My introverted inner hermit is getting a workout with all of the visits as of late. We had the mister’s parents stay with us for a week over Christmas, then off to visit my folks for a few days and then on Friday I had my two sisters and their respective crews in for the weekend. Phew! I’m about ready to get back to my anti-social routine of holing up with a fresh canvas, a messy palette full of paint and a podcast (or twenty).
One of the things I like doing best when people are here to visit is going to movies. I know…kind of defeats the purpose of visiting when you can’t talk, but with my ADD-adled brain, I just don’t do well when there’s a bunch of different conversations going on at one time. One on one? Fine! Bigger groups are fine too if the conversations are one person at a time, one speaker addressing the group. It’s those dinner party situations where someone sitting across from me is trying to talk while the person beside me is talking to someone else at the end of the table that throw my brain for a loop. I catch a bit of the other table conversations & my mind (& usually my eyes too) jump over there. My mister says I’m like a dog; focus, focus, focus – squirrel! Focus, focus, focus – bouncy ball!
And with that, here are my latest movie recommendations:
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Recommended. Loved it! As soon as the folding stage came on screen, I was hooked. It’s like a paper doll theatre, but life size! The layers of trees, the way it all folds up and DRIVES AWAY, the little compartments that still exist when it is all folded up for sleeping or chatting or playing with costumes and make-up…*swoon*. My eyes were big as saucers watching it unfold and after whispering, “I want that” to my mister, I spent the rest of the movie trying to figure out how we could build it. Or where we would put it. Awesomeness.
FYI: the rest of the movie is good too. The way they finished Heath Ledger’s scenes with other actors works beautifully and Lily Cole is an absolute doll.
Recommended. I was never a huge Sherlock Holmes fan. I’m sure I’ve read at least one of the books, but not for a good 15 years. Still, a good story is a good story and the characters are fabulous fun. Robert Downey Jr has such an expressive face, he can crack me up with one eyebrow. The little nods to the future were interesting too.
Not Recommended. Admittedly, I didn’t have huge hopes for this one and 80% of the movie was perfectly fine, fulfilling its romantic comedy duties nicely. I adore Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock and the trailers looked like he was going to be the same smarmy character in this flick. Sold! There were lots of funny, sweet moments, but the ending just didn’t make sense to anyone I saw it with. If you haven’t seen it yet (& want to), you should probably stop reading here – spoilers ahead!
It’s not that I would’ve ended it differently, but the reasons she gave for not getting back with her ex did not seem to match up at all with the movie I’d just watched. Them sitting on the bench agreeing that it had never felt “right”? Huh? When was that, exactly???
She could’ve said she didn’t want to risk trying again and then disappointing the children all over again. She could’ve said that she was so hurt from him standing her up that she realized she would never be able to forgive years of problems and truly start over with a clean slate. If they had fleshed out the Steve Martin character more she could say that though she still cared for her ex, she didn’t think she could ever be in love with him again. But after one date? Really?
Movies like this really irk me because it feels like the writer or the director just ran out of time and needed to end it, so they slap in an ending regardless of the fact that it doesn’t fit with everything they’ve spent the last hour and a half telling us about the characters. Fracture is another one (totally different genre) that springs to mind. The genius mastermind is tripped up in the end by a really basic legal loophole that even I, a lowly painter, has heard of? Not buying it.
Have you seen any movies lately that you’d recommend? And don’t say Avatar.