Tag: three sentence movies

Welcome to the first Best Movies Patricia Watched in 2008 awards. We have no celebrity presenters here, or sparkly statues or celebrity gift bags, or even dinner and drinks, so without further ado:

When was the last time I saw Sean Penn playing an impish character instead of a repressed and tortured one? I had forgotten he had it in him. Well acted, very good period piece, good story line, a bit long near the end, and I can’t quite square this in my Gus Van Sant world.

It has been a very long time since I have watched a science fiction/fantasy movie. Though a little long near the end, this was a delightful, suspenseful, well acted, well designed movie. Perfect for families.

An understated story about the sometimes-rough transition from adolescence to adulthood set on a family farm in Nebraska. Sometimes I find a movie and I can’t imagine how I and the movie could have existed at the same time for so long and I wasn’t aware of it. Excellent acting all around and filled with many tiny moments of joy, I highly recommend this.

This is one of those movies that has me looking for the book it is based on just as soon as the credits roll. The movie was good in both its romantic scenes, political scenes and those tense, “what the heck is going on?” scenes, but a little something was missing from the whole. Sometimes the book provides those missing parts.

ps. Billy Crudup. Yum.

Our across-the-street-neighbor Janet Miller took us to this movie when it came out. We saw it at the Egyptian Theater on a Sunday after church. The setting has never been as nice, but this movie is still as delightful as the first time I saw it.

This was a movie to watch if you like any of the main actors or have a lot of time on your hands. The story line was interesting, though I felt that some of the characters (Bill Pullman) and scenes were sort of dropped into the story randomly. Movies about alcoholics are kind of interesting and I felt like the main character’s attempts to become sober were accurately depicted, though I have no first-hand experience.

I mostly felt uncomfortable during this supposed “vibrant and uplifiting comedy.” I couldn’t get over the idea that 5.3 million American women experience abuse such as the main character experienced (and worse), yet we rarely see movies about this topic. This movie was beautifully filmed and I enjoyed the main characters and especially Andy Griffith, but I can’t really recommend it.

This is my favorite holiday movie even though I find the main character to be whiny, petulant and mostly unlikeable. There are so many good lines where I snort or hoot with laughter–“Mary? You on the nest?” is perhaps my favorite. And every year it kills me when George Bailey finds out that no man is ever poor who has friends.

Most of adult life is pretty boring and repetitious: hours, days, month spent doing the same thing over and over again with no real surprises. I can’t really convey the pleasure and the anticipation this movie brought letting me join the characters of Before Sunrise nine years later. They are still the same age as me and there is still a lot of walking and talking and well-thunk thoughts.
Crap, I can’t do this in three sentences, here are a few more: Never has a walk up a staircase been so full of tension. I’m hoping Linklater will take up Roger Ebert’s suggestion to drop in on them every nine years so we can see what has become of their lives.

Also, watching these movies one after another really highlights the aging that can take place in a decade. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, just looking at Ethan Hawke, I thought, “Wow! Has my face undergone similar changes?” Which of course it has, as I smoked for seven years and love the sun and tend to shy away from sunscreen.