Review: “A Perfect World”

Last weekend we finally got around to watching “A Perfect World“, the Clint Eastwood film in which Eastwood plays a Texas Ranger trying to catch Kevin Costner’s escaped convict as he makes a run for freedom. Complicating matters is Costner’s hostage, a young boy he snatched during a home invasion. Lacking a father figure at home, it doesn’t take long before the boy starts going all Patty Hearst on us.

Review: “Paranormal Activity”

So this weekend we finally got around to watching “Paranormal Activity”, the (in)famous smash hit that was filmed down in San Diego for about $11,000 and went on to make a couple hundred million dollars. My wife wasn’t all that enthusiastic about it, because of the “found footage” nature of the film, which reminded her of “The Blair Witch Project”. We both hated that movie. Maybe we’re jaded from having spent so much time hiking and occasionally getting lost in the woods, but all we both kept thinking during TBWP was, “Just keep walking downstream, you idiots!” Fortunately, that wasn’t an issue with “Paranormal Activity”.

Review: “The Brothers Bloom”

So this weekend I saw “The Brothers Bloom”, a caper movie along the lines of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”, only with a little more jaundice. I say “I” saw it because my wife was not around for it, which means I can’t say how long it took her to fall asleep, so I’ll just have to estimate it instead.

Review: “Inception”

So this weekend we went to see “Inception”, the new trippy mind-bender from trippy-mind-bender-specializing director Christopher Nolan. If you think “Dark City” meets “Matrix” meets “What Dreams May Come” meets “The Spy Who Loved Me”, you won’t be far off. (But don’t think “Dreamscape”. Aside from involving dreams, the films are nothing alike.)

Review: “Thank You For Smoking”, AKA “The Insider’s Evil Twin, Skippy”

So last week I finally got around to watching “Thank You For Smoking“, the satirical 2005 film about the tobacco industry and its efforts to lobby Congress and the public about its products. Not being familiar with the source material, I at first didn’t realize that it was set before the massive settlements between cigarette companies and the government; once that became apparent, I kept waiting for Russell Crowe to appear in the background to leak secret industry documents to intrepid reporters. Instead Aaron Eckhart (in a great performance that manages to make his smooth lobbyist character, Nick Naylor, not come across as smarmy) sleeps with an intrepid reporter, but that’s okay, too.

Review: “Zombieland”

So I finally got around to seeing “Zombieland”, in which Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg do battle with hordes of undead as well as Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin (in a road trip only marginally less strange than the one she took in “Little Miss Sunshine”). As you probably know from the trailers, Woody and Jesse have much more success against the zombies than against the girls.

Review: “Cold Souls”

So this weekend we watched Cold Souls, a film about a company that specializes in removing and storing souls for people who find them burdensome. We picked this one because:

1. It features one of my wife’s favorite actors, Paul Giamatti, playing one of my wife’s favorite actors, Paul Giamatti (see The Illusionist).
2. It features my favorite magazine, The New Yorker.

Review: “Sunshine”

A few weeks ago we rented the movie “Sunshine“, in which a group of astronauts embark on a mission to fire a gigantic bomb into the sun (which is suffering from diminished output) to reignite it, and thus rescue Earth from the grip of an endless winter. (Sounds like one of Dennis‘s missions, doesn’t it?) There seems to be a lot of carping about the physics of this, as the sun isn’t scheduled to start dying for quite some time; in the back-story, which is not explained in the film, it is revealed that this is because the sun has captured a Q-Ball which is acting as a damper. I read the explanation and still don’t understand exactly what a Q-Ball is, so I’ve decided it’s something that Q uses when he’s shooting pool. But I digress.

Review: “District 9″

So over the holiday last week, we watched the movie District 9. Originally my wife had declined to screen this film, but after hearing from several friends about how good it was, she agreed to go see it. I had also told her it was supposed to be good, but apparently, after suggesting she might like Hellboy because it was made by Guillermo del Toro (she is a huge fan of his Spanish-language movies like The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth), suggesting she might like Kung Fu Hustle because because it was “probably like a Jackie Chan movie”, and trying to convince her that Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is a classic of 80s filmmaking, I lack credibility. Go figure.

Reviewus Interruptus: “Slumdog Millionaire”

So the other night, my wife was feeling lazy and wanted to watch a movie. We went through the On-Demand options, watching the trailers … Confessions of a Shopaholic … Duplicity … Slumdog Millionaire … she thought they all looked interesting but decided she wanted to see the best-picture winner, so we bought Slumdog Millionaire. Unfortunately it immediately started with our young hero being subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” and went downhill from there.