Loved it. Tom Cruise is showing his age (which I thought maybe he’d be one of those crazy celebrities who gets 97 billion procedures and never has a single wrinkle). Renner / Pegg / Payton all played their bits well. It was 100% completely enjoyable.

EXCEPT… So here’s the thing. With any action movie, but ESPECIALLY the Mission Impossible movies they do a million crazy nutbars out-of-this-world things and as the viewer you accept them as part of this movie’s reality. Fine. BUT if I am going to accept all their crazy masks and daring feats and car acrobatics and such, I insist that this type of movie must do everything else ACCURATELY.

And let me tell you, if you remove the floor to ceiling window from a 100th-floor hotel room? THERE’S GONNA BE A CRAPTON OF WIND BLOWING THROUGH. But no, they stand calmly in front of it, clothes barely aruffle. Sorry, can’t buy into that one. When they replaced the windows in my 4th floor apartment in NYC, things magentized to the refrigerator were blowin’ around the house.

GIVE ME MY REALITY and I’LL GIVE YOU YOUR FANTASY. That is the deal this type of movie is supposed to make with us.

So other than that, it was great. 🙂

As you may have noticed, I haven’t found a lot of time to post about anything I’ve been reading, listening to, or watching these days. I WANT to tell you things…but lying on the floor moaning about how hot and miserable I am usually takes precedence. Today is oddly un-volcanic in the apartment though, and I might want a study break, so are some super speedy thoughts on the movies I’ve seen of late!

Cowboys & Aliens – Fine for what it is (a ridiculous combination of Western + Alien movies. Just as the title says). Daniel Craig takes his shirt off.

Harry Potter 8 – Pretty good, but I guess I didn’t remember enough from the last flick as I found some of the beginning confusing. Also it went FAST. I mean the last film made me cry – this one did NOT, partially I think b/c all the deaths were passed by very quickly. Also we purposely saw it in 2D but somehow it was enough 3D-ish as to make me kinda queasy!

Super 8 – FANTASTIC. I can’t believe I waited as long as I did to see this one, I absolutely LOVED it. Super super super.

Buck – As expected, a complete tearjerker! BRING KLEENEX.

Beginners – Really good! Not nearly as twee as it looks! I am a big fan of the lead actress and I loved the mood. And the dog. Interesting dialogue.

Hanna – BAD! Incredibly bad plot. What a waste of Eric Bana’s hotness.

Midnight in Paris – SO so good! A LOT of fun! Especially for us literary types.

Tree of Life – I will try to post a real review of this one soon. I liked a LOT of it a LOT. I thought that middle 35 minutes was a) interminable and b) not necessary in anyway. Sure it’s all about the cosmos. WHATEVER, can we get back to people, and dialogue, and plot-like stuff now? (not that there’s a lot of plot.) I thought it was really great in a number of ways and I certainly think it’s THE movie to see this year, despite the things I could have done without. But seriously I’ll try to say more. Soon. Because this one just cannot be summed up in so few words. Obv.

Thankfully I was able to find a 2D viewing.

Fluffy superhero fun. Not up to Iron Man levels (oh, Iron Man) but certainly acceptable for what it is.

The Thor dude is quite pretty, don’t ya know. And Idris Elba is fantastic, but I couldn’t stop wonder whether he was wearing colored contacts the whole time? The actor playing Loki was suitably creeptastic.

And there you have it. Good summer fun if you need a couple hours of air conditioning in your day. 🙂

I think a lot of people are probably going to hate this movie. It’s certainly heavy-handed and over the top and JGL is doing one of those “so much against type that there are times you don’t believe it” roles.

But I really enjoyed it and really this is a movie about the kid. Not JGL, not Dwight (Rainn Wilson), not Portman. The kid and what he needs and how he grows.

It’s hard to watch, there is some ick. But not “scar you for life” ick, just uncomfortable.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

It’s true, I AM the only person in America who didn’t find this movie hysterically awesome.*

Yes, it WAS funny. Sometimes painfully so (as in laughing so hard your cheekbones hurt).

It was also really, really, REALLY STUPID and I think they made some really bad choices that made the movie nearly unwatchable to me (although, as I said, NO ONE ELSE seemed to mind at all). For example, I would have cut Every Single Thing to do with her roommates and living situation. None of those scenes were a) at all funny (gawd no) or b) at all connected to the “plot” such as it is.

Also: the only one way in which this is “Bridesmaids” plural is by including the other really dumb things like the “we all get food poisoning and puke/vomit/diarrhea into the dresses we are trying on” ridiculousness. This movie is really only about the one bridesmaid and I think eliminating all that stupidity would have been a better choice as well.

Sure, Jon Hamm and Melissa McCarthy were very good in their (unusual for them) roles. But both those roles really seemed like sketch comedy add-ons. Let’s throw in a really crass icky guy! Let’s have one of the girls be all butch and nasty but really have deep insights! That sounds good! (It was amazing they could make McCarthy look that unappealing, though, wasn’t it? She’s really quite a pretty girl.)

I have been listening to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcasts lately and I was just SO disappointed to hear Linda Holmes talking about how this is a movie that finally shows how she and her friends actually relate! That girls have inside jokes just as much as boys do! Really? THIS is the movie where you see that? I saw a movie where girls only relate to each other when they are talking about their relationships with boys.

I was not a fan. But given how the rest of the world feels about this? You probably will be.

*Actually a couple people I talked to this weekend also said they found a lot of it disappointing. But that was a month after I had seen this movie and been the only one with a negative opinion so far. So for the sake of this review, that conversation hasn’t happened yet. 😉