Butchie Boy

Here is what we saw:

Here are my reviews:

The 10th Kingdom

Transdimensional trolls from the “4th” kingdom invade Central Park in their pursuit of a prince who has been turned into a dog. That’s as far as we got when the phone rang. What a perfect excuse for not wasting another minute on this clunker. If it hadn’t been for some fine, but miscast actors, this baby might even have rated a “1”. As it is it’s a very low 2.

Netflix – 2 stars

Elizabeth – The Golden Age

This movie tells the story of Phillip of Spain’s plans to invade England and get rid of the upstart Protestant Queen Elizabeth I. The movie is told from the English side of course. Along with this plot there is the romantic sub plot of Elizabeth, Sir Walter Raleigh, and the queen’s lady, Bess. The film ends with the sinking of the Spanish armada. From the reviews I knew the filmmakers took some liberties with historical fact. So, I’m not sure how much of this movie can be believed. The costumes were great. Elizabeth looked wonderful in armor with a waist length wig of flowing and braided red hair. I like the actors, but the storyline was pretty weak.

Theater – 3 stars

Snakes on a Plane

A man witnesses the brutal murder of a prosecuter by a crime boss and has an attempt made on his own life. He has to fly to Los Angeles to testify. Why the trial wasn’t in Hawaii where the murder occurred, I don’t know. The crime boss discovers which flight the witness will be on and smuggles a load of ultra poisonous snakes on board. When the plane is so far out, the snakes are released and spread to every part of the plane almost instantly. Oh yeah, they are all riled up because the villains have sprayed pheramones all over lots of flowers. They particularly like to bite people in intimate places when they are in the rest room. About 70 percent of the passengers are killed in a matter of minutes while the rest flee to the safety of the first class lounge. For some reason the snakes can’t get there even though they are in the cockpit which is right next door. All the interesting characters seem to survive and show lots of bravery, blah blah. When the flight crew is finally eliminated by the snakes, a hip hop body guard with 2000 hours of time on an Xbox flight simulator lands the plane and saves the day. Jeesh!

Netflix – 2 stars

Amazing Journey – The Story of the Who

If you are a Who fan, you’ll like this documentary. The basic structure of the film uses a record as a metaphor. It starts with an album, “Amazing Journey – The Story of the Who” being selected from a huge collection of records and put on a turntable. Each of the show’s segments is another cut on the album. Halfway through they turn the record over. Not a big deal but a nice touch. What’s really great is that the first quarter of the picture is before they got famous. Then it runs right up to the current day. When they were starting out, their agents were looking for a band to represent when they discovered our boys. From the very beginning they insisted that the group be filmed performing. Because of this, there is footage of the Who like no other band I can think of. Townsend is 17 or 18 years old when we first see him. Amazing. They are all babies. We all know Keith Moon died many years ago, but I had not heard that Entwhistle had died too. So it’s just down to Daltry and Townsend. While I recorded this off the TV, it is available on Netflix.

VH1 – 4 stars

Man on Fire

This is a fairly standard action/revenge movie. Our hero is hired to be the bodyguard of a little girl in Mexico City. Of course she gets kidnapped and he takes 4 bullets trying to prevent it. The ransom exchange gets muffed and the little girl is killed. A month later, pretty much recovered, our hero goes looking for revenge. Starting with one clue, an almost complete license plate number, he tracks back through the kidnappers one by one and do they pay the price. There is a little twist that I had figured out fairly early.

Netflix – 3 stars

What’s Up, Tiger Lily?

Was this ever a stinker. I remembered it fairly fondly but what a difference 40 years can make. Woody Allen got the rights to a “B” grade Japanese spy movie. He recut it and dubbed in English dialog but what seemed funny to an 18 year old does not appeal as much to a 59 year old. Give this one a miss.

Turner Classic Movies – 1 star

Firewall

A computer security expert and his family are kidnapped and he is forced to help a team of bank robbers steal $200 million from his bank. Throughout the middle of the movie he is constantly trying to get around his problem and raise the alarm. They catch him at it every time. This is all complicated by the fact that his bank is being taken over by another one and the security systems are changing. Where once he had access, now he has none. He comes up with a brilliant way to do it but he knows he and his family will be killed when it is done. Once the money has been transferred, things begin to wrong for the bad guys. From then on it’s a roller coaster ride to the conclusion.

