Watching

Movies I enjoyed recently

Sing Street. Another good story with music. I am becoming a softie in my old age?

Begin Again. Touching love story featuring a 50-year-old who needs to reboot his career and love life. Spoiler alert – people act their age.

Ondine. Charming fairy tale of an Irish alcoholic fisherman finding redemption when he pulls up a fishing net and finds a nearly-drowned young woman.

Series in progress

Dr. Who. It took the 2005 or so re-boot with Christopher Eccleston to lure me in, coupled with my niece’s love of David Tennant. I feel I’m right in sync with where I should be – watched an episode set on Nov 11, 1913 on Nov 11, 2013. The episode “Blink”, if you can watch just one episode, is a masterpiece of time travel storytelling. I can’t see a statue now without … eerie good fun. [Update: Put aside Dr. Who for a while, sometime after Rose left the companions got irritating and the creature of the week feature less entertaining. I’m sure we’ll keep slogging through.]

Grimm. Bad police procedure, but the initial premise and Monroe entertained me. It’s a good argument for unarmed characters, as they have to think more if they shoot less.

X-Files. It’s so old, pre internet, pre cell phone, but oh-so-current.

Firefly. Can’t watch it enough. Always such a charming good raucous time.

Treme. Enjoyed watching the characters develop. The music feels very authentic. Can’t wait for more seasons of Treme or Game of Thrones coming down the Netflix pipe.

Gave up on:

Star Trek Next Generation. Painfully poorly acted and tedious 25 years later.

Boardwalk Empire. Just never cared enough for the characters or the story, and blood and gun fire truly turn me off quickly.

Finished

Man in the High Castle. Won me over quickly with the quiet sharp dark-haired girl in Aikido. You know she’s going to kick ass too. And like Orphan Black, the actual choices she makes as she goes along are sometimes puzzling. Character motivation and choices can make or break my experience. Characters have to make smart choices. Or, if they aren’t the best option for the character to take, a damn good reason why based on the characters flaws, predilections, imperfect knowledge and blind spots, give me some reason why someone would do something as stupid as a horror movie parody other than the plot needed them in that place and time. Some people are creeped out by the Nazi imagery, I’m ok with it. I’m entranced by the vehicles and costume details in a 1962 under German and Japanese rule.

Orphan Black kicks ass. The first season is free on Amazon Prime, very tight plot, everyone’s actions make sense, and full surprises and twists at every turn. Now I’m suckered into paying for the second season as each episode drops. Finding more often “why the hell would she do THAT!” as the authors force characters into nonsense moves, steps that are out of character, just so everyone ends up at the point they need to reveal the next plot point. Sigh. I know people get rushed once something takes off, but it’s disappointing.

True Detective, Season One. Started out riveting, the last two episodes were a bit anti-climatic in the structure of the story, the final showdown  was somehow … gosh, maybe it was my mood watching it. But the time shifting in the story telling, brilliantly executed. Three people are interviewed for their version of past events, then the story shifts in time to the actual past events. The details of the toll time takes – the hair, weight, wrinkles on the characters – was so carefully brilliantly done.

Klown. I truly enjoyed it. Others thought it was way too juvenile. Whether or not it qualifies as a Good Movie or one people should recommend to others would make an interesting discussion, for sure.

The Hobbit? Interesting study of creating a story arc out of one third of a short book, some great songs, but really. 3 hours?

Hugo was a great movie. I enjoyed learning about Mélière and have been watching more classic movies ever since. John Wayne of the 1930s, Charlie Chaplin.

Three Musketeers completely failed to live up to its trailer. All that money on costumes and sets and they couldn’t buy a freakin’ plot?

Real Steel was worth the theater ticket. It’s very typical plot development, but Hugh Jackman is brilliant, the robots, the future Detroit, the weak and wily kicking ass over the rich and powerful, good story.

Machete – the two female characters looked very much too much like each other, but it was an adventure.

Buckaroo Banzai – there’s a lot of 1980s vintage stuff streaming through my Netflix/Roku account these past few weeks. In all these years and viewings, very little about this movie ever actually sticks in my head. It’s like cotton candy.

Pow Wow Highway – another quest adventure, this time with two Cheyennes in a very old pony of a car on a road trip to rescue a damsel-in-distress. Scenery of Montana to Santa Fe going through Pine Ridge. I love this movie, it’s quietly comic, magical fantasy that makes your heart open to the goodness and subtle otherworldliness of the main character: chubby, awkward, and maybe slightly-not-so-bright Philbert. Against the militant background of Buddy Red Bow that makes you remember why VietNam, Peltier, and AIM matter. Great music, opening with Joe Ely singing Lords of the Highway and Robbie Robertson humming in and out. Takes me back to the KGSR (Austin) playlist of 1990 minus the Bob Dylan. One of the best movies of the 1980s, in retrospect.

Sucker Punch –  I didn’t know what to expect. Enjoyed over-the-top fight sequences, anime and video game aesthetics applied to a movie with four girls dancing their way out of a mental hospital. Crazy, eh? Good quest set up: find four items, identify the true heroine, make a sacrifice, kill the bad guy, mission accomplished, fade into the sunset.

Super 8 – more coming of age, lots of huge great noisy special effects, I thought the story-telling was meh but others were entranced. Definitely a good ride.

Hot Tub Time Machine – I was only teasing after Black Swan when I said I’d find a movie with man-on-man action! Definitely a coming of age (where do I come from?) tale, the youngest learns about his conception.

Black Swan – a female coming of age story, and boy do we bleed.

Rango – is to the hero what Gnomeo is to three-act structure.

Cowboys and Aliens – certainly starts with ‘a stranger comes to town’ and then some even stranger stuff comes through town.

Tenth Kingdom – reuse of the familiar to tell the story without lots of prefab parts.

Gnomeo and Juliet – a super-clear presentation of three act structure.

Tudors – good series, better with subtitles. Sex, drugs, and dirty dancing, 16th century style.