Perfect soundtrack by Alexi Murdoch, some of which I’d heard before but hadn’t listened to in ages. Just fit the movie perfectly.

A movie about a happy relationship through and through = so rare these days! Instead of a couple in trouble, this is a couple looking for “home”. Trying to find that place they belong. Wandering together, looking for the place they both fit. Visiting friends, visiting family, seeing what they have, and what they don’t. Trying it all on.

Quite lovely. (And both the leads are so NOT at all what they have been before. Really unexpectedly good performances.)

This was actually a well-plotted, well-acted, intelligently written thriller and a really good movie…up until about 10 minutes from the end when it went just one twist too far and basically EVERYTHING falls apart from that moment on. And I mean EVERYTHING. If you go home and think about what that moment CHANGES, you get about 17,000 strands going off in the wrong direction that just don’t even make sense anymore.

At the exact moment it happened, P. and I looked over at each other, and I said “Sigh” and he made the universal hand motion for “DOWNHILL” and the movie just threw away all the good it had been up to that point.

If you pretend those 10 minutes didn’t happen: some really tight performances by Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck, and Helen Mirren was great, and Rachel McAdams really made her part sing, and Jason Bateman has really made himself a new career out of playing slimeballs so well (what with this and with Juno) and there was some nice cinematography and wow Jeff Daniels looks HORRIBLE, WTF happened to him. And then BAM. 10 minutes of suckage that destroys all the fine plotting of the previous two hours.

Ah well. Happens to the best of us, doesn’t it. I know my plotting falls apart pretty much every time I try. (I’m talking Life there, not Movies.)

So…I guess I just had really, really low expectations because honestly I can’t really figure out why people are bitching and moaning so much about this movie. Hello, it was the FOURTH installment in an ACTION SERIES. How fucking good did you expect it to be?

I myself expected it to be horrible…and instead found it quite watchable. There was a sad lack of romance or even, at least, sex (hello, you are an action movie, where’s the mack session?). And there was one car chase type sequence that went on way way waaaay too long. (But of course most of the people bitching about the flick didn’t seem to mind that!)

But otherwise, I thought it was fine for what it was: the fourth installment in an action series, that wasn’t ever that great to begin with! I liked Moon Bloodgood or whatever her name is, and yeah the half terminator dude was quite nice to look at, considering Christian Bale was a bit wooden.

And really, probably the main reason I enjoyed it was I thought it raised some interesting, and VERY Battlestar Galactica-like, questions about “man or machine” and what defines a person.

I’m so not a Trekkie, I’ve probably seen maybe 10 episodes total? But I’ve seen just enough to be able to tell what a great job they did with the casting of this flick. The actors were able to give performances that were just reminiscent enough of the actors of the original as to make it believable that this was them in their younger days.

Enjoyed a lot of the humorous touches. Didn’t take itself too seriously. Some cool effects. Pretty good job, if you ask me. But again, not enough of a Trekkie to have taken issue with it anyway! 🙂

A quirky little indie flick that was quite enjoyable but ultimately suffers from a lack of plot. Nice nuanced performances by Paul Dano (who played the brother who rarely talked in Little Miss Sunshine) and Zooey Deschanel. But ultimately one of those movies that’s a bio piece on a quirky dude but nothing much happens or if it does, it doesn’t seem to lead to anything. Also there’s a weird little Fight Club thing happening in the background that never ultimately amounts to much (or is even explained).

So while I liked it…I also thought it lacked that “story” or momentum that would have brought it to a higher level.

p.s. I did think John Goodman was a bit over the top. For a quiet, slowly evolving movie to have this big ole loud dude on screen? He always took me a bit out of the “action”. Not that it was “action” per se.