly anti-union. Exceedingly pro-charter, but that begs the question, what happens to kids that are driven out of charter schools, because charter schools are allowed to do this. Do we just give up on our special needs kids? The film failed to address these issues. Milwaukee was featured prominently, and not in a good way. 'The Dance of the Lemons' was an entirely new concept to me, and one I almost would have preferred to know nothing about.

Before that, we saw The King's Speech. I was quite disappointed. I love Geoffrey Rush, but that was a painfully predictable, mediocre offering. I found myself shouting A stammer? Really? Some of us have real problems! Guess it's not the film's fault that I can be such an old curmudgeon. 

[monrein]

We saw "The Tree of Life" yesterday and despite all the wonderful reviews it received from various reviewers I found it pretentious, trite and beyond boring.

[galvo]

Beautifully expressed, monrein. I've heard similar reviews from other people whose opinion I respect. It's not on my viewing list.

[Poppylicious]

Harry Potter 7.2 (3D) ... Oh.  Despite it seeming like a we have to tie it all up, there's not really a storyline film, I did find myself to be strangely tearful that it's come to an end.  This was most odd, but soon forgotten.

 

[Poppylicious]

Okay, the cinema junkie (me) saw ANOTHER film at the cinema; Super 8.  Awww, it was horrifically cutesy.  And I was a little perturbed that it was rated a 12A (children under 12 can see it but must be accompanied by an adult) because it was quite scary in places.  Or I'm just becoming a bit more wussier the older I get.  Please don't jump up to leave as soon as the credits start rolling because you will miss the kids film and it was quite sweet. 

 

[galvo]

Popsie, I loved Super8.

[MooseMom]

Super 8 was gr8!

I love the movies, and I can always find something to like even in bad movies.  I mean, I found something to like in the movie remake of Charlie's Angels!  But I saw THE WORST MOVIE EVER tonight from our Netflix queue.  It was a New Zealand sci-fi flick made in the mid 80s about a scientist who wakes up one morning and finds he is the only living person on Earth.  Sounds interesting, but NO, it was NOT.  My husband had to take a potty break, and while he was out of the room, I fast forwarded the movie about 15 minutes, and when my husband returned, he had not even noticed.  THAT's how dull it was.  If you ever come across a movie called The Quiet Earth, run screaming from the premises.  Oh dear God, it was mortifyingly dull.  It didn't have a single redeeming factor.  I can't get its horribleness out of my mind!

[cariad]

We watched The Station Agent after having the Netflix dvd sitting in our home for approximately a month. It had a series of lovely moments, but did not really add up to anything. I thought the characters were wonderfully performed. It's been a long time since I've seen a film and thought to myself "yeah, I know people like that". I was annoyed with the cause of death for the woman's son. I don't think a parent wrote the script because that is an extremely unusual way to die, and exploits parents' fears unnecessarily. Your child is not going to die if you let them alone on the playground or turn your head away for a moment. Sheesh. I ought to know, having one of the most defiant children I've ever met in my home. If anything he has taught me to relax because he will do what he wants and there is precious little I can do to stop him most times.

Loads of uncomfortable moments for the dwarf character. It reminds me of going down the road to the trendy shopping district and there was a dwarf couple there. Liot smiled and waved to them which made the woman just beam and smile and wave back. Then he said to me, out of earshot and with a happy sound to his voice "those big kids really freaked me out" which made me a bit sad, but he's only five. I told him that that word hurts feelings and that they were just ordinary people like his father and I are. He had a few questions about whether they were real grown-ups or something, which I answered as directly as I could. He seemed to really take that to heart and being the frighteningly intelligent child that he is, hopefully the message will stick.

[MooseMom]

Since my husband took this past weekend off, we've done quite a lot of movie viewing.  We saw "The Debt" one day and "The Help" the next, and I was really struck by the fact that Jessica Chastain played both the young Rachel in "Debt" and Celia Foote in "Help".  What a versatile actress in such varied roles.  "The Debt" had some twists that I really appreciated; it was a very intelligent thriller. 

I had read "The Help" before I learned it was to be made into a movie, and I enjoyed the story.  Once the movie was released, I was interested in the controversy surrounding it that seemed to take two forms; 1. that it was not "dangerous" enough and 2. that once again a white person comes to the rescue of the black people in the story.  I had not really thought about either of those ideas when I read the book, so when I went to see the movie, I thought I'd try to see if those criticisms rang true.

