Monday, November 06, 2006

The Weekend Movie Review

Song Stuck on the Brain: Battlestar Galactica Theme. The original not the pitiful excuse they have for a remake.

This is kind of how I'm feeling today... or most days actually.

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting


A co-worker sent this to me and it was just Oh SO appropriate.

So I had big plans for this weekend. Errand running and all that, but instead I was a lazy bum and didn't leave my house all day Saturday. I watched movies and played no risk Texas hold'em poker with my sister and nephew. Surprisingly enough I do okay at poker, but I think that's only because we're not using real money. If real debt was at risk, I'd fail miserably.

I watched way too much TV this weekend. I thought I'd play movie critic for a day for those interested.

Started off with a 1942 B&W movie from TMC called Cat People.

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting


When the naval construction designer Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) meets the Serbian Irena Dubrovna Reed (Simone Simon) in the zoo, he flirts with her and they sooner fall in love and marry each other. However, Irena is afraid of an ancient course of her town that women can not be touched by a man, otherwise she will transform in a panther, and the couple does not consummate their marriage. Irena is sent for treatment with the psychiatrist Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway), while Oliver looks for "consolation" with his colleague Alice Moore (Jane Randolph). When Irena sees that she is losing Oliver to Alice, she becomes jealous and hateful, leading to a tragic end.

It was interesting, but a little overly dramatic. It's hard to say though, it's an old film, so what I would consider overly dramatic or cheesy now - may have been much more the norm in '42. I think the story could have been a little more detailed. I wanted to know more about her as a cat. The suspense was good, and you could see that she worried about whether she was a cat person or not, but you didn't really get WHY she worried. Whether it was just a general fear or if she had real reasons to wonder. There were some general clues, like animals fearing her, but other than that, it seemed kind of vague. Maybe too simplistic. I still enjoyed it though.

Next was The Visitation

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting


The Visitation reveals a small town torn apart by supernatural events involving a mysterious stranger and his unsolved past.

This one was based on Frank Perretti's book of the same name. It dealt with the end times theme of false prophets and the anti-christ. I read the book when it first came out and loved it, but it's been long enough it was hard to remember how closely the movie stuck the novel. I enjoyed the movie, but I remember liking the book better. That could just be me though. I almost always prefer the book. It was just scary enough for me to be a little creeped out, but not too bad. I don't usually do horror, but Frank Perretti's work is an exception because his work deals with the topic from a Christian perspective.

I re-watched Teen Wolf.

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting


Teen discovers that puberty for him means he turns into a werewolf. One of the beneficial side effects is that it also turns him into a top-notch basketball player. But will his notoriety cost him his friends and can he find true love?

I think this was at least the fourth time I've seen this one, but I haven't watched it in years. I love Michael J Fox's work. This movie falls into the cheesy teen movie category, but it's so much fun. It's a good brainless late night watch.

I tried to watch Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.



Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting


A noir send-up. A narrator introduces himself at a Hollywood party: he's Harry Lockhart, a thief from New York, in L.A. for a screen test. He meets Gay Perry, a glitzy private eye who's to school him for his role; there's Harmony Lane, a wannabe actress whose time has passed; the host is an aging actor who starred in detective movies, plus his daughter, with starlet looks and a choppy past. The next day, Gay and Harry stake out a house where Gay is to take surreptitious photographs for a client - what they find is a corpse. From there, twists and connections abound and bodies pile up. Who's double-crossing whom? And, has Harry found Harmony too late to save himself from misery?

A co-worker recommended this one. The previews did look funny and he claimed it was very clever and humerous. I managed to get through the first 20 minutes before giving it up as crap. The language was really bad, it wasn't funny and it was BORING. I don't recommend this one.

The last one was a 1934 B&W mystery called The Thin Man.

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting


Young Dorothy Wynant approaches amateur sleuth Nick Charles when her inventor father appears to be a major suspect in a murder case. In fact, Dorothy is so worried about her father's guilt that she tries to convince Nick that she did it. Nick's wife Nora wants him on the case so that she can experience some of the excitement herself. However, Nick is reluctant to get involved until he sees that police Lt. Guild is coming to the wrong conclusions. Nick decides that the best way to clear up the case is to invite all the suspects to dinner with Lt. Guild and see what happens...

This was probably the best one I watched all weekend. I loved it! It was so funny and clever and I didn't figure out who-done-it until the very end. The husband and wife team have a great relationship and there are a lot of one liners and zingers. I wish Nick hadn't been such a lush. He's done up as such a laughable, easy going drinker that never really comes across as drunk, that it's hard to dislike the drinking. Plus for the era the movie was made it comes across as very normal. So other than that I HIGHLY recommend this one.

That does it for the weekend movie review. The rest was just miscellaneous TV shows here and there that I had taped. Like reruns of Galactica 1980. Hence the song stuck on my head...

Don't forget that you can still enter the FIRST contest to win a copy of Nancy Jo Jenkin's Coldwater Revival. Just leave a comment HERE.

A.

No comments: