Mixed Bag

On Friday, I went with a friend to see Les Miserables - yes, it was my second time seeing the movie and I have to say that it was just as good, if not better for me the second time around. I have gotten some grief about naming Les Mis as my favorite movie of 2012, but I stand by my choice. Although, I did look at Russell Crowe with a more critical eye than I did the first time...he was definitely the least talented in the cast - all the other cast members sang and acted so passionately. I do agree that his performance was mediocre. Anyway, after seeing the movie again, it's probably going to take another week for me to get the movie soundtrack out of my head...

"Do you hear the people sing?

Singing a song of angry men?

It is the music of a people

Who will not be slaves again!

When the beating of your heart

Echoes the beating of the drums

There is a life about to start

When tomorrow comes!"

UNFORTUNATELY, the rest of the weekend was a bust for movies for us. Ron and I make a conscious effort every year to see all the nominated movies before the Academy Awards. Every once in a while there will be a movie nominated that we have absolutely no interest in seeing. This year there are two such films - Zero Dark Thirty and Django Unchained. Although we have heard that Zero Dark Thirty is an excellent film and all the controversy has made us curious, the fact that there are apparently very brutal torture scenes in it totally rules it out for me. I don't need to see that. Ignorance is bliss, I guess. As for Django, I am not a fan of Quentin Tarrantino AT ALL. I can't stand the brutal violence in his movies. So, we won't be seeing that one either.

So, having ruled out either one of those movies this past weekend, we decided to come home and see what was on pay per view. The first movie we decided to see was The Paper Boy. This was mostly interesting to us because of the cast - Nicole Kidman, John Cusack, Matthew McConaughey and Zac Efron. OMG - what a horrible HORRIBLE movie! It was so bad that I wanted to stop watching but it was a train wreck that I couldn't turn away from...had to see what happened at the end. I heard that this movie did well at Sundance or Cannes, but honestly, save yourself and DON'T SEE IT. It just left me feeling icky (like that fancy technical term?).

To try to lighten the mood after watching such a dark, ugly movie, we next opted for what we thought would be light and funny - To Rome with Love. In general, I am NOT a Woody Allen fan - especially when he acts in his own films. Although there were some very good actors in this movie like Judy Davis, Penelope Cruz, Alec Baldwin and Roberto Benigni, this was just silly. In fact, Ron fell asleep about 1/2 way through - he was that impressed. The best part of the movie was the location, but the story lines were just dumb. My recommendations is to skip it all together.

Thank goodness for Downton Abbey otherwise the weekend would have been a total bust!