Category: Three Sentence Movie Reviews

Three sentence movie reviews: On the Road

I tried, once upon a time, to read this classic of mid-century literature and eventually discarded it, thinking, “You know what? These guys are jerks.”  And you know what came through loud and clear in the film version?  You guessed it:  these guys are jerks.*

Cost:  $4.00
Where watched:  Laurelhurst, with S. North.

*This book/movie is navel-gazing male literature/cinema at its finest.  Which for me means “most boring.”  Although there were fun period details and the cameos were interesting.

Three sentence movie reviews: Take This Waltz

I liked this movie for the building tension, and for the good performances by all the leads and especially the presence of Sarah Silverman.*  But what I really like about this movie is that it didn’t end where I thought it would, but kept going, giving me a very different ending than I expected.  Michelle Williams was not exactly a likable character, but her performance was very much worth watching.

Cost:  $1.00 from Videorama’s $1.00 Thursday
Where watched:  At home.

*There is a post-swim session shower scene in the movie that is pretty much spot-on depicting the realities of post-swim showers.  It has a lot of nudity in it (including Sliverman and Williams), but the nudity is of the “everyday” variety, not the much idealized women’s locker room scene that opens the movie Carrie.  If you are female, the locker room scene in Carrie is totally worth watching just for laughs.  It is very much the male fantasy of what happens in the women’s  locker rooms.  Take this Waltz is the reality.

Three sentence movie reviews: Safety Not Guranteed


In my mind, the best kind of movie is where a character, or characters, if you are lucky, go through some sort of transformation over the course of the movie.  Based on that criteria, this movie was fabulous: simple story, interesting and not unlikable characters, and kind of quirky. Overall, this movie was made of some simple parts, but they all came together so well that I greatly enjoyed myself, and was reminded that this is why I love to watch movies.*

Cost:  $1.00 from Videorama ($1.00 Thursdays!  How lucky am I?)
Where watched:  at home.

*Have you not heard of this movie?  Well, you should watch it because there is a reason it was the Laurelhurst Theater’s longest running movie of 2012.
Also:  the extras have a great story about how the text for the ad came about.

Three sentence movie reviews: The Place Beyond the Pines

In celebration of having my real life back,* I took myself out to this movie.  It was a very good choice as I loved the story itself, the acting was phenomenal,** I was entranced the entire time and kept thinking about the movie in the days that followed.  This was an excellent flick and not just because a certain someone was all tarted up with incredibly white trash tattoos.***

Cost:  A premium $8.50
Where watched: Regal Fox Tower

*Class is over, dress is mostly done, I can reclaim my time!
**Hamster Ryan Gosling is growing on me and Bradley Cooper keeps being marvelous.
***It took about a week before I realized that the Ryan Gosling character was cleverly designed to appeal to every single bad-boy trigger point:  trashy motorcycle racer who changes his ways for not just a woman but, (wait for it) a baby!  I totally fell for it.

Gas Station

I love the look of this building, run down though it may be.  For the five-plus years I’ve lived in North Portland, this has been a rough-around-the-edges car repair place.  From the looks of the RV parked on the lot, I surmised that the owner lived on site.  The whole lot was always full of rusted out cars.
 
So imagine my surprise one day when I noticed that everything was gone.  What happened?  Did the owner die?  Run out of money?  Decide to see the world?  Retire?  Also, what happened to all those non-working cars?

There’s a for-rent sign, so maybe something new will appear there.  I doubt it though.  I see a tear-down in the cards for this lot.

Community Sing-Along

It’s the last Saturday of Spring Break, I’ve got a dress to finish ASAP, food to make for Easter tomorrow, and potatoes to plant today.  I also need a nap.  I have no time to sing along with Pink Martini in Pioneer Square.  
But guess what I did?  I didn’t work on the dress.  I didn’t get all the food made.  But I did plant potatoes, nap and sing along with Pink Martini in Pioneer Square.
The first 300 people got songbooks.  And very nice songbooks they were, too.  They had words AND piano music.

We had the bonus of having both China Forbes AND Storm Large lead us in song.  Also, the Von Trapps were there (four fresh-faced, college-looking members).  And former Governor Barbara Roberts was up on stage too, singing her heart out.  Members of the Oregon Symphony were there too.  It was a very full stage.

In my haste to leave, I forgot my camera, so these photos are taken with the cell phone.  I was delighted at the earnestness with which this deadlocked-haired youth sang along with the lyrics.  I was simultaneously disturbed because the song we were singing at the time was “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” which apparently he’d never been exposed to?

In case of rain, local umbrella makers ShedRain gave away free umbrellas.  It was not at all rainy, but at one point everyone put up their umbrella for a photo op.
And we sang!  We sang nearly every song in the songbook.  The songs ranged from classic sing-along songs:  “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” “Home on the Range,” “On Top of Old Smoky.”  There were also songs from musicals:  “Edelweiss,” “Summertime,” “A Spoon Full of Sugar.”  And there were great surprises that were incredible sing-alongs:  “The Theme from All in the Family,” “Copacabana,” “The Gambler,” “Nine to Five.” Aside from all that singing we did, we got performances of Pink Martini songs, as well as Sound of Music songs performed by the Von Trapp singers.
At one point, Thomas Lauderdale referred to Edelweiss as one of five songs that everyone knows.  I emailed him, curious to see what he thinks the other four are, but he has not responded.  What five songs do you think everyone knows?

Three sentence movie reviews: Paper Heart

This is a quasi-documentary, in that it’s filmed in a documentary style, but you can’t believe anything you see presented as fact. However, that does not make it one whit less delightful as we travel the country with Charlyne Yi hearing people talk about love and watch her own views on love undergo a metamorphosis when one charming gentleman by the name of Michael Cera enters the picture. Overall, this is 88 minutes of delight (possibly propelled by the fact I love Michael Cera, but also due to the general whimsical nature of the movie) and I recommend it heartily.

Cost:  free from library (yet another, “why not?” that turned out well)
Where watched: at home with Kelly, my “I’m on break, big salad and a movie” companion.

Three sentence movie reviews: 10 Things I Hate about You

This movie is much better than it had any right to be.  Probably because a bunch of very good actors* took this usual high school romantic comedy up several notches.  Also, I think the setting is so magical, it conspires to make the movie great too.

Cost:  free from library.
Where watched:  at home.

*Joseph Gordon-Levitt!  Julia Styles!  Allison Janney!  And Heath Ledger, who, it is amazing and sad to realize, would be dead less than 10 years from when this was filmed.

Sometimes first impressions are right.

When I graduated high school, I piled in a car with three other friends the day after our graduation and we drove to Oregon for a short vacation.  One of our observations about the Beaver State?  There are road signs everywhere!  They told us the speed limit was going to change, told us to turn our lights off after a tunnel and told us that there might be “Congestion.”  That was our favorite. We would always cough when we saw that one.

But walking to work today, I realized the incredible number of signs that were jammed in a two-block stretch.  This one has five, as does the next block.

I’m glad to see that, 20 years on, Oregon signs are still everywhere.