Netflix – 3 stars

Bee Movie

A bee graduates from bee college and reports for his first day of work. Work that promises to be continuous and monotonous for the rest of his life. He is intrigued by the pollen gathers, the top guns of the hive. While they have the most glory, they also face the worst dangers; birds, spiders, fly swatters etc. They dare him to come along with them on his first mission. He gets separated from the rest and commits the biggest bee sin, talking to a human, a woman that owns a flower shop. He also learns that some bees live in bee concentration camps and are forced to produce honey that the humans steal. He sues the entire human race for return of the stolen honey with disasterous consequences. The rest of the movie is how he tries to fix things. The plot of this movie isn’t that much but it’s a wonderful framework to hang one line jokes on and this movie is just plain funny. It was written by and starred Jerry Seinfeld. So if you think he is funny you won’t be disappointed.

Theater – 4 stars

Volver

Several women interact in this Spanish language movie. Primarily it is about a woman, her sister and her daughter, but it is also about the woman’s ghostly mother, her dying aunt, and the aunt’s neighbor. Fairly early on there is a murder and disposing of the body takes place over the course of the movie. Then we learn of a couple of other murders. But this is not a murder mystery. They are just incidental to the story line. Primarily it is a movie of reconciliation. It’s kind of a chick flick but it’s wierd enough it should interest guys too.

Netflix – 3 stars

Coyote Waits / A Thief of Time

These are two different movies but we saw them one right after the other. They both involve Tony Hillerman’s Navajo tribal policemen, Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.

In Coyote Waits Chee is on the radio to a fellow officer who is trying to figure out who is defacing the cliffs. Something is wrong and Chee responds as backup only to arrive and find the other officer dead in a burning car. He discovers an old drunk indian walking away with a bottle of whiskey and the murder weopon. Slam dunk. Leaphorn’s wife asks him to help the old man out because he is from her clan. The deeper they dig, the more it’s unlikely the old man did it.

In the Thief of Time Leaphorn is assigned to find an archeologist who seems to be selling antiquities and Chee is looking for a missing back hoe the he was somehow responsible for. As in most Leaphorn/Chee works, the paths of the two come together and they end up working on the same case.

I am a very big fan of the Leaphorn and Chee novels and I was excited when I learned that they were making movies of the books and that Robert Redford was going to be the executive producer. The first one I saw was Skinwalkers and I was very, very disappointed. Leaphorn was portrayed as confused and unsure of his place in things and Chee was the cocksure, young stud who helps him come to terms with himself. This is almost exactly the opposite of the characters in the books. Perhaps I ought to watch this one again since it has been a number of years since I saw it and may not be remembering it exactly right. Anyway, the current two movies had things back to normal. The movies don’t come across as well as the books in showing the Navajo cultural mystery but the movies are well made. I always envisioned Graham Greene as Leaphorn and maybe Lou Diamond Philips as Chee. Wes Studi is pretty good as Leaphorn. The actor that portrays Chee is a little too stocky to match my picture of him. Graham Greene is in these two movies but rather than the main hero, he is a bible-thumping flim flam man. Oh well.
Netflix – 3 stars

3:10 to Yuma

A band of outlaws robs a stage and in the process runs into a rancher and his two sons. For some reason the outlaws don’t kill him like they did everyone else. The rancher is in financial straights and comes into town to try and talk his creditor out of foreclosing and while he is there, the main bad guy is captured. There will be hell to pay when his men come back for him so they hustle him to a nearby town to catch the 3:10 prison train to Yuma and our rancher hero signs on as part of the posse. The reward will save him financially. The rest of the gang is in hot pursuit. Our heroes arrive in town before the bad guys but have to wait around for the train to arrive. There is a stand off and one by one the posse is either killed or runs off leaving only the rancher and his teenage son to get the villain to the train depot. Of course they have to run the gantlet to get him there. Lots of gun play. Half way to the station there is a plot shift that makes no sense whatsoever and you are left with a bittersweet ending.

