With a few discs from Netflix, and a few borrowed DVDs from Beanpole, we’re having a movie weekend. The kids are gone, the Lyse beast is over, and the popcorn is hot. Here are the movies we’ve seen, and Sunday we may watch The Game, although I’m kinda expecting it to suck. (I’ll update this entry if we see it.)
The Jackal – Bruce Willis is a bad guy. Bruce Willis kisses another guy (as part of scamming the guy, who is gay). Bruce Willis wears a variety of disguises and never quite manages to look inconspicuous or even nonchalant in them. *sigh* I’m used to Bruce being so much better. Richard Gere did an excellent job as an occasionally-clever, stupid-but-likeable criminal (who’s really a good guy). Sidney Poitier must have needed a paycheck, is all I can guess at, and can’t quite pull off being an FBI agent. I guess this was supposed to be a caper flick, of sorts, but it just misses the mark. More explosions would have made it more interesting, but still wouldn’t have saved it. Nonetheless, at the movie’s end, I didn’t quite feel like I’d wasted 2 hours of my life.
The Bounty – Pretty good flick. Lovely scenery, gorgeous tall ships, many beautiful half-naked Polynesians doing stupendously-gorgeous tribal dances. A pretty straight-forward and not overly-entertaining retelling of the famous mutiny. Mel Gibson & Liam Neeson look incredibly young, Anthony Hopkins looks suitably gruff. Absolutely nobody’s acting skills stand out, except perhaps the guy who plays the Tahitian king. The only glaring flaw in this movie, though, is that the youngest officer on the ship seems to be “spotlighted” early in the movie, so that you’re waiting for this young actor (probably all of 15 at the time) to have a major scene or somehow be an integral part of a sub-plot…but it never happens, and you’re left feeling vaguely confused by it. Great to crochet by, or otherwise idly watch while devoting part of your attention elsewhere.
White Noise – If you like scary movies, this one’s a keeper. Micheal Keaton is good, although he doesn’t seem to be aging all that well (I really loved him in My Life, where he plays a dying man who makes videotaped messages for his unborn child to watch as the child grows up). I was pretty impressed by Deborah Kara Unger, who I don’t think I’ve seen in a movie before. She’s very striking, and has a compelling charisma even when she’s not doing anything in a scene.
I won’t be watching it again, though, because like all good scary flicks, it has just enough realism to creep you out. I giggle at zombie & vampire movies, because (despite my Buffy fangirl-ness) there aren’t really zombies & vampires out there. I enjoy creepy sci-fi flicks, because they’re set in the future, with lots of high-tech stuff we don’t actually have, and generally in a galaxy far, far away. But horror movies set in the here & now, or the historically-accurate past, with phenomenon that are actually possible in the real world (even if highly unlikely, still possible)…yeah, I don’t need to dwell overly much on that. I dismiss odd occurrences in my house with chuckling references to our “black hole,” which (if it indeed exists) is the most mellow poltergeist in history. (Or possibly the ghost of an absent-minded librarian, since it often moves keys, books, remote controls, and other small items from where you left them.)
Of course, having a beloved with a sick sense of humor helps lighten the mood a bit. Although there are several serious “jump moments” in White Noise (those bits where you’re startled into jumping, even if the scene isn’t actually that scary) – including one that made Lyse jump, shriek, and quickly scoot backward a couple feet – it’s hard to really get immersed into the horror of a flick after a scene where Micheal Keaton is looking terribly concerned & thoughtful, and Geoffrey voices gruffly, “I’m Batman.”
Lyse instructed me to smack him, but I was giggling too much to do it.
