At The Movies

Third Monday Movie Day

120 Comments

I have this crazy plan to watch a movie a day one of these months. I'm so behind it's ludicrous.

This month I saw The Grey and Beverly Hills Cop, as I'm always on the cutting edge. I actually think I've seen BHC, but it was in my high school years that I...don't remember very well. The Grey was interesting, I guess, though I'd love to sit down with the director and see if there was anything more he was trying to say or if it was essentially about death being sad. I want to give the movie more credit because it was shot rather well, but I have a feeling the script was pared down to the essentials because there wasn't much there.

Otherwise...Archer, Justified, Deadwood, Downton Abbey. I'll finish some of them one of these days and move on to something newer.

120 thoughts on “Third Monday Movie Day”

  1. I also watched Beverly Hills Cop this month. Well, I caught it on TV. I worried I would hate it after all these years. I found it pretty amusing still, and watchable, but some of the laughs are dated.

    The Blue Lagoon: Better than I thought it would be. But...yeah.
    Blue Lagoon: The Awakening: Lifetime remake, sort of. Prettier cast with worse acting and mindless script.
    Taken 2: Awful follow-up. It opens well, but the last half of the movie is a bunch of repetitive, boring chase scenes with no real tension.
    Morning Glory: Very pleasant. Several genuine laughs, at least half of them at the expense of Matt Malloy's character.
    Wreck-It Ralph: Loved this movie. I couldn't stop smiling the whole way through. Sarah Silverman does a bang-up job as well.
    Oz, The Great and Powerful: Oh why did it have to be James Franco? Not sure someone else could have saved the mostly obvious script, but he pretty much ruins every scene he's in. Zach Braff as a monkey...could have been worse, but I just kept hearing J.D. At least Kunis and Weisz put in strong performances.
    Argo: Really liked it. Not Best Picture liked-it, but I was riveted throughout. Could have done without the Apollo 13 ending. Here's a question. Will the Academy ever again pick an out-and-out comedy or sci-fi movie as Best Picture?

    1. Saw Taken 2 as well...more Liam Neeson running around a foreign city. It was alright, but I was so happily surprised by the first one that there's no way this one could measure up.

  2. Based on adjusted gross box office, BHC is still the #1 grossing comedy. I was on a softball team one season with actor Art Kimbro, who played Detective Foster and is a great guy -- I still check his IMDB page to see if he's been up to anything lately.

    Our TV has an app for TED Talks, and I could just watch those all day.

  3. We are tearing through The Killing at a pretty rapid pace. We tried, really tried, to like Luck, but I can't find a way to enjoy watching degenerate gamblers hang out at a race track.

  4. Thanks to some on here, I have gotten my daughter into Shaun the Sheep. Now we have something that we can both enjoy. I'm still looking for other kids shows (on Netflix) that I can handle because Super Why and re-watching the same five seasons of Sesame Street over and over are starting to get a might tiring. So, any help would be appreciated.

    I didn't really watch much for movies last month, though. I've been watching season three of Justified and it has to be the most entertaining show on tv these days.

    1. *thumbs up*

      Our library has a slew of DVDs of the books which were "read" on Captain Kangaroo -- can't think of the name of the series now, but those are excellent

    1. Is it Jason Lee or Earl Hickey? I imagine there are a lot of Earl Hickeys in your neck of the woods.

  7. The only movie I saw this month was Lawless. It was alright. Shia Lebeouf does what he always does. Tom Hardy mumbles to the point of near incomprehensibility. Jessica Chastain is in the movie to get naked in one nearly completely throwaway scene. Guy Pearce is over the top in a sort of enjoyable way. Like I said, it was okay.

    Started season four of Parks and Rec, which is a nonstop source of complete hilarity.

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    Archer season 3 is awesome.

    Watched the first few episodes of Girls, because one of my friends wouldn't shut up about it. It's... well, I guess I don't even know what it is. I hate every single one of the characters in completely different ways, so there's that. It's got some pull - maybe I need to watch more?

    The Walking Dead had their best episode since the pilot a couple weeks ago.

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    1. one of my favorite season 4

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  8. Finally watched Skyfall and The Dark Knight Rises. Im glad I waited to watch them in the comfort of my home instead of going to the theater and sitting for 17 hours.

    Dont get me wrong, I did enjoyed both films, but both could have had a half hour chopped out of them and not missed a beat.

    1. I take back my above statement to note that I did rewatch Skyfall and still find it to be just about everything I want in a Bond movie.

      Also, I watched the last hour or so of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on ABC Family, because the last half hour or so of that movie is excellent, and I will watch it whenever it's on.