Theater – 3 stars

Beowulf and Grendel

This is a variation on the Beowulf story although it is pretty close to the original. Also, it ends with the death of Grendel’s mother and not 50 years later with the dragon. For this movie’s approach some liberties are taken with Grendel’s motivations for evil and the way he loses his arm. They also introduce the character Selma that I just don’t remember. Perhaps I should reread the poem. The look and feel of this movie are great. The armor looks just like what they found in the Sutton Hoo burials. The windswept northern countryside is beautiful and the characters are as filthy and earthy as you would expect. I reserved this movie months ago, long before the current release of the new 3D Beowulf. As luck would have it, the DVD arrived the same day we were going to see the new one in the theater. The theater was full however and you must wait a bit before I can give you the review on that one.

Netflix – 4 stars

The Warrior

This movie is set in northwest India sometime before guns or autos. Lafcadia, the warrior, is the local lord’s head enforcer. He is order to teach a nearby village a lesson because their taxes didn’t come up to what the lord expected. In the process he renounces his violent past and readies himself to return to his hometown of Tullu. The local lord is mad and sends Lafcadia’s former collegues to return with Lafcadia’s head. They can’t find him, kill someone else, and take his son captive. As Lafcadia treks to Tulla he encounters other characters, some new, some from earlier in the movie. There is a showdown in Tulla and Lafcadia settles down to a normal life. I gave this movie a 4 because it was pretty good and you just don’t see this type of thing. It was shot on location and the production standards were first rate. The cinematography is stunning, even the desert sequences. When they get to the mountains it is just beautiful. It’s not as action packed as many movies, but it was a delightful little find. It does have subtitles however.

Netflix – 4 stars

Flags of Our Fathers

This movie tells the story of the men who did the famous flag raising on Iwo Jima during WWII. The action is gritty, like in Saving Private Ryan. But this in not just a battle movie. Jumping back and forth in the story line it also tells what happened to the men after the battle when they were back stateside selling warbonds. And eventually how their lives ended. There were actually two flag raisings. The first flag raising was an inspiration and when some mucky muck ordered the unit captain to get him that flag, the captain sent his men up Mount Sarabachi to get the real flag and put another one in its place for the mucky much to have. The first flag was to go to the marine unit. I wonder if it ever did. Both flag raisings had pictures taken and the second one also had movie footage shot. There is sadness also in that half the men who participated didn’t make it off the island and one who took part in the real, first flag raising was never recognised till much later.

Netflix – 3 stars

Here is what we saw:

Here are my reviews:

Marie Antoinette

We tried to watch this movie three different times but the DVDs wouldn’t play past the FBI notices. Finally after 3 different disks, I had to watch it on my computer which did work for some reason. The movie documents the life of Marie Antoinette from the time she is sent to France to marry Louis XVI to just before she is introduced to Madam Le Guillotine. She is painted fairly sympathetically. The movie does a great job illustrating the oppulance of the French court at that time. There is very little of the terrible conditions of the common people. I think the movie would have benefitted from a comparison of the two but maybe that wasn’t Sophie Coppola’s intent. The dialog seemed pretty good throughout but in the last 20 minutes it turned wooden. I’m also not sure I cared for the modern background music. I saw Marianne Faithful’s name in the credits and couldn’t tell who she could be. She turns out to be Marie Antoinette’s mother. What a difference 40 years will make in one’s appearance.
Netflix – 3 stars

Sea Monsters 3D: A Prehistoric Adventure

A mother Dolichorhynchops (Dolly for short) has two babies and this 3D movie is the story of the baby female’s life. Their rapid growth to adolescence in the shallow seas and eventual migration to deeper waters brings them in contact with the others in the cast of characters. Some of them are small and are Dolly’s prey. Others are gigantic and are fearsome predators that Dolly herself is not safe from. Eventually she dies of old age and is buried in the sea floor where her fossilized skeleton is discovered in modern times. My granddaughter Rachel and I are 3D fans and I take every opportunity I can to let her see 3D movies. This was the latest. The animation of the beasts was very good and the 3D was almost perfect. The surface rendering of the skin was not quite as realistic of some of the other prehistoric beast movies we have seen, Jurassic Park for instance, but the way they moved and the way they handled the 3D was spot on. Very realistic. The movie had a couple of things that were less than perfect; the live shots of the paleontologists suffered from too wide of lens positioning and they used a Model A Ford pickup for a scene supposedly shot in 1918. Most people wouldn’t notice that however and it was more of a little easter egg than a problem.

