This past weekend we watched a number of movies once again as we relaxed around the house. I figured five was a bit much for the title of the blog so didn't put them all in there, but those five movies were "No Strings Attached", "Red Riding Hood", "Source Code", "Lincoln Lawyer", and "Arthur". Yes, we do more than just watch movies but we do enjoy a good movie and it is a good way to relax at night, especially now where we don't have many shows that we're watching as seasons have ended and we haven't really found that replacement for "Lost" on Netflix. I'll take on the reviews in the order that they were watched once again.
The first movie that we watched of the bunch was "Red Riding Hood". Of course as the title says this is the story of the big bad wolf, red riding hood, and grandmother ... well, sort of. It is about a town plagued by the presence of a werewolf who the town has lived with for a long time in peace, just sacrificing livestock. One day the wolf begins to kill again, and the town calls in a priest and his crew to kill him (actually one person does while the others set off to kill it). The "priest" was played by the guy that played Sirius Black, Gary Oldman, and I have to say that I've enjoyed his acting and the characters he plays and this was no exception. As the movie goes on, the main character (Red Riding, though that isn't her name in the movie) is pursued by two love interests, the one she wants and the one that her mother betrothed her to. The wolf continues to kill until it meets her in an alley and tells her that it wants her to leave with it and it'll leave the town be. It continues on until in the end the wolf is killed.
Personally I really enjoyed this movie. I thought it had great scenes and a good story, and that it flowed very well. I also really enjoyed the look of it and it set good atmosphere for the story it told. I also really enjoyed the fact that throughout I had a number of people who I thought could be the wolf and in the end it was one that I had given little thought to all along. One thing I didn't like was the dream that fit in the whole "What big eyes you have grandma" lines, but that was just overly cheesy but didn't detract a great deal from the movie itself. In my opinion this is a movie well worth watching.
Next up was the movie "No Strings Attached". This movie about a couple of characters played by Ashton Kutcher (not one of my favorites) and Natalie Portman who run into each other a couple times in life and eventually find themselves hooking up one day after Kutcher's character shows up drunk at her place the night before. After talking about it they decide to have a sex only relationship, thus no strings attached. Of course after a while they start falling for each other and she, being afraid of commitment, breaks it off only to regret it later. In the end they end up together of course ... so the plot line is pretty predictable and un-original. However the story and the characters are good enough and there are some humorous moments throughout. It was an enjoyable movie.
"Source Code" was the third movie of the weekend. Continuing the good luck this was another movie that I enjoyed, making quite the string of enjoyable ones versus bad ones. This movie was about a guy who wakes to find himself being used to relive the last 8 minutes of another's life in order to determine who bombed a train so that the next bomb could be stopped. I really enjoyed this one and suggest it to others, so I won't go much into the plot or storyline. It did raise a lot of questions about alternate realities, time travel, and the such. Some such questions were "if this is the last 8 minutes as seen by another's brain, how could interactions with those others around be changed by changing your actions unless it was just how you 'thought' they would react?" and "did each attempt to interact create a new reality, thus creating multiple new realities that hadn't existed before?" and "in the alternate reality, what happened to the 'soul' of the guy he took on?". Lots of questions that could be debated with anyone else who watched the movie and wanted to debate them ... but a good movie even for those not looking to touch these subjects.
Next up was the movie a co-worker had said he enjoyed, "The Lincoln Lawyer". Early on in the movie I found that it was entertaining but the camera work really bothered me. It looked like instead of having the golf cart going along in front of the actors as in many movies, instead the camera man just walked in front of them and the camera bobbed up and down while they walked. Horribly distracting and annoying, but it didn't last and I didn't notice that kind of camera work the rest of the movie. I really did enjoy the plot, the story of a lawyer who got a client accused of beating a woman only to find out not only did he do it but he had also killed before, and seeing how he tried to manipulate the system while not doing anything to jeopardized attorney-client privilege. I enjoyed the acting and the entire movie flowed well, and despite the initial worries about the camera work in the end this was yet another movie to add to the string of good and my co-worker was right, it was a pretty good movie.
Finally we ended the weekend movie watching with "Arthur". This movie risked my streak of movies I enjoyed as at first I wasn't all that into it and Russell Brand is one actor I really don't care for anyway. I just find him annoying and irritating more than anything, and this movie where his character was meant to be that way anyway just doubled my annoyance with him. The story picked up however and started moving along, and in the end I found that it wasn't all that bad and there were actually parts that I laughed aloud during. The end bugged me, as I didn't want to see him with his riches and the girl, and his mother's only "that's my son moment" seemed a bit out of place given that she never really cared and went back to not caring, but other than that, a bit of a slow start for me, and an actor I don't care for the movie turned out to be decent and enjoyable anyway. Not something I'll watch again, but not bad for a one time viewing.
So with another five movies watched in the past few days my streak of enjoyable movies continues. It can't last forever though so I'm sure sometime soon a movie will really disappoint me, but I am enjoying the streak for now. Soon the new seasons of different shows will be starting again and the hockey season is just around the corner so I'll be getting in fewer movies, but for now it has been fun relaxing and seeing a number of good ones.
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