At The Movies

Third Monday Movie Day

60 Comments

I spent a good part of this month on vacation or preparing for it. While on vacation, though, I took in some stuff.

Prometheus. Why is this movie so dull? Ridley Scott remembered to take a lot of pretty enough shots, but the story really takes its time, and the cast just doesn't become particularly engaging for the viewer, outside of lead actress Noomi Rapace and Idris Elba, who really can do no wrong. Also, clear this up for me: did people watch this whole movie unaware that it was a prequel? I remember hearing people say they were shocked by the ending setting up the Alien franchise, but I can't imagine being force-fed any more clearly. Maybe my memory on this is failing?

The only good thing I saw anytime recently was Django Unchained unless we add TV, and even that was pretty light of late.

What have you seen?

60 thoughts on “Third Monday Movie Day”

  1. Winged Migration: I was watching Life with my kids on Friday night and said something like "I wish there was something like this but about birds we find around here, and without so much talking, especially from Oprah." Then on Saturday, I found this at Half-Priced books. It's close to a feature-length version of what I asked for. It's not Lammergeiers and Birds of Paradise, but Geese and Terns and Sandpipers. There might be 100 spoken words in the whole thing and another 100 in the music (sung by Nick Cave). I'll want this on Blu-Ray some day.

    Jeeves and Wooster: starring Dr. House as Wooster. I'm halfway through Season 2. EAR found this at the library and it shows some decent branching out from Jane Austens while still being BBC British Period (but comedy, not drama). The DVDs lack subtitles or even captions, so it makes a few characters hard to understand, but that may be the point, like Boomhauer. Very enjoyable.

      1. The US version of "Planet Earth" DVDs was Attenborough, and not Sigourney Weaver. Why wasn't "Life" the same? I blame Disney.
        Also, I got the $15 Half-Price Books edition. Beggars and Choosers and all. When I eventually upgrade to Blu-Ray, I'll be sure to look for the Attenborough edition.

        2. If I remember correctly, they didn't actually sell the US version of "Planet Earth", they only sold the BBC version. That was how I knew to look for BBC when "Life" came out.

          1. This makes no sense to me. How did you know to look for a second version when the prior series only had one version?
            I'm really bummed they don't give me the choice. I've got DVDs with tracks in Hindi and Italian, but I can't pick from the US or UK narration for a nature documentary?
            I do have the option to go without narration. But then the kids learn less. (Like the cool name "Lammergeier".) I'll probably do that next time through, anyways.

            1. I knew to look for BBC because I was surprised that was what we got for Planet Earth. We ended up loving it, more than the US version we'd already watched during its airing, so when Life came out, we had already wised up to our preferences.

                1. It keyed me in to looking for a BBC edition. I watched Life as it aired too, before purchasing, and knew I didn't want Oprah as a narrator. So I wouldn't have purchased unless I could find the BBC edition. If it didn't exist I wouldn't own a copy of Life.

                  1. $15 at Half-Price for a series that we only saw half of. (because it was airing when our free cable went digital and stopped being free).
                    Maybe that's why I found it at Half-Price.

                    If we upgrade to Blu-Ray, I'll be more careful.

    2. Love Jeeves and Wooster. Laurie and Fry have such great chemistry.

      I used to watch these with my dad on Public Television. He had turned me on to Wodehouse back when I was back in HS, so it was especially fun to enjoy them together. My mom, on the other hand, used to always complain that she couldn't understand anything they were saying.

  2. I took the family to see Million Dollar Arm and One Hundred Foot Journey. Both were a little long but good family movies.

    1. Million Dollar Arm was on our flight to Vancouver. I didn't listen, but from watching some scenes, I don't think I would have liked it much.

  3. I had a good month for martial arts movies. I watched The Raid: Redemption which was great. I knew I was going to be entertained since I've seen Dredd and I knew going in that they are basically the same movie. (story-wise, anyway).

    I also saw 13 Assassins which, holy crap, is one of the best movies I've ever seen. If you like Samurais/sword fighting, then yeah, no reason not to watch this. The finale was completely awesome and the story was even pretty good.

    1. I had a good month for marital arts movies. I watched While You Were Sleeping and... not really. I just totally misread "martial arts" though.

      1. Agreed.
        I also took in The Raid 2 a coupld weeks back. It was not nearly as engrossing as the first, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

  4. Guardians of the Galaxy - fun. Cardboard villain, but entertaining protagonists.

    How to Train Your Dragon 2 - rife with slow segments, very unevenly paced.

    Dredd - I know Karl Urban was channelling Dirty Harry, but otherwise it was a better movie than I expected.

