This weekend I’ve had the great pleasure of watching:
Secretariat – Disney’s fluff film of the true story of Secretariat and his owner, Penny Tweedy. Good family movie about a woman stepping outside of her “house wife” status and into something much bigger. Nice little feel-good movie, maybe a little more fluffy than the real life story, but it makes you feel good and has much more humor than I expected.
Let Me In – Chloe Grace Moretz broke out in Kick Ass, and Let Me In continues to show her acting chops. A remake of the Swedish film (based on the novel of the same name) Let the Right One In, Let Me In is the tale of a shy, bullied boy who befriends the new girl next door … who happens to be a vampire. I haven’t seen the original yet, but this version was a great film. Some may feel sorry for Abby, others will see a deeper evil in her. I look at it as she is just as much a victim as Owen, they just have very different lifestyles.
McLintock! – The first John Wayne movie I’ve seen all the way through. Recommended by a co-worker, this film is hilarious! A great comedy western with the Duke of westerns himself. I can’t say much for Wayne’s acting in the film and the delivery of his lines, but as a comedy, the entire cast delivers.
Autumn – Do you know what I like in Zombie movies? Zombies. A hour in, there have been exactly one close call involving the walking dead. The acting is pretty bad, the story is pretty bad, the audio is horrible. I can normally find the bright side in any movie I watch, but there is nothing really redeeming in this movie. If I had to say something positive about the film, I suppose it would be that it could potentially be a good starting point for a series. The evolution and adjustment of the recently deceased from reawakening to the blood thirsty death bringers that they should be could be skewed into something that hasn’t really been presented before, I suppose. Although, there again, I guess the last George Romero movie in the Dead series, Land of the Dead, could be presented as an example of this – the zombies, by films end, were starting to show intelligence in picking up weapons, banding together in groups and storming the city. But I’ve already gone off on a tangent. My advice is to avoid Autumn at all costs unless you just want to experience it for yourself. But I can’t honestly recommend it.
The Chaperone – Starring a wrestler known as Triple H (real name Paul Levesque), I wasn’t expecting much from this film, billed as a teen comedy. It instead turned out to be a pretty good flick. It’s about a man who comes out of prison after 7 years and tries to make amends with a daughter he barely knows. When that fails, he almost turns back to his old ways of robbing banks, but at the last minute has a change of heart. He instead accompanies his daughters class on a field trip. Little does he know that his bank robbing buddies have hidden their loot aboard the bus, and he is involved anyways. A fun little film that hit me unexpectedly by how good it was. Not very funny, not overly dramatic, but a nice little blend of both.
True Grit (1969) – The John Wayne version! I have the remake with Jeff Bridges in my Netflix queue, but figure I might as well check out the original first since I’ve already watched one John Wayne movie this weekend. Well made film with Wayne toward the end of his career. Also had younger versions of Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper.
