Somusing

I have fond memories of the soundtrack to Saturday's Warrior and vague memories of my parents taking me to see a live production when I was little. We watched this 1989 production of the play while we were at my parents' house over Thanksgiving. I think I might be permanently scarred. The combination of cheesiness and 1980s fashion was too much for me. There's probably some pretty interesting psychological stuff I could get into (I used to think that looked cool?), but I'd rather not.

Yes Man is good! One of Jim Carrey's more thoughtful movies, funny but with something meaningful to say. I always like Zooey Deschanel, too. This movie is at least loosely based on a non-fiction book by Danny Wallace, which I'd like to read. Wallace sounds like the British version of A.J. Jacobs, doing semi-crazy stuff and then writing books about the experience.

This was so much better than I thought it was going to be. My expectations were fairly low, but it had interesting characters and made me laugh. And the central message was important and relevant and made an impact.

Here are a few movies I've watched again, with or without kids, in the last several months, and I like them all:

Ever After (1998): It's delightful to see the heroine saving the hero and herself from the bad guys. Also, I like da Vinci as a side character.

Legally Blonde (2001): I love this movie! Reese Witherspoon is a great actress. Not that this part is Oscar-worthy drama or anything, but she's hilarious and wonderful in it. And I always like Luke Wilson, too.

Mansfield Park (1999): The script takes many liberties with the story, but this time I noticed in the credits that it's based on the book and Jane Austen's life and/or her Juvenilia (can't remember exactly what it said). So it's not a true adaptation of one of her novels, but I really like it.

Wonder Man (1945): I have many good memories of watching this with my family, among them waiting for my sister Ally, probably about four at the time, to laugh hysterically and predictably at one part in particular. My kids loved it, too. Danny Kaye is delightful.

As far as romantic comedies go, this is much better than usual. But maybe it's more drama than rom-com. It's nice to see a romance between older, more believable people. I liked it.

It was the trailer for this movie that inspired me to finally read a little of the original Sherlock Holmes works. I'm happy Jon and I could see it in a theater. I loved it. I thought the characters fit very well with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories (as far as I'm acquainted with them, anyway). Of course the action was ridiculously over the top, but that's modern movie-making, isn't it? Anyway, I thought it was a lot of fun.

We watched this movie last night with the kids. Based on a Michael Crichton book and directed by him, it's very loosely based on an actual robbery that occurred in 1855 in England. It's a pretty good heist movie, and we enjoyed it, although there's a lot of innuendo that I kept hoping the kids didn't get. Apparently, Sean Connery did his own stunt work on top of a moving train.

After all these years, it's still funny. Our kids had never seen it, so we watched it on New Year's Eve. Perfect New-Year's-Eve-with-the-kids fodder.

This is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I'm happy that it's still worth watching. Jon and I bought it for ourselves for Christmas on Blu-Ray, which means it will live at his parents' house, but that's okay. All the kids watched it with us, and the older ones liked it a lot. It's tough to follow sometimes, but Jon's dad provided helpful commentary that cleared some stuff up for me, too. (I think he used to work on submarines. Jon can verify or not.)

I don't really like to watch kid movies, so I don't usually. But I do take the kids to the movies occasionally, and these are the two we saw most recently:

Up (2009): I had no idea this would be so enjoyable. Maybe it was because my expectations were low, but this movie delighted me. I loved the talking dogs. It was nice to look at, too. (My sister Ivy would disagree. She didn't like it.)

Planet 51 (2009). We saw this in Lake Havasu when we visited Jon's brother and his family. I spent a lot of the movie getting popcorn and drink refills, which was fine because it seemed kind of dumb. And one time when I was out in the lobby, I almost saw Robert Redford! Right after the guy in the line to my right left (presumably Robert Redford), the teenage girl behind the counter asked me who Robert Redford was. Apparently, he'd given her his autograph and she had no idea who he was. I explained who he was and described him, and she just kept nodding her head while her eyes got bigger and bigger. It's kind of a sad story in a way: a screen legend going unrecognized by the girl who's too young to know him. On the other hand, I was glad that she seemed impressed just based on my description. At least she wasn't rolling her eyes and going, "Whatever."

I guess it's not saying much about the movie that my lame story about almost seeing Robert Redford seems more interesting to me. (Of course, there's also the chance that it was a Robert Redford look-alike just trying to mess with that girl. In which case, it's great that she didn't recognize him!)