Tag: three sentence movies

This was one of those amazing movie experiences that make all those so-so flicks worth sitting through.  I’ve seen Michael Shannon’s fabulous acting on display in two other films* and he carried me away during this one too.  This is completely worth your time and money so go and find it today.

Cost:  Free from Library
Where watched:  at home.

*Revolutionary Road, where he was the key turning point in Leonardo DiCaprio & Kate Winslet’s marriage and The Runaways where he played sleazy Kim Fowley. The first role was a quiet crazy building to an explosion, the second an exuberant, bacchanalian picture of rock and roll excess.

So the thing about movies with “alternative” plots is that they nearly all of the time end up in the traditional way.*  The trick of such a movie is to be able to bring me along, so I agree with the traditional ending by the time they get there.** This was a very smart, funny movie*** and I can report I was quite happy with the ending so now you are left to figure out if it kept an alternate solution, or if it was just well written enough to charm me into agreeing with the traditional ending.****

Cost:  $1.20 from Redbox (impulse purchase on the way out of the store)
Where watched:  at home.

*I’m not saying this one does, but most of them do.

The first few minutes of this movie had me wondering if I was going to like it this time around, because I had fond memories from my first viewing when it was originally released, but this time I found the introduction incredibly obnoxious. But once Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes showed up I loved it all over again.  There was a lot of kissing–the poster is quite accurate in its representation.

Cost: Free from Library
Where watched:  At home.

ps:  I almost couldn’t find this in the library catalog because it’s not Romeo & Juliet it’s Romeo plus sign Juliet.  So now I call it that in my mind.  It’s also from the era of movies needing to tell us who their famous authors are, as if we don’t already know.  I recall “Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter” also being a title of the same era.

This movie had promise with the fun dancing and Kristen Bell and all that, but it took a turn for the worse about halfway through and never recovered.  I don’t think Cher is a very good actress (sorry!) and Christina Aguilera seemed to be channelling Cher at times which was incredibly distracting.  Not even the usually saving presence of Stanley Tucchi came to my rescue, this movie was just bad.

Cost:  Free from library.
Where watched:  At home.

I loved how this movie captured so well that confusing time post-college when so many mistakes are made on the way to becoming a fully functioning adult.  Lauren Ambrose was incredible as usual and Mike Birbiglia was a surprisingly good actor.  The supporting cast was also fabulous and I’m happy to report this was the rare case of a movie about stand-up comedy actually being funny.

Cost: $7.00
Where watched:  The beautiful gem Cinema 21, where not only do you not have to spend time waiting for the movie to begin attempting to ignore assualtive ads for television shows and video games the theater plays (I’m looking at you Regal Cinemas) you also don’t even have to watch a slide show of ads (which I don’t mind, but it was quite restful to just stare at a blank screen before the movie began.)

Also, I saw this with Matt and then the next week saw Mike Birbiglia at Live Wire! on Saturday and then Ira
Glass (who co-wrote) on Sunday!  How cool is that?

And! Plus!  Who knew all those years ago when I first heard this story on This American Life, that I would then read a book and see a movie about the same topic?

Viewing two of this movie was just as delightful as the first, perhaps more so as I didn’t have to pay attention to plot and could just immerse myself in what was happening on the screen.  I think my favorite line was the simultaneous “that was the girl!” spoken by Bruce Willis & Edward Norton.  And it’s interesting to look at both Bruce Willis and Edward Norton, who have both played action heroes and compare them in these roles.

Cost:  $6.25 (plus $5.00 in ATM fees because I didn’t think to bring cash)
Where:  Cinemagic, which is a lovely theater I’ve only been to one other time.

I hadn’t seen this since I was fifteen or so and though the opening scenes were awesome, it slowly but surely rolled down into mediocre territory from there.  I think one of the problems was that all the boys looked alike which made it hard for me to feel sad when something happened to one of them because I couldn’t tell which one it was.  Also, the many gratuitous shots of the various characters shooting their guns made me realize we used to see that all the time in movies and now we never see that, probably due to advances in computer animation; before showing us what happened after the bullets were fired was an expensive endeavor and we had to use our imaginations, now it’s just computer generated and we can see what the gunfire does.

Cost:  free from library
Watched: at home.

How often is the third movie in a franchise awesome?  This was good enough that I loved it despite uncomfortable seats, bad sound and a viewing in an un-airconditioned theater on a day when temperatures reached 100 degrees.*  The plot was tight, fun and funny and the acting was quite good making this a good escape from the heat, even while sitting in a steam bath.

*McMenamin’s St. Johns Theater has many charms, but they are more difficult to channel on a very hot day.  To be fair, they told us to go in the theater before we bought our tickets, so we could see just how hot it was.  We bought tickets anyway.

Cost:  $3.00 (plus another $10.00 for a sandwich when I realized I was starving)
Place:  McMenamin’s St. Johns Theater.