Here is National Geographic’s web site for the movie:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/seamonsters/
Theater – 3 stars

Grand Prix

This was a favorite movie of mine from 1966. I was really interested in grand prix racing and it was at the time when the cars were at their absolute most beautiful. Those wonderful little cigar shaped Lotus Fords and Ferraris. The movie is about one season’s competition for the world championship. Our hero, a young British lad is out ahead but he is competing as much with his dead older brother as the others. Early in the season his American teammate blocks him from going around and causes an accident which cripples our boy who may never race again. Then the teammate runs off with our boy’s wife. Over the next several races the old French champion, the young Italian, and the American all win races. Our boy, against all odds overcomes his injuries and returns to the game. It all comes down to the last race. Whoever wins among the four will have the most points and be the champion. I’m not telling who wins. The American is played by James Garner and I hated his character so much that I transferred that hatred to him. I hated him for years. When Rockford Files came out I tuned it in one time despite my dislike for Garner and as luck would have it, he got the crap beat out of himself by the bad guys. GREAT! I started watching regularly because Garner got beat up in just about every episode. But that was such a great show, I learned to like James Garner. I wondered if I would feel the same as I did about him when I saw the movie again, but I still like him.
Turner Classic Movies – 3 stars

2010

The spaceship with the deactivated HAL still on board starts to have its orbit degrade as it sits next to the mysterious monolith. The Russians are sending a mission and are way ahead of the US in their preparations, but know nothing about the spaceship. They invite the Americans to participate in a joint mission. When they arrive, they reactivate HAL and realize why there was a problem in 2001. There is tension between the US and the Russians back home and the various crew members are ordered to go to their own vessels and have no contact with each other. But that is not to be. Right then, a dark spot appears on the surface of Jupiter and it appears to be growing. They have to rejoin forces to get away in the nick of time. The monolith has started to duplicate itself and it’s having an effect on Jupiter which eventually implodes and turns into a dwarf start. One interesting thing is that the movie was made in 1984, before the disintegration of the Soviet Union so there are lots of hammers and sickles still in evidence.
AMC – 3 stars

The U.S. vs John Lennon

This was a documentary about the Nixon administration’s persecution of John Lennon for his anti war views. It was a pretty straightforward chronology. It was fun to see the old events but otherwise is was fairly uninspired.
Netflix – 3 stars

A Scanner Darkly

This was one of the strangest movies we’ve seen in a long time. Set 7 years in the future, a narcotics officer is hot on the trail of drug dealer who peddles Substance D, the drug of choice which has addicted 20% of the population. Substance D has the side effect that it causes schizophrenia and unbeknownst to the narc, the dealer is his other personality. The plot gets tricky after a while. Mostly the movie is seen through the eyes of four main characters, all druggies with very distinct personalities. Because of this it is hard to tell exactly what is going on as a result of their drug addled brains. The ending is a bit of a surprise. This was done with the same type of effect as Sin City or 300 with animation drawn over the top of live action footage. Very wierd.
Netflix – 3 stars

The Matador

A businessman on a trip to Mexico gets drunk with another guy who turns out to be a hit man. They become friends and while at the bull fight, the businessman asks the hit man if his assignment was to kill one of the attendees of the bullfight, right here, right now, how would he go about doing it. The hit man shows him. They go their separate ways. After some time, the hit man starts to lose it and clinches at the decisive moment and thereby puts his job and life in jeopardy. A total wreck, he looks up the businessman and convinces him to help him with one last assignment.
Netflix – 3 stars

Into the Wild

This is a story of a young man who graduates from college in the early 1990s and drops out to head into the wild. He travels from the South across the United States to California and then up to Alaska. The movie starts when he is in Alaska and develops the story line by alternating flashbacks of the people he meets on his adventure with what is happening to him in Alaska. He has lots of experiences and hardships and as a writer, keeps track of everything in his notebooks. Beautiful scenery and an interesting life.
Theater- 3 stars