O-Dark-Thirty

  We saw Thor yesterday. The movie started, the lights went down and it was LOUD. My Darling hands me a couple squishy things and I think “Wow, she remembered earplugs.” I almost put them in my ears before I realized they were Hot Tamales. I know. You expected something different, didn't you? Just letting y'all know (both of you) that I'm still here.

Quarantine Movie Memos The River of No Return (1954) Made in 1954, there's no blue screen in this movie. So all those scenes where the actors are in the water or on the raft must be real. And cold. Set against a gorgeous background, we get to travel along a wild river and brave the rapids on a rickety wooden raft. So did the actors. Marilyn Monroe did a good job, actually singing the songs in the movie. Apparently she didn't really play the guitar, though. The movie was filmed in Jasper and Banff in Canada. We've been there. Not on a river, though.

Quarantine Movie Memos S.W.A.T. (2003) Before Samuel L. Jackson assembled the Avengers in 2012, he put together an impressive team in S.W.A.T. Jeremy Renner is part of this plot, too. Though not as impressive as when he played Hawkeye, that's the fault of the role, not the actor. It's a high-octane romp through destruction and mayhem. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Quarantine Movie Memos Bye Bye Birdie (1995) Sure, Elvis went into the Army, but Hollywood couldn't make a movie about that. They did. Then they did a remake in 1995. 1995 remake Random Thoughts: Reminds us of Grease (from 1978), but that makes sense considering the era. Who knew Jason Alexander could sing and (sort of) dance? I was delighted to see George Wendt in a show (he's Norm in  Cheers .) Darling and I simultaneously looked at each other and exploded in laughter when they broke into song over "Ed Sullivan." Tyne Daly as Albert's mother is amazing. She's the best part of this movie, in my opinion. Sadly, that isn't saying much. "What has she got, besides looks and brains and talent?" That made me laugh.

 Quarantine Movie Memos Guy and Dolls IMDB Poster We never watched this musical before. Hollywood made the movie in 1955 (according to IMBD). Our random comments: Dance moves of the guys are reminiscent of the moves of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Marlon Brando is a handsome, charismatic actor. Darling said so. Even I said so. Jean Simmons reminds me of Audrey Hepburn. Frank Sinatra could have sung more, but I like Frank Sinatra, so I'm biased. Along those lines, who knew Marlon Brando could sing? Good, fun movie.

Summary: Why are you reading this? Go to the movie! Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice running length is about two and a half hours, but it sure didn't seem like it to me.  Whisked into the world of cinema, I felt they finished it just a bit too soon. I wanted to see more. More Batman! Ben Affleck did a great job. More Superman! Henry Cavill - nothing else to say. More Wonder Woman! Gal Gadot - perfect casting. All the rest of the cast brought the movie exactly the tenor it needed. (Jeremy Irons  did a superb job  as Alfred.) There was a lot more, but ... spoilers.  The reviewers that complain - well, I read those reviews and think they need to go watch it again. I think they might be disappointed if someone gave them cotton candy and a free trip to the fair. Don't trust them. Trust me. The movie transported me to the story, and that's what movies are supposed to do. So go see it. Thanks for reading, though.

Please don't go see A Walk Among The Tombstones . I like movies. It's what we do. I like Liam Neeson, the main actor. I like the books by Lawrence Block, who wrote the novel the movie is based on. I'm sad that Liam Neeson was in this movie. The best actor in it was the young man who played TJ. A Walk Among The Tombstones  is a dark movie, unnecessarily dwelling on the dark aspects of humanity and depravity to a level of discomfort - and not simply to advance the plot. The previews made me think this would be similar to Liam Neeson's previous thriller Taken , but it was not. Where Taken glanced at brutal aspects of the wickedness of humanity and returned to the plot of the movie, A Walk Among The Tombstones seems to revel in the scenes that should disturb people of good character. I hoped those scenes were an aberration and the movie would eventually focus on the plot. They weren't and it didn't. Don't give me blatherings about...

The 100-Foot Journey I liked it. When movies show scenery of France my heart almost stops, as if a great hand wraps around it and tugs it from my chest. (If I believed in reincarnation, I'd think I came from France.) The cinematography of this movie had that hand squeezing my heart - there was so much beauty that I think I actually gasped a few times (but I won't admit it if I did). The plot is good, though I won't say it is superb. I will say the acting was superb. The story fleshed each character out, but the actors brought them to life perfectly. I won't even pick out a favorite actor/actress (but I will say I have a hard time believing that Dame Helen Mirren is English and not French now!). Oh, and there was food. I do love food. I owed Darling a movie that wasn't all explosions and superheroes. For once, I chose wisely. I can give it an easy eight of ten stars. (I don't buy these kind of movies, but if I did, this would be one I'd buy...

