Somusing

Or as our drive-in has it, Nacho LEBRA. I don't know if they ran out of letters or if they're creative or what.

We laughed. Jack Black using a Mexican accent is funny, it turns out. Professional wrestling is always weird, even when it's funny. I liked it.

After bad-mouthing this movie (or at least implying that it wasn't good), I thought I should watch it. It was pretty dumb. I guess that's what happens when you write a script based on a song like "Love Potion No. 9."

Everyone seems too modern and sentimental in these movies. Having said that, I kind of enjoyed the first Work and the Glory movie. This one not so much. I may have been more critical because I was in a bad mood (dealing with broken appliances made me crazy last night). I thought the movie might make me appreciate my modern and convenient life, but instead I was annoyed by the actor's facial expressions. I do like Joseph Smith in these movies for some reason, though he's nothing like I imagine he really was.

I just discovered that I don't know how to spell "Caribbean." It still looks weird to me.

I loved the first Pirates of the Caribbean. That was one of my favorite rides at Disneyland when I was a kid, and while I'm not a fan of Disney nowadays and I know it's a marketing gimmick to make movies based on their rides, I loved it! It was fun and funny, the story was good, and Johnny Depp was great. It even withstood a third viewing recently.

Anyway, I hardly ever see first-run movies, but I took my visiting sister to our local drive-in for the second Pirates of the Caribbean. For a few minutes at the beginning, I thought it might be really stupid, but then I started to enjoy it. The crazy action scenes are crazy and unbelievable, even cartoon-like, but the dialogue was again hilarious and clever, and the story interesting and good. I enjoyed it very much and look forward to seeing it again.

We have a tiny public library where we live, and sometimes I get movies from them just because they have them. I always wonder how they decide which movies they'll buy, but many are probably donated, because why would a tiny library choose to purchase The Truth About Cats & Dogs or Love Potion No. 9? Of course, I don't know how libraries choose to purchase anything, so I'll shut up.

Anyway, this is an okay movie, not appallingly bad and not particularly good. Janeane Garofalo seemed happier than in most roles she played. And it's the first time I've seen Uma Thurman play a dumb girl. I liked their characters and liked that it was also about their friendship, and not just about the guy/girl thing. It was okay.

What I watched while the blog was resting:

• Follow Me, Boys (the kids loved this, even though by today's standards it's about three movies in one)
• Blow (edited for TV)
• Mobsters and Mormons (funny)
• Spellbound
• Holes (so good! I love Mr. Sir, mostly because we know someone just like him)
• National Treasure
• Gone With the Wind
• Off the Map
• Cipher in the Snow
• John Baker’s Last Race
• Seven Years in Tibet (fun to see again after reading the book recently, which is fascinating, by the way)
• Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (five minutes thereof; hard to express how bad I think this movie is)
• Pride and Prejudice (2005) (after initial annoyance--because who can do better than the 1995 A&E production with Colin Firth?--came to like this very much)
• Master and Commander
• Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit
• Melinda & Melinda
• Good Night, and Good Luck. (I thought this was an amazing movie; and were people smarter back then? 'cause the people on TV sure talked smarter!)
• Curious George
• Nanny McPhee
• Eight Below
• The Office (BBC, season 1)
• William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
• Everything is Illuminated (really enjoyed this, though it has quite a serious ending)
• Manna from Heaven
• Bigger than the Sky
• Alex and Emma
• In Her Shoes
• Dreamer
• Just Friends (surprisingly funny in spite of a Saturday-Night-Live-like beginning that made me think it would just be annoying)
• Prime (great acting by Meryl Streep)
• The New World
• Bleak House (BBC mini-series) (delightful Dickens characters with delightful names like Mr. Guppy and Mr. Skimpole and Mr. Smallweed)
• Reality Bites (is this movie supposed to be a satire? 'cause it seemed like one to me)
• Failure to Launch (I don't like Matthew McConaughey very much, but I enjoyed this movie; good secondary characters)
• Freaky Friday
• Over the Hedge
• Cars (made me laugh out loud a few times)
• The Pink Panther (2006)
• Le Genou de Claire (Claire’s Knee)
• Mr. and Mrs. Smith
• RV (better than I thought it would be)
• The Family Stone
• Ushpizin (very good Jewish movie in Hebrew)
• Proof
• Gladiator (TV edit) (great music sung by Lisa Gerrard, of Dead Can Dance)