      1. I'm with Nibs on Skyfall.

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    2. We also watched Skyfall

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    3. I saw The Dark Knight Rises in the theater. Here's what I thought about it(and I hope it's not too far into the Forbidden Zone).

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            1. apropos of this and nothing, for years afterwards, I would occasionally break out my Mickey Rourke Barfly voice, to the chagrin of mrsS.

              1. I like to drop a little Sling Blade on the Milkmaid from time to time. I do it rarely enough that it still amuses her, which is unusual restraint for me.

              1. My favorite is when Batman has Maroni off the fire escape and he's like "The fall from this height won't kill me" and Batman says "I'm counting on it"

  9. i caught up to the current episode of parks and rec, something i'm surprised i was able to do so quickly. awesome stuff. as an overview, i'm shocked at how they were able to completely turn the show around by the end of the 1st season. case in point: andy. turning him from what he was into one of my favorite characters on the show was quite impressive.

    season 5:

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    other than that, going over some 2nd season archer in prep for new episodes on netflix.

    also, i acquired a near mint copy of the pacific (with the cool metal case to go with my Bo'B one) for a cool $5. i haven't heard too many amazing things about it, but i'm hoping it's decent.

        1. I watched one episode with a friend who owned the box set. He loved both Band of Brothers and The Pacific. I mostly just remember the title sequence.

  10. whilst in La Jolla, suffering I tell you, I watched (for the first time!!) Major League. It was just as wonderfully dumb as I'd expected.

          1. I've seen Major League II, which is well further into in the franchise than anyone should ever go.

          1. Well, I own at least one copy of Bull Durham. Nuke's knockout of the bull >>> Wild Thing's "I can't see the plate" ordinariness.

          2. No, Bull Durham is a genius mashup of chick flick and baseball flick. A League of Their Own is a chick flick in a baseball cloak.

            1. I find this interesting, because my memory frames it in the opposite way. When I ponder A League of Their Own, I almost completely forget that there's a romantic angle. When I ponder Bull Durham, I barely remember the baseball angle (and if you hadn't mentioned Nuke, I would have forgotten all about his storyline, despite seeing it in the last 18 months). It's funny how we remember things.

                1. Same reaction I had when I read that. Apparently it wasn't memorable, whatever it was.

          3. The love angle in Bull Durham is much more interesting than the tired story in Major League.

            1. a thousand times this. the Major League version is beyond trite, and ridiculously executed.

              1. Can't I just admit to not really liking either movie?

                Also, that "I believe" speech from Bull Durham is one of the most irritating things I've ever seen.

  11. I went to two movies in the theatre this month, Hansel & Gretel Witch Hunters and Side Effects. I was surprised at how entertaining H&G was, honestly. It's terrible but at least it's the entertaining variety of terribleness. Side Effects was very good bordering on great, but the last few minutes tied everything up in a bow too much for me. Soderbergh is one of my favorite directors, so I'm sad to see him retire. I hope his retirement is more Michael Jordan than Barry Sanders.

    J & I finished the first season of Girls on Friday night. Everyone on the show is a pretty self involved, awful person but I think that's part of what makes the show so good. I have a number of issues with the show, but mostly I like it a lot.

    J & I also watched all of Revolutionary Girl Utena and the Utena film The Adolesence of Utena. Yeah, this is some gooooooood stuff. Ikuhara is an amazing director, and if you like anime at all this should pretty much be required viewing. The movie was a trip and a half, but that's why it was so awesome.

    1. Side Effects was very good bordering on great, but the last few minutes tied everything up in a bow too much for me.
      This. It takes a bit to get everything set up, is great in the middle as you try to figure out who's telling the truth, and then everything becomes crystal clear and stays that way.

    2. i've been thinking about checking out girls as it's something jane might enjoy. however, with the boy and her (very) early bedtime, i don't see it as a possibility. we're still stuck 2 episodes deep in the 2nd season of louie and haven't started the 2nd of game of thrones. both shows i'd reaaallly like to watch but feel compelled to wait until she can watch too (to be fair to jane, she's told me to go on without her).

      1. Early bedtime? That's an interesting concept for a child.

        I would suggest that you continue on without here with Game of Thrones. Then, when she wants to progress, you get to watch it again!

        1. jane's out shortly after the boy. i'm usually up for another 3+ hours after that.

          you get to watch it again!
          actually, jane walked in when i was on the season finale of the 1st and told me she wanted to watch too, so i watched that one again. i wouldn't be shocked if something like that happened once more.