There's been a lot of talk about the views of the writer, Orson Scott Card, author Ender's Game. Some people won't see the movie of his views. That's entirely their right, but personally I have a different opinion. What a load of crap. I never agreed with the socialist views of Jack London and I still love his stories. Ender's Game is a great book. I just read it again to make sure it was as good as my twenty-plus years of memory told me. It is a great read, probably one of the majestic tomes of science fiction. Our society screams tolerance. I've said it before and I'll say it again - if you truly believe in tolerance, then you also truly believe the intolerant have the right to feel that way. Let it go and find your own freedom. The lessons you take from the book will depend on who you are and might change in different phases of your life. That's okay and one of the things that makes Ender's Game a great read. The book doesn't s...

The New York Post has an article titled "Crew members: 'Captain Phillips' is one big lie." Okay, fine. It's the published people who write history and Capt Richard Phillips wrote the book. Hollywood made the movie. It's "based on a true story." Is it worth watching at the theater? Well, I think so. I don't know why, but I'm not a big Tom Hanks fan. I mean, I like him. I can't recall a movie I didn't like him in, but he doesn't normally compel me to buy a movie ticket. There's been a shortage of film outings this fall, though, so Captain Phillips looked like a good reason to go to the movies. Besides, it was raining outside. True or not, I have to admit the movie had me on the edge of my seat for most of it. The movie tells the story of the 2009 hijacking of the MV Maersk Alabama, the first US ship captured by pirates in over 200 year. It was based on "A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, an...

About the movie Gravity , one reviewer put his title as "Don't bother reading this review. Just go see the movie." I didn't read his review. We did go see the movie. If you haven't seen Gravity , please do so. There are spoilers here. I think this is a powerful film. Let's get something clear right off the bat. I think Sandra Bullock is an amazing actress. If she's in the movie it's pretty certain I'll go see it at the theater. Not so with George Clooney. I think he's a good actor, but I won't bother buying tickets for a film just because he's in it. Darling will. So we both expected great things from Gravity , for different reasons. I'm a fan of space. Lord knows I have plenty of it between my ears and a growing sense of it in my memories. When we left the movie I told Darling "I think that might be the best movie I ever saw." Please take that as it sounds, in combination with that memory comment earl...

Summary: Are you kidding? If you only see one movie this summer, this is the one. (Well, except that Thor is coming out soon.) If you're a fan of the Wolverine, this is a must-see. If you aren't a fan of the Wolverine, but you love movies with action, this is a must-see. If you don't like movies with action, then go ahead and watch old I Love Lucy re-runs. You don't even need to be the Wolverine's biggest fan. Spiderman is still my favorite of all the superheroes, and as far as the movies go, The Avengers is the most awesome movie made. I am a fan of Wolverine, so I really looked forward to this movie. Let's face it, Hugh Jackman was born to be the Wolverine, and he's been awesome in all the previous incarnations. This is thirteen years down the road from when we first saw him in X-Men (2000). We then saw him pop up in the rest of the series as Wolverine (arguably the best character in the movies) X2 (2003), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), X-Men Ori...

Summary: I liked it. Though it seemed to wear a little thin on the jokes, and we got relationship advice from Marvin (that's just odd), it was still fun to watch. Yeah, there are a couple spoilers. I'm not bothering to white them out. It just doesn't matter, really. If you want a decent review of RED (2010) then go read the one at Dan the Man's Movie Reviews . I don't disagree with his review of RED, though I think I probably liked it a bit more than he did. The original RED relied on the quirky introductions of the team, and that supplied a lot of the level of fun. This one tried to do that with a couple of the characters, most notably Katja and Bailey, but I think it failed in that. There is only a certain amount of eccentricity you can take with movie characters and I think we already reached our limit. I certainly liked RED 2 more than Dan did (he rated it as 2.5/Crapola). I suspect that is because he is only twenty years old and in his prime, so a...

When we left this movie my wife turned to me and asked "Didn't we just see this?" Well, almost. A few months ago we saw Olympus Has Fallen where Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) tromped through a destroyed White House and eventually saved the President (nicely played by Aaron Eckhart) and the world. The theme is the same: bad guys destroy the White House and get into the President's top secret bunker to launch nuclear devastation on the world. The good guy survives multiple assaults but limps on to save the world, neutralizing roof-top missiles launched at incoming choppers along the way. I'm sure the helicopters were in both movies… Maybe not. Things are starting to blend together in my aged memory. There isn't a lot of intrigue in either film, though there is a thin plot that pretends there is. If you don't see it coming, go watch more films. At least in White House Down we are offered the chance to root for more than one character. Aside...

