Category: Three Sentence Movie Reviews

Just as I always fall prey to Vince Vaughn’s talky-talky thing, so did I enjoy Eddie Murphy’s chamelon-like trove of characters to get himself out of all sorts of situations.  Though I will never understand the early 80s fascination of Judge Reinhold, both he and John Ashton were perfect foils to Murphy’s color-outside-the-lines brand of detective work.*  This movie also has bit parts with Paul Reiser and I was delighted to find a pre-Balki Bronson Pinchot who cracked me up with his portrayal of Serge, an Associate Art Director at a gallery.

*This movie also includes two 80s movie staples: boobs (in the strip bar) and a lot of ridiculous shooting of guns that totally wouldn’t happen in real life.

Cost: free from library. I think I ended up requesting this because I was really going after Beverly Hills 90210 season 1, and this came up in the search results and I realized I’d not seen it.
Where watched: at home.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1984/beverly_hills_cop.html

I’ve checked this out of the library on more than one occasion, but never got around to watching it because the cult aspect scared me off.  Now that I’ve finally seen it, the movie was fascinating mostly because the woman* does not tell her sister** she was in a cult, just that she had a bad boyfriend.  So that made the reactions by her family to the after-affects of her trauma that much more interesting and intense, which made for a fascinating movie.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home

*Martha is her given name, Marcy May is her cult name, Marlene is the  name the women in the cult use on the phone.
**Sarah Paulson! I would have watched it a long time ago if I had known she was in it. I love her!

Note that this is yet another good role played by John Hawkes.  I also recently loved him in the Sessions and he’s quite good in Winter’s Bone too.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2011/martha_marcy_may_marlene_ver3.html

Hey, remember how I loved Kings of Summer but lamented the lack of coming-of-age movies with girls as the main subjects?  It turns out that Sweden is on it, with middle school girls and punk rock, rather than high school and the outdoors.  While being incredibly fun and heartfelt, this movie also captures a lot of nuance of girl-as-friend relationships, especially during the middle school, jockeying-for-position time period.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/intl/sweden/2013/vi_ar_bast.html
(aren’t they adorable, those little punk rock girls?)

I brought this movie along as a palette cleanser, because I knew the subject matter of the first film would not be to the fellow Borah alum’s taste.  Plus, when I first watched this movie I knew she would really like a certain aspect.  Watching this for the third time, I was struck how this is a solidly crafted movie that is pleasant to watch, which will probably relegate it to being quickly forgotten,* though I think it deserves a better fate.

Cost: I own
Where watched: at the Minneapolis home of the Borah Alum

*Except by people involved in a Channing Tatum Personal Film Festival

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2012/ten_years_ver2.html
Look!  The Russians get a better poster than the rest of the world.

It was quite fun to watch this with a fellow Borah Alum and catch all the references together.  It was even more fun when the fellow Borah Alum’s  husband laughed at several parts.  On second viewing, I still find this to be a solidly constructed movie about a subject we usually don’t see from the female perspective.

Cost: I actually own it.
Where watched: in the Minneapolis household of the Borah Alum and her husband.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2013/to_do_list_ver4.html

While the movie shelves are loaded with whiny male protagonists whose lives fall apart and they retreat to somewhere/something to recover, there are fewer of these stories about women.  So it was that I enjoyed watching Kristen Bell return home to her parents to be again the lifeguard she was as a teenager.  I found the story resonant and the acting was great too, especially by Bell, Mamie Gummer and Alex Shaffer.

Cost:  free from library
Where watched: at home, while avoiding prepping for vacation.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2013/lifeguard.html