          1. I usually get 1 or 2 hours, but the Trinket pretty much has a floating bed time. Sometimes it goes to as late as 10 pm, which sucks because she's not usually very not-grumpy after 8.

    3. I haven't seen Girls, but I think I'd be interested in it--or at least find it thought provoking. There was a piece about it in The New Yorker and this bit struck me.

      “Girls” has been attacked, and lauded, and exploited as S.E.O. link bait, and served up as the lead for style-trend pieces, to the point of exhaustion. The authors of these analyses have often fretted over privilege: the show is too white, Hannah’s a spoiled brat, or a bad role model for Millennials, or too fat to qualify to have sex on cable television. But when there’s a tiny aperture for women’s stories—and a presumption that men won’t watch them—when almost no women are Hollywood directors, when few women write TV shows, of course it’s the privileged ones who get traction. These artists have what Dunham has referred to as Hannah’s Unsinkable Molly Brown force. (Molly Brown, after all, was a mouthy rich woman who survived the Titanic.) To me, the whiteness of “Girls” is realistic, although the show is slyer and clearer about class than about race. But, as Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote recently in The Atlantic, “the problem isn’t the Lena Dunham show about a narrow world. The problem is that there aren’t more narrow worlds on screen. Broader is not synonymous with better.”

      1. I read that article too. I'd heard of Lena Dunham, but not the show until recently. The write-up you linked to really made me want to check it out.

      2. I know there's a whole lot of stuff about the lack of diversity in the Girls cast, but this sums up a lot of how I feel about it. The idea that we have a show created/headed by a young woman, starring four women, about women is a pretty huge deal. I mean, it's sad we have to say that in 2013, but it is. The fact the people dismiss that because of what the show isn't is pretty damn sad.

        The first season is worthwhile viewing.

        1. I totally agree. I really, really like Girls a lot. I don't know why some people just love to hate it so much. Maybe people conflate Lena Dunham's character with Lena Dunham. Some of it is probably a little misogynistic ("why does that fat girl think she can be naked so much?"). And maybe that it's a show about 20-somethings written by 20-somethings (when those types of shows are usually written by 30-somethings). It definitely has a different voice (ex: recreational drug use doesn't always end in tragedy).

          Regardless, she has stories to tell and she tells them well.

          1. Maybe people conflate Lena Dunham's character with Lena Dunham.
            Having just finished season 2, I sure hope they are very distinct.

    4. Everyone on the show is a pretty self involved, awful person.
      So, I used to watch Grey's Anatomy for this. But I'm not sure I want to enjoy the suffering of fictional characters again. Plus, they're in NYC and I don't know if I can take any self-involved New Yorkers (or Angelinos for that matter. (Grey's worked since it was in Seattle and I don't have preconceived notions about self-involved Seatellites. But the spinoff in LA got spun out of my rotation.)

      Also, it's on Cable, so I've been happy assuming I wouldn't like it anyways. They aren't even ripe yet!

    5. J & I finished the first season of Girls on Friday night. Everyone on the show is a pretty self involved, awful person but I think that's part of what makes the show so good. I have a number of issues with the show

      okay, so, long story short (and thanks to a tired, slightly feverish kid), jane and i watched the first 4 episodes. i'm not sure what i think so far, but i tentatively agree with this. after 4 episodes, the only one i currently have any sympathy for is

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  12. We watched the last three episodes of Game of Thrones (S2) this weekend and we're counting the days until season three starts. I told Pam to get me the first book today when she gets off of work. Most of our movie watching lately has been oldies that younger daughter has recorded, lots of Jimmy Stewart and Gregory Peck and anything Hitchcock. Spellbound, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Notorious were all watched last week during spring break.

    Also, with the pending unemployment, I've downgraded our cable package and dumped our home phone to save us about $90/month, but I'd like to get Netflix. Anybody have a good suggesting for a streaming device other than a gaming console? We don't have much use for video games anymore, but elder daughter has a Netflix account and we'd like to stream movies and shows from the series of tubes. Looking for a device that doesn't require a service subscription.

    2. A Roku box costs $80 and can get the job done. Also, pretty much all Blu-Ray players have Netflix built in now; just make sure to get one with Wi-Fi so you don't have to hardwire it to the router with an Ethernet cable.

      1. just make sure to get one with Wi-Fi so you don't have to hardwire it to the router with an Ethernet cable.
        Heh. I specifically got a Roku that could use ethernet so I wouldn't have to deal with wireless. Probably less important in a single-family home, but immensely useful in an apartment complex where the 2.4 GHz band is saturated.