Based on a book by Thornton Wilder (author of Our Town), this film is about five people who die when a bridge collapses, and a Franciscan monk who investigates their deaths for evidence of God's design, uncovering their secrets and connections with each other along the way. It takes place in Peru in the early 1700s. It's weird to see European culture in Peru--I mean, of course the Catholic church was everywhere and has been for a long time, but the huge, ornate European-style buildings and carriages and clothes and wigs--did they have to bring those? But I guess I can't blame the Church for that, or not exclusively. Of course this was Spain in Peru, so it was probably an unholy marriage of Church and State, and in that case, I can blame the Church.

Anyway, it was pretty interesting, although it took a while for me to figure out what was happening. A lot of great actors (Gabriel Byrne, Robert de Niro, Kathy Bates, F. Murray Abraham), but some of them seemed like they were reading the lines instead of acting.

I've never read anything by Thornton Wilder except Our Town, and it occurs to me that it was about dead people, too. Though in a very different way. I think the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey would be worth reading.

I liked this movie quite a bit. The main character, Damian, is a little boy who reads and knows everything about Catholic saints, and sometimes he converses with them, always greeting them with their name and dates of birth and death. It made me want to read more about the saints.

The story is good, too. Damian finds a huge duffle bag full of money, and he and his brother hide it and have very different ideas about how to spend the money.

There is a very interesting but strange portrayal of LDS people in the movie. I wonder if they were included just because of the Saints thing, and if it's based on someone's brief contact with missionaries or something. There are three youngish men who live together in a house in the new development the boys live in. They're dressed like missionaries and one of them carries what looks like a Book of Mormon in one scene. No nametags, though, and one of the men explains at one point that they live in a special "community" with no TV, dishwasher, microwave, etc., so they end up sounding like a commune. At any rate, weird, like I said, but it makes me wonder how missionaries must appear to people.

This is a psychological thriller about a mall security guy (John Turturro) whose wife was murdered in the mall parking lot, and now he's obsessed with watching security tapes and trying to figure out who did it and why. The cinematography is very good, and I liked the music. It's pretty slow-moving, but it managed to scare me. But I'm a wimp when it comes to scary movies, so that probably doesn't mean much.

The movie does not have a definitive ending, and while there are some interesting possibilities about what really happened, I was discouraged to read later that the director (a Danish guy who also co-wrote it) admitted that there's no ending. I'd like there to be a right answer, so that after Jon and I discuss it, we can check to see if we were right. Apparently that can't happen with this movie.

(And actually, while I'd like to have right answers to things, there often aren't, if there's any ambiguity at all. Jon and some fellow Mamet fans have been known to introduce questions about The Spanish Prisoner, which seems to be all neatly tied up at the end. But is it really? I was kind of mad when Jon started questioning the ending of that movie, but I admit that it extends the talk-about-ability of it. How's that for a made-up word?)

So it was an interesting movie, nice to look at most of the time, but I felt somewhat let down at the end. Does that make me shallow?

This was mildly amusing and pleasant enough to watch. Wanda Sykes was surprisingly funny. The character of the guy was sort of invisible, but I think that was intentional, since it's about J-Lo and Jane Fonda. Well, about the characters they played, anyway. Though it does seem that J-Lo movies are made for us to look at J-Lo and all her pretty clothes.

We can never resist the special features, and they were good on this 2 DVD set (is two DVDs really necessary for such an inconsequential movie?). Even the section called "Documentaries," which confused us at first, (because what is there to make a documentary about?), had some great stuff in it. The various actors are funnier in their interviews than they were in the film.