Regarding the first criticism, I came away with the notion that you can deliver a message gently and have it still make an enormous impact.  I have a feeling that if the screenplay had been more "dangerous", one could have complained that it either was "too preachy" or that it's just wrong somehow to have a white character speak for black ones.  I felt the tone of the film hit the right note.  Even my husband, who is a fan of sci-fi and horror flicks, said that he found the movie to be profoundly moving, and that says something.

I didn't see the Skeeter character as coming to anyone's rescue.  I looked long and hard, and I just did not see this.  If anything, Skeeter was the least prominent character in the film.  She was just the conduit.  I thought the Celia Foote character was the most compelling.  She was white, but she still didn't fit in, but the fact that she didn't know how to conform actually made her to be one of the freer characters.

We're thinking of seeing "Our Idiot Brother" sometime this weekend.  At first, I thought it would be yet another one of those "I'm a grown man but don't know how to act like it" movies we're seeing so many of lately, but I've read several reviews that seem to indicate that this film is much more than that.

I love the movies!!

[cariad]

Interesting commentary on The Help, MM, and I especially appreciate it because I have no intention of seeing the film. Reading the book was enough for me.

I think Roger Ebert agrees with you, and said something to the point of "we learn that even a 'safe' film can still be compelling". I was uncomfortable from the start - in one of those murky, uncertain ways - with Skeeter and also with the knowledge that the author was white and seemed to make that first-time writer mistake of essentially writing herself into the protagonist role. Skeeter had no real flaws. That's a problem. We were inside her mind for much of the book and yet her mistakes were all innocent and benign, we don't even get to hear her unbecoming thoughts, which ALL real people have. I saw many parallels to anthropology (also psychology). Yes, I know we are talking about fiction, but the heroine in this book can be criticized in the same way that Freud and countless anthropologists are criticized - using someone else's life story, their very soul in fact, for personal gain, and no serious discussion of the possible injustice of that. The fact that this book deals in black/white relations just adds another complication to this age-old debate.

Again, I did not see the film, but even the dark parts of the book seemed to only receive passing mention, which robbed them of their gravity. It did not want to go into potentially offensive territory, so the one character (Hilly) is a complete cartoon villain with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Can we not challenge an audience with full characters who can be both racist yet sincerely altruistic, or great mothers, or whatever? One of the most difficult aspects of the book In Cold Blood was that I started to sympathize with the murderers, and was horrified to find that I could feel anything but utter contempt for them. I read that book over 20 years ago, and I imagine I will remember that experience long after I've forgot that I ever read The Help. This is what I think was meant with the 'not dangerous enough' criticism. I wanted to see more resistance from the black community, less unanimous adulation. They were grateful to Skeeter, but in the end Skeeter profited most, and I did not see any of the natural resentment that you would expect in this situation. Gratitude toward white people for reporting on a dire situation in which they are all in some way complicit is probably what struck me as most problematic. It is like we were supposed to join the author in saying "That Skeeter - what a good person." I think the book sorely lacked a Malcolm X-style character, neither villain nor saint, who could not be won over by Skeeter.

I still think it was a well-done book in many ways, but I can see how many people would take her to task over some of the story's more obvious failings.

[jbeany]

I started watching Lost In Translation, but so far, I just keep hitting pause and wandering away to do something more interesting.  Unless someone can tell it gets drastically more interesting towards the end, I'm giving up and going to watch the rest of Shaun the Sheep, Season 1.   

[MooseMom]

I love Shaun the Sheep.

Cariad, I can see your points; I agree that there seemed to be unanimous adultation and no resentment toward Skeeter, and it would have been intriguing to see a character who refused to be won over by her.  I am thinking that Minnie was supposed to be that sort of a character at first, but then again, she capitulated and began to cooperate.  I am not sure what to think about this particular conundrum, though.  If a "Malcolm X-style" character had been introduced, I have to wonder if that would have lead to charges of tokenism.  I'm also wondering if it's valid to believe that the reason no such character was introduced was because the stories were about women, and maybe the explanation is that women might be less inclined to hold Skeeter responsible for the racist status quo.  Maybe one could claim that these women saw the wisdom of cooperating with Skeeter as being the price to be paid to tell their stories, thereby introducing the impetus for change.  They certainly resented the other white women in their lives!  I don't think this is a book/movie that can possibly escape criticism from someone, and that might not be such a bad thing.

I didn't read In Cold Blood until just 2 years ago, and it's a book that will stay with me for a very long time.