Iron Man 3 - catching up

What a great way to start the summer movie season! Ron and I took Viliamu to see Iron Man 3 today. We all really enjoyed it. Tony Stark's past came back to haunt him and that's all I will say - I will not ruin this movie for anyone else. Lots of action and suspense - some violence and fight scenes, but not bloody gory. Robert Downy, Jr. is one of my favorite actors and he does a great job with this character. Guy Pearce and Ben Kingsley are excellent as the villains for this movie. It passed The 6 year old attention span test! He sat still for the entire show. No Oscars for this movie, but it's a lot of fun!

I am a little behind telling you about some other movies that we've seen lately. With summer movies on the way, I thought it would be a good idea to get caught up. 

Ron and I went to see this Pain and Gain last week. Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson play real life criminals Daniel Lugo and Paul Doyle. In a lot of ways it's a funny move - funny strange not funny ha ha. During the entire movie I couldn't imagine that I was watching a true story, but apparently it is. There are some pretty gruesome things that take place in the telling of this story. I suppose it's a fair telling of the story, but I don't recommend it.

Yesterday we went to see The Big Wedding. I had heard some pretty bad reviews for this one, but I wanted to see it anyway. Robert Deniro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Robin Williams were enough of a reason for me to see this  movie. I have to admit that it was incredibly predictable from start to finish and parts of it were pretty crass. We did laugh some, though, so it wasn't a total loss!

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We finally got around to watching Gangster Squad on pay per view last week. It's very loosely based on a real gangster, Mickey Cohen. We had wanted to see it when it was in the theater, but it was one that got away from us. It's worth putting in your queue on Netflix if you like gangster films. Ryan Gosling is always easy on the eyes and Sean Penn is excellent as the brutal Mickey Cohen. We liked it.

Last but not least, we watched this movie last Friday night. This, too, is based on the true story of a family's experience and survival in the aftermath of the tsunami that hit Indonesia in 2004. Naomi Watts was nominated for an academy award for her performance in this film last year and it was well deserved. She was amazing in this. It was difficult to see what happened to the people in Thailand during this natural disaster. It's a good film - also worth putting in your queue.

I will do my best to keep up with my reviews. The Great Gatsby comes out next week and its next on our list.

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!

Best Movies of 2012

I am writing and posting this much later than I usually do. But since Oscar nominations came out over a week ago, I was reminded that I haven't given you my Top 10 Movies for 2012. Upon reviewing the full list of movies that came out last year (there were 246!) , I found that I only saw a small fraction of the movies released in 2012 - 53 to be exact - averaging one movie each week - but only 21.5% of all the movies released. You don't have to take my list seriously since I saw so few films last year. I really feel I will have to do better during 2013.

So without further or do here is my Top 10 Favorite Movies of 2012...

10. Silver Linings Playbook
9. The Avengers
8. Moonrise Kingdom
7. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
6. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
5. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
4. People like Us
3. Argo
2. Lincoln
1. Les Miserables

We will have to see what happens at the Oscars next month to see if my list lines up with any of the big winners. I haven't gotten around to seeing some of the movies that are in contention for the big prize (Life of Pi, for example),  but I will have to try to remedy that before the Academy Awards on February 24th. That gives me 5 weekends to squeeze in a few more movies...