I’m not going to say too much about The Lone Ranger. I love westerns. I really wanted this movie to be good. It wasn't. The movie opens with a small boy in a Ranger outfit going to the museum. I was that boy. Oh, we didn’t have the money for me to get the complete outfit, though I desperately wanted the hat, boots, vest and guns. I made do with the hat and some sticks. Eventually my parents relented and bought me the guns, but those are lost in my memory.  If you were one of those boys, pay attention to this review. The Lone Ranger was my hero. Every stick horse I ever rode was Silver. Except when I was Roy Rogers and my horse was Trigger.  This movie is not about The Lone Ranger. Quite simply, this movie is about Tonto. As entertaining as Johnny Depp made Tonto, this is not the Tonto we grew up with. That’s okay. There was a lot of opportunity for this movie to shine. Opportunity may have knocked, but nobody in this movie answered the door. The Lone Ranger ...

As I said in my last post, Pacific Rim is a monster movie, so you need to expect a lot of explosions and buildings blowing up. There is a loose plot but not enough to detract from the basic monster formula. Giant monsters attack coastlines. Mankind bands together to survive. Mankind survives. Some people are heroes.  There you go. In Pacific Rim the giant monsters are Kaiju (Japanese for monster) and the world bands together (at last) to build huge robotic Jaegers (German for hunter) to defeat them. You get a little bit of Iron Man in the fantastic suits, but these suits are the size of multi-level office buildings. It’s more like people-powered Transformers , which is cool.  It isn’t a spoiler that one of the Jaegers uses an oil tanker as a ball bat. That was fun. You certainly get a little bit of Godzilla and Mothra in the Kaiju. If you are a fan of the old Godzilla movies from the late 50s and early 60s (I grew up with those) or even a fan of the 1998 versi...

Summary : go ahead and watch it at the theater. The movie has lots of action and a little suspense, but not a lot of mystery. It will keep you on the edge of your seat. There will be spoilers, so beware. I made them white on white, so you have to highlight to see them. I mean, they aren't terrible spoilers - at this point you know the movie has zombies, right? I'm a fan of Brad Pitt. You can't really disregard the talents the man has as an actor. I might even like him in real life. I wouldn't mind meeting him and I certainly would have loved meeting Jennifer Aniston, but have to admit that Angelina Jolie scares me a little bit. Before I start the short review of the movie, let me make bring to light an interesting tidbit.   Before I saw the movie (in fact, before I knew about the movie) I started writing Zombie Apocalypse: Vampire Raiders of Las Vegas . When I first wrote the title it was New York instead of Las Vegas, but things change as needed whe...

And, yeah, I like the suit. Spoilers: since I can't seem to figure out how to do those really cool spoiler tags in my blog that other bloggers have, I'm doing it the poor man's way - spoilers are white text on a white background. If you see a gap in the text, it's a spoiler of some sort. Just highlight it to read it. A review First of all, I'm a Superman fan. Let's just get that out of the way right at the beginning. I watched the old black and white versions when I was little. I delighted in the 1978 version with Christopher Reeve (though not much of a fan of Margot Kidder). I don't think I missed an episode of Lois and Clark and I thought that Dean Cain was an excellent Superman (and was a fan of Teri Hatcher). I didn't enjoy Superman Returns at all. I'd like to scrub that one from my mind actually. I'm also a Spiderman fan. The Sam Raimi trilogy for Spiderman violated a Spiderman premise when the webs shot from Peter Parker...

Netflix™ is wonderful. Not good enough for me to own stock in it, but I certainly enjoy the service. As long as they have shows I want, Netflix is the way to watch. As I've mentioned before, we watch a lot of television series , many of them already concluded. Some we watch to see if we want to watch the current series. Hell on Wheels , for instance, is a western series set during the years of building the railroad. I like westerns, so we watched the first season before deciding it wasn't worth continuing. Perhaps building the railroad was as dirty, gritty and evil as they portray, but if I watch something I'd like to see some redemption in the story. We didn't see that in the series, so we'll not continue with it. Along the same lines, we just couldn't get into The Walking Dead , a series about an apocalyptic world filled with zombies. I have a fascination with apocalyptic stories, though I'm not a big zombie fan. There might be some redemption in the...