Remember 10 years ago when I posted here pretty much every day? Yeah, me neither.
With a windy, rainy, and raw weekend on tap, I took advantage of the forced inside time to tackle a bunch of home projects. Actually, that is what I should of done. I mostly laid on the couch and watched movies and college football.
In A World…
A quirky, awkward indie comedy written, produced, directed, and starring Lake Bell. I wasn’t really familiar with her prior to this flick, but she pretty much nails it across the board. It’s a family dramady centered on an adult woman and her father, both in the voice over / movie trailer business and both competing to be the “guy” that replaces Don Lafontaine as the voice you’ve heard 10,000 times starting a trailer with “In A World…” It’s really much funnier than my set up might lead you to believe. It also checks in at a little over 90 minutes, which has become a thing for me. I’m tired of 3 hour movies. The perfect pop song checks in at around 2:50, and the perfect movie (with rare exceptions) should be able to tell its story in 2 hours or less.
The Hunger Games – Catching Fire
I thought the first Hunger Games movie sucked compared to the book. In this case I think the 2nd movie is better than the 2nd book. The book spun up too many side plot lines. The movie smartly focuses on Katness’ inability to sell the compliance desired by the Capital, and of course the games itself. It checks in at 2:30 but if they had tried to really mirror the book that would have been a 3:30, so I can let it go, in light of my comments above. Also, it’s 150 minutes of Jennifer Lawrence, so there is that. The 3rd book was a disaster in my opinion, so I expect that movie will easily be better than the book, even if the movie kind of sucks.
The Spectacular Now
Another indie dramady, this time centered on two high school seniors, the “bad boy” (mostly slacker / class clown) that falls for the “good girl.” Yeah, it’s been done 1000 times, but only maybe 25-50 of those were done better than this try. It’s kind of sweet and charming in it’s own way, and felt more real to me than most attempts to capture high school romances on film. It also wisely tells its story in about 90 minutes. This is not a bad choice for a date night flick.
All of the above are available free on Amazon Prime. I needed a Halloween costume component in 2 days and could not find it locally. Finally accepting the ubiquitous Prime offer from Amazon then paying a $3.99 surcharge got me next day delivery. I don’t see a whole lot on Prime movies that I can’t get on Netflix, and I’m still undecided about how much we really need free 2nd day shipping – so I’m not sure if we’ll keep it or not. Feel free to weigh in if you have an opinion.