        I will second/third the Roku. Simple, low-power, and there are free channels for just about every streaming service out there.

    3. If you have Apple products and a wireless router in your house you can get Apple TV (similar to Roku) and stream from your Apple device to your TV. Also you can watch Netflix, Hulu etc. Also remember you can connect your laptop to your TV via an HDMI cable and stream what's ever on your computer to the TV.

      1. i have the latter setup. my TV is functionally my second monitor, so i just throw whatever i need onto the big screen when necessary (though i have a PS3 hooked in as well).

        also, i have hundreds of weird and/or artsy desktop pictures which change once a minute, and since my TV's wall mounted, it makes for a great cycling art piece if people are over.

      2. I have Roku and enjoy it, but I a friend of mine prefers using his computer connected to his TV for Netflix. I admit that it is much easier to search for what you want online than on the Roku Netflix app.

  13. Finally got around to The Raid: Redemption. It was as good as you all said it would be. Started it in English but switched to original audio with subtitles - worked much better in my opinion.

    My wife and I have been working our way through the first season of Homeland. I'm enjoying it more than I expected to and Inigo's work is just fantastic.

        1. I'm guessing he's talking about the re-make. I don't know anyone that would use the term "awesome" with the original.

          1. Yeah, I guess I often forget that one exists, haha. The 2012 Judge Dredd is an awesome action movie that also takes place almost completely in an apartment block. It was one of the most surprisingly awesome movies I've seen in some time.

            2. I'll look into it - my memory of the first one precluded me from even paying attention to the remake. Sort of the opposite of Total Recall...fond memories of the first compelled me to view the 2nd.

              1. Heh, similar to the Spooky-bS reversal above, I have the opposite thoughts about those movies. Fond memories of Total Recall have me avoiding the re-make at all costs while awful memories of Jude Dredd had me interested in a re-make. Seems there's a time and a place for re-makes, and most of the time they original seems to involve Sly.

                1. I have so far declined to see the Total Recall remake. I thought the original was pretty entertaining.

                    1. I expect that I will, although there will be a point of discontinuity, followed by asymptotic decline to total entropy.

                    2. Second. Take the nifty play on reality from the first and basically remove it and replace it with awful acting.

  14. My MiL works as the head of purchasing at a small-town library in West-Central MN. With that, she often gets first dibs at deleted DVDs. I borrowed a few last time we were up:

    Live-action Peter Pan. I keep falling asleep about the time they get to Neverland, and there’s something unsettling about the youth of the Wendy paired with her makeup, which seems to “sex”-ify her. I’ll try once or twice more when I’m not as beat. Maybe something comes of that.

    Luther, about the religious leader, starring Joseph Fiennes. Twas OK, but it simultaneously tries to get to all the “big event” points in his life, somewhat disconnectedly, while still leaving off like the last 20 years of his life, with only a small bit of epilogue text. (There’s surely a good word for that stuff. “Luther would start a movement that this day has 600 million followers. He and [wife] had 11 children and died within days of each other. Germany would remain a fractured state until the early 20th century.” [Not the actual text.]) Peter Ustinov was pretty fantastic in it though, and there was one line about a two thirds of the way through, something like “When I was a child, I thought like a child, I spoke like a child, I understood as a child. When I became a man, the adults around me made me into one of them, and I was appalled at how cheaply they thought I could be bought.”

    Ms. Pettigrew Lives for a Day: Light and fun story starring Amy Adams and Frances McDormand in London right before WWII breaks out. I recommend.

    Plus, Zack tipped me to free streaming of the works of Anime director Makoto Shinkai over the weekend. I watched these all yesterday.

    Voices of a Distant Star: a 25-minute movie about teenagers in a really long-distance relationship, and growing up and apart. 5 Centimeters Per Second: an hour-long movie about teenagers in a long-distance relationship, and growing up and apart.
    These are different movies, but they felt very similar. (I did watch them back-to-back.) Both were told largely in voice-over. Zack had compared and other bits I’ve read have also compared Shinkai to Miyazake, so the thematic similarities didn’t bother me. (Miyazake: Girl is presented with a world that’s strange and foreign, must find strength within self to grow and overcome.) I was probably expecting more of Miyazake’s childlike innocence and supernatural forces, but neither of these movies really had those. More, the innocence of first teenage love, and then growing sadness with the loss of it, as depressing reality presses on. Still, these were both pretty great and very affecting (though not affirming like Miyazake), and I wanted more of both stories. In 5cm, there’s a point at which wind blows something valuable away, and I shouted out, “C’mon!”, waking up my napping wife. If I’m to complain about Shinkai, it’s that his characters have very little difference in appearance, so I had difficult times telling characters apart except for via hairstyle.

