Sorry about how late these reviews are. I usually write my review the day after I see a movie, but with the Christmas holiday and all, I somehow didn’t get the job done.
Here is what we saw:
Title | Made | Saw | Rating |
Forgetting Sarah Marshall | 2008 | 12/3/2008 | 2 |
The Gift | 2000 | 12/7/2008 | 3 |
After the Fox | 1966 | 12/14/2008 | 3 |
The Tale of Despereaux | 2008 | 12/23/2008? | 4 |
The Day the Earth Stood Still | 2008 | 12/27/2008? | 3 |
Here are my reviews:
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Oh how I wish I could. Sarah Marshall, a TV cop, breaks up with her real life boyfriend, the sound man on the show. He still loves her but she has made it clear she is done with him. He mopes around for way too long then in order to forget, he heads for Hawaii, a place he and Sarah had always talked about going to together. Only problem, when he gets there Sarah is there too along with her new boyfriend, a perfectly loathsome British rock musician. This makes for all sorts of excruciating social situations. Our hero takes a shine to the desk clerk at his hotel and that love interest starts to develop. In the end he realizes the desk clerk is better for him than Sarah. The first half of this movie was so tedious Karen actually asked me to turn it off three times. We persevered and by the time we got to the second half it actually started to get a little funny, about three stars worth. But the first half was so dismal it would only rate one star. The final rating of two stars is the average of the first and second half.
Netflix – 2 stars
The Gift
Kate Blanchet plays a woman with psychic abilities in a small Southern town. She befriends one of her clients, a woman whose husband beats her up all the time. He threatens the psychic and tells her to keep away from his wife. When the nude body of a local debutante is discovered in a pond on the man’s property he is targeted for the crime. The psychic has led the police to the pond based on a vision she has had. He now has it in for her for any number of reasons. The cops are friends of this good old boy so the psychic is in constant peril. She realizes the man is not the killer based on other psychic clues she has had, so the real killer has yet to be discovered. There are lots of twists and turns in this movie and it’s pretty interesting.
Netflix – 3 stars
After the Fox
Peter Sellers plays one of Europe’s greatest criminals. When a shipment of gold is stolen in Egypt and has to be sneaked into Europe he is the only one the police and criminals can think of to do the job. Only problem, he is in prison. However he is a master of escape and when he gets out, he takes the contract. Posing as a film producer in a small town, he claims he is making a movie about the smuggling of gold. It’s the real gold of course. He plays on an aging actor’s and the town’s vanities and has them all working to smuggle the gold in. This is what Lance would describe as a wacky 60s romp. I checked this movie out because it is what Karen and I saw on our first date, way back when. Quite nostalgic.
Netflix – 3 stars
The Tale of Despereaux
Despereaux is a mouse who just won’t behave properly. He won’t cower. He is not afraid. He even draws pictures of cats on his school notebook. After so many infractions of being un-mouselike, he is banished to the sewer where he will almost certainly be eaten by rats. At the same time, the king of the humans has made many unhappy social changes because of the death of his wife. Despereaux befriends the Princess and through his adventures restores the kingdom to happiness. This is one of the best animated movies I have ever seen. Computer animation just gets better and better every day. I took Wyatt to see this when the others were busy.
Theater – 4 stars
The Day the Earth Stood Still
This was a remake of the 1950s sci-fi classic. Instead of threatening the universe with nuclear war, the universe now seems to be threatened by the environmental ruination of our planet. Klaatu comes to Earth to give us one last chance but when he discovers things are hopeless, he sets about ridding the planet of mankind, the polluter of all things. He is persuaded to give us one last chance at the end. I thought the movie was pretty good, but Zach thought it was dreadful.
Netflix – 3 stars
I thought “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” was funny. Maybe a three star movie.