Barenaked Ladies' new single!

Friday, January 8, 2010

Okay, so I watch a lot of movies, it appears...

I probably should have written about my Tuesday escapades before Wednesday happened, but as it is, now I have four movies to talk about instead of three. I'm moderately ridiculous, I'm aware. One of the movies I watched as my job, okay?

1) Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009, Bill Hader, Anna Faris, and some other voice actors): DUDE this is an AWESOME movie! I simply love the fact that working at an after school program means that I get to watch kids' movies on a weekly basis. Okay, SOMETIMES I simply love this fact. I'd love this fact all the time if my boss picked better movies (like this one!) on a regular basis. As it is, I've been forced to watch some pretty crappy stuff. BUT THIS WASN'T SOME OF THAT! I only vaguely remember the book, reading it as a child - it was pretty much a picture book, with not so much by way of plot or anything, as my sister tells it - but I was highly amused by the plot they chose to inject into the movie script. Basic gist - wacky inventor creates machine to turn water into food (programmed by choice), it blows up and gets stuck in the sky and starts precipitating the food. Too many requests for different foods come in, and the food starts mutating into GINORMOUS food and threatens to squish the town. Wacky inventor and romantic interest weather girl must save the day. There were a lot of random silly bits that I'm pretty sure I was the only one in the room to get - example, one of the ports on the side of the machine is the "Welcome to Moose" port. FYI that was a supposedly terrible movie (never watched it, never could be bothered) that had Ray Romano in it, and it was filmed in Uxbridge, ON, which is where one of my university roomies was from - hence why I know about it. Also during a scene with an ice cream snowball fight, the monkey character is seen to be participating by throwing "chocolate ice cream" snow balls. Ha. Ha. Get it? Nobody but me did, until I groaned audibly in a disgusted manner :D ANYWAY. Watch this movie, I don't care if you think you're an adult. It's awesome

2) Did you Hear About the Morgans? (2009, Sarah Jessica Parker & Hugh Grant): This was a silly fluffy romantic comedy movie - exactly the type I love! Basic premise, separated couple get together for an evening and accidentally witness a murder, then need to go into protective custody to get away from the murderer. They end up in Middle-of-Nowhere, Wyoming, and are brought back together by being forced to live together in a happy, friendly little town. Vaguely reminded me of the premise for For Richer or For Poorer with Kirstie Alley and Tim Allen - except that involved Amish folk, I think. Anyway, I really enjoyed this one, and you will too if you're into that romantic comedy stuff. SJP is a bit annoying, but I always find her a bit annoying, and Hugh Grant, to quote his character from Love Actually, looks "increasingly like my aunt Mildred," with the sad, kicked-puppy-dog eyes and lack of backbone in general, but I will always love him anyway. Happy ending, not to spoil it or anything, but some people like to know these things about romantic comedies. Watch it 'cause you know you want to.

3) The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009, Christopher Plummer, Heath Ledger [et al.], & Lily Cole): by et al., I mean that this was Heath Ledger's last film before he died and, in fact, he died before it could be completed, so a bunch of other actors (Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell, to be precise) stepped in to be his character in different Imaginarium scenes. Basically, this movie is a huge drug trip. I think that by watching this movie (and by continuing to watch movies of its type, like the upcoming Alice in Wonderland), I have assured myself of never needing to do LSD or other hallucinogenic drugs. I'm not entirely sure that it made sense, and yet it did. I think that I came out of it with a better understanding of what it was about than when I came out of watching I Heart Huckabees, for example. But man, was it trippy. Loved it, absolutely loved it, and of course I love watching all those pretty, pretty actors, but whoa. Basic gist, Doctor Parnassus makes too many bets with the devil, and is scrambling to undo his last bet (which would cost him his firstborn child, the lovely Valentina) by making another bet... you see where this is going, perhaps. The Heath Ledger character is an interesting tie-in to it. I will say no more, because I think you should watch the movie for yourself. Quite worth seeing it in theatres, by the by.

4) Fast & Furious (2009, Vin Diesel & Paul Walker): My sister picked up this movie, actually thinking that it was its own predecessor, The Fast and The Furious, mainly hoping for a killer action movie to try out the pretty new TV I may have mentioned in a past post. Driving movies are awesome. We watched it, and it was only about a third to halfway in that we actually figured out we were watching the new one that just came out. I've never actually seen the first one. Or second one. I saw the third one, which doesn't have any characters the same, really, 'cept maybe one? But my sis had seen the first one, and when I figured out that this one was the new one she said, basically, "I was wondering why the plot didn't seem familiar..." :D So I guess the movies are pretty interchangeable and the plot doesn't matter all that much. I didn't really feel like I missed THAT much by not seeing the first couple of movies. I suppose now I have to go back and watch the first two in the series just to see what I was missing. AND of course to watch some awesome driving movies. I do love driving movies. Anyone remember the show Drive that was on TV for like, four episodes? I loved that show. Somebody who lives in the US needs to buy the episodes 5 and 6 that appeared on the US iTunes store, and burn them to disc for me. Random side note. Um... watch this movie if you like driving action movies and don't give a crap about plot lines. In fact, it might be well worth your while to fast forward the attempted plot bits. They're not that good. There were some good driving and fighting scenes. I liked it, certainly better than I liked Jumper.

Phew, that was a lot of movies. Don't worry, I am reading a book at the moment, so my next post MIGHT actually be about a book. But no guarantees, I also just got a Blockbuster coupon in the mail for rent one, get one free :D

1 comment:

Anne said...

Count me in for the other two fast/furious movies!