    I started watching Children Who Chase Lost Voices, which is almost 2 hours long, last night starting at about 11pm, but I was tired and nodded off here and there and had to quit. I will definitely follow up with it as it had supernatural forces and childhood innocence. Lots of pieces in it seemed to reference Miyazake directly. There’s a creature that could be out of Monoke, a shelter in the earth that reminded me of Graveyard of the Fireflies, and cooking that reminded me of Ponyo. Unfortunately, the movie was only available online through yesterday. But, after watching 40 minutes, I’m not afraid of spending money on something I’ll despise.

    Thanks for the tip, Zack!

    Finally, I finally watched Spirited Away with my 9.5yo daughter CER and 7yo son HPR. Over three nights. CER is still so sensitive with movies, she woke up crying after the first part of the movie, which we stopped right after Chihiro is introduced as the new worker. So EAR and I had to basically tell CER the whole story. Afterwards, she was happy I pushed her through it though.

    1. This Peter Pan or this one? I assume you mean the first (which I haven't seen) because I've never noticed, or heard, that particular observation about the second. I still have a hard time thinking of Peter as anyone other than Robin Williams or Hook as anyone other than Hoffman.

        1. The link on "this one" is to the Mary Martin version - that's the non-cartoon one I knew until aged 12 when Hook came out.

      2. The first. It's not overly sexualized, but just enough to make me feel uneasy.
        And again, this is just the first 20 minutes. For all I know it's truer to the source material than Disney, and this is an uncomfortable part of the book: Wendy's becoming a woman, that Disney bypassed.

    2. In 5cm, there’s a point at which wind blows something valuable away, and I shouted out, “C’mon!”, waking up my napping wife.

      Haha, I'm pretty sure J and I had a similar reaction to that scene.

      I am sure that you'll be surprised to hear that his next film is a love story:

      Shinkai wrote on his website that this is the first time he is making a "love" story — in the traditional Japanese meaning of the word. He added that there were words long before there were characters to write them in this world. The Japanese language during the era when it had no written form is known as "Yamato kotoba." The language during this time had its own pronunciations, before the importation of kanji characters from China.

      At the time, "love" was written as "lonely sadness" (koi). Moreover, according to Shinkai, the modern concept of "love" (ai) was imported from the West. While his new Kotonoha no Niwa film is set in the modern era, it will be about koi in the original "lonely sadness" meaning — of longing for someone in solitude, as opposed to the modern meaning.

      There's a trailer out and even though I can't understand it at all, I can already tell I'm going to shed many tears while watching this. Still, I will be importing the Blu-ray (which has English subs, hooray!) the first day it's released in Japan.

    3. Speaking of Peter Pan, the wife and I watched Finding Neverland again last weekend. Really good story behind the story movie, and Depp and Winslet both turned in fine performances.

    4. Was going to ask if Joseph and Ralph are siblings but just saw Joseph's mug and that answered it for me.

      1. You didn't know of him? He got pretty famous after starring in the Best-Picture-OscarTM-winning Shakespeare in Love.

        1. Saw that, but never made the connection to He who must not be Named.

          Side note - did see Ralph F. in an H. Ibsen play in London (Brand) back in 2003. A good performance (8/14) - almost as good as Maid in Manhattan (9/14).

              1. Wow. That is...an obscure draw from the catalog. I haven't even read that nor do I remember it existing, though I probably have it on my shelf somewhere.

                  1. Yeah, that list is a load of fun. Here's something an actor hates to hear:

                    "The role of Brand certainly plays to Fiennes’s strength as an actor."

                    Oy. That's a harsh backhand that always means "this person is extremely limited but this role actually works within their limits." I know because I've said it before. And, as a college freshman, had it said about me.

                    It's right up there for nightmare "praise" along with average theatregoers saying "You were just like the guy in the movie!" They typically have no idea that they're accusing you of having no vision.

  16. Saw Ang Lee's Life of Pi on the return flight from Argentina last week.

    Had just read the book, so it was great timing.

    Generally true to form (I don't recall the love interest in the young Pi being in the book, but hey), but was wowed by the computer animation of Richard Parker in/around the boat. A little 70's'ish with the sea scenes at night tho...

    10/14 on NBB rating scale.

    I would vote to read this book before the film - but don't always lean this way (Death in Venice you could do, Zephirelli's Romeo and Juliet is film heroin, Conrad's Heart of Darkness could be savored more after Apocalypse Now) .

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