The Movie Update
Oops. I’ve accidentally now watched more movies this year than I’ve read books, and have been reading a bunch of graphic novels, so it isn’t even like there are chunksters slowing me down. For a while I stopped requesting DVDs from the library because the queues were so long. Now I’m back in the habit. And a habit it is, in the negative sense of the word, when my husband has to warn me to stop using his account to reserve things or he’s going to change his password.
I can’t even blame recent binges or Blu rays from Half Price Books, since none of the recent viewings are from recent used purchases. Sigh. I suppose there are worse habits to have.
Django Unchained (2012) Hyper violent, of course, it didn’t impress me as Inglourious Basterds did. Good, but overlong and unfocused. I do like the revisionist history/wishful thinking aspect that it shares with IB.
Pitch Perfect.(2012) Flawed, but charming, like a real person. Don’t have high expectations, and it’ll be fun. Geek note: I bought the soundtrack, plus Kelly Clarkson’s Greatest Hits after watching it.
Dredd (2012). This I borrowed from the library because I thought my husband would like it and I watched it too. Hyper violent, again, but with dark humor, and an intriguing villain.Like V for Vendetta, this comic-book adaptation made more sense when it was grounded in Thatcher’s England.
Clueless (1995). I was reminded of it when I saw this article on game theory. Charming and fun, but a little low on the acting quotient. Paul Rudd has come a long way.
Iron Man 3.(2013) Date night. Glad I saw it before anything got spoiled, ’cause there’s loads of stuff to spoil. But overloud, overlong, and over ’splodey. Towards the end stuff was going down and I just kept thinking, “I’m bored. This is silly. Please move the plot along.” It does set things up interestingly for the future. But I’d say see it at a matinee, though sooner is better because of spoil-i-tude.
P.S. We saw a trailer for The Lone Ranger, that has Johnny Depp playing Tonto, and in Iron Man 3, Ben Kingsley plays a character called the Mandarin. Why are white people playing non-white roles, still? Shouldn’t we have moved past this? Can’t we PLEASE move past this, and have more non-white roles in movies played by non-white actors?
May 5th, 2013 at 8:33 am
Leaving soon to go see Iron Man.
On the flip side, we have Neil Patrick Harris playing a sexist womanizer on How I Met Your Mother. So there’s that.