    Foyle's War - still liking it as I go through past seasons

  5. The Lego Movie - Lots of fun.

    House of Cards - Engaging, but I'd like to see a little bit more depth to the characters. They sort of tried to give Underwood a little bit deeper characterization than "semi-evil political genius" in the library episode, but I dunno. At this point, I want to see more Russo and Claire (or at least more depth to Claire), and possibly have Zoe Barnes hit by a truck or something.

    Game of Thrones - Halfway through season 4. Enjoying it immensely.

  6. Saw The Wolf of Wall Street a couple of weeks back. Ugh. Oh Marty, you were so talented. Why? Why? At least we'll always have Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas.

  7. Batman Begins Wife and I sent the kids away for a weekend. It was awesome. Not so much the movie, but the sitting and the watching without interruption. This is why I don't get to participate much in the movies and books and music and baseball and cooking and projects parts of WGOM. It would seem I'm mostly here for the feelings of inadequacy. Let's call that "hope."

      1. "It gets better."

        Eventually they will ignore you, hide in their rooms all day and night, or just be gone all the time, and you can do pretty much what you want. Which often consists of complaining to each other about the kids. 😉

  8. I went to Chef because I was bored a couple weeks ago. It was okay, but there was a really unnecessary (I mean they all are but...) rape joke early in the film and it had a terrible, schmaltzy ending. Mostly it just made me want to go back to LA.

  9. I saw About Time by Richard Curtis. It's not as tight as Love, Actually, but it's got time travel, so that almost makes up for it. Winning performances, especially Bill Nighy.

  10. The Kids Are All Right - Very well acted by a cast of folks I usually enjoy watching, but I came away feeling a bit disenchanted. Not sure what I was expecting, maybe something lighter?

    Divergent - I enjoyed this one. My wife's read the books and we enjoyed The Huger Games and figured this would be in-line with that. It mostly was.

    Winter's Tale - I was really liking this one; was totally into it until things took an unexpected (and unnecessary in my opinion) turn. After that point, I was not nearly as happy as I had been and came away feeling kinda meh.

    Charlie Countryman - I know what I thought this was going to be. After watching it, I couldn't tell you what that was though.

    Out of the Furnace - Awesome cast and a compelling story, but I had a hard time buying into this as it played out. I enjoyed it, but everything pretty much progressed as expected. It was good, but I was hoping for great.

  11. Peter Jackson's Complete Rewrite of The Hobbit part one (passable, I guess, but boy, I really, really do not remember this story), and Guardians (what Rhu said -- way fun, despite cardboard baddies).

      1. I especially enjoyed the sled ride into Gringotts' vault, what with all the Orcs goblins in pursuit.

  12. Just rewatched Amelie again - definitely a Top 5 for me. If you haven't seen it, it's very Wes Anderson and extremely well acted. Watch it with your significant other.

    1. Wes Anderson wishes. Ugh. Wes Anderson can make a beautiful shot and get great performances out of his actors, but I can't remember ever feeling significant emotion during one of his films.

      2. Wasn't it just last month that I was saying how much I trusted Anderson as a filmmaker? Weird to see this. Moonrise Kingdom and The Royal Tenenbaums both stand out to me as having an emotional connection. That said, everyone wishes they did Amelie. I gotta see that again.

        1. He's one of the only filmmakers I can think of who had, and then lost, my trust. I kept waiting for him to make a great movie that never came. After paying to see The Life Aquatic I decided that if I wanted to see beautiful shots without story or emotion attached, I could just go outside and look around for free.

              1. I guess I'm team Life Aquatic around here? I liked it when I saw it 10 years ago but rewatching it recently I liked it a hell of a lot more.

                My favorite of his is The Darjeeling Limited so I'm probably in the minority there, too.

                1. I still haven't seen Darjeeling. Have considered giving Life Aquatic another chance, but my memory of it is... not fond.

          2. Agree Life Aquatic was pretty lame but I'm with Team Novak on Moonrise Kingdom, Royal Tennenbaums and Grand Budapest. Also Spooky aren't you holding Wes Anderson to a pretty high standard? 80 percent of movies out there have very little story or emotion attached (unless 'splosions can be emotive). See my rant above regarding Martin Scorsese for a filmmaker who lost any ability to show emotion on the screen.

            1. Yeah, Goodfellas and Wall Street are very similar in style, but Goodfellas moved me at times while Wall Street left me cold.

  13. I started a dark BBC cop drama, Happy Valley, last night. One episode in I can already see that we're headed for disaster for just about everyone in the series, but I'm interested to see it happen. Fantastic acting here, and enough humor to keep the viewer from feeling crushed by the weight of what's coming.

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