AB and I haven’t been to a movie in ages… think the last Harry Potter movie. We used to love going to movies, but it has fallen off our priority list. Leif isn’t quite ready for the whole movie theater experience yet, and so we rely on whatever has come out on DVD.
Am I just picking poorly, or are there just a serious lack of decent movies out there? Or maybe it is just me and our 32” (non hi-def) TV just really detracts from the movie experience rendering all movies in the less then great category. (AB would love that to be the problem, he is clamoring for a new TV.)
Before I get too far down the road here I should say that we did rent The Illusionist this past weekend and really enjoyed that. So much so that when we didn’t finish it Saturday night (due to my cinematic narcolepsy) we clamored to put it on right away Sunday night despite Amazing Race being on. Lately with other movies we don’t finish we eventually get around to finishing it simply so we can return it and rent something else. But while we enjoyed The Illusionist (love Edward Norton), it still wasn’t that flawless wonder. It was a good movie and I recommend it, but where are the big blow you away movies?
I would say the last really great movie I have seen was Return of the King. And while I don’t expect every movie to live to that caliber, I hope for one a year to make the run.
We rented Little Miss Sunshine after hearing rave reviews. We walked away going “hmm”. It was good. Love Toni Collette and William H. Macy in nearly anything. But this movie just didn’t do it for me. It had such wide swings from hilarious silliness to real and provoking losses. I finished it feeling like my moods were all over the place. I was confused about how I felt about it. Ok, I am still confused about how I feel about it.
Another on the list of referrals was Idiocracy. Remember that song by Harvey Danger, Flagpole Sitting, with the line that “only stupid people are breeding”. Take that line and turn it into a movie starring Luke Wilson and you have Idiocracy. The premise is that the intelligent people are all waiting to have children (often too long) while the stupid people are breeding like rabbits. What happens after 500 years of this? The planet is overrun by stupid people. When a guy of average intelligence is frozen and suddenly revitalized in 2505 what happens? Ok, I can’t tell you what all happens because my cinematic narcolepsy set in. But I will say that the movie quality was reminiscent of a B movie. It actually wasn’t bad, there were humorous parts. AB watched it all and told me that there really weren’t any new jokes beyond the first hour I watched. Mediocre but funny was his statement.
Then there is the just plain bad list. I tivo’d Freedomland the other day after noting it was on cable. I suppose there are reasons movies that I swear just came out on DVD end up on cable so quickly. Julianne Moore, Samuel L. Jackson and Edie Falco, can’t be bad, right? Wrong. Someone tell me that race relations are not *that* bad in the US? Tell this currently rural mom that society is not so freaking hateful. Tell me that the police aren’t so biased and oblivious to HUGE clues that something is amiss. We watched the first hour last night. AB has no desire to continue it. I only want to fast forward to the end to find out what happened to the kid… I have to know the kid is OK. (Warn me now if he isn’t, because I cannot take violence against children right now.)
I need to watch a great movie. Help, someone?
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