Movie: Date Night

The movie Date Night falls in the genre of: boring married couple have an exciting adventure and discover their marriage isn’t so bad/boring/dull after all.  Hollywood puts out this genre about, hmmm, I’m guessing about 200 times a year.

But actually for this tried and true genre, Date Night is pretty good and has one out-loud 5 second laugh.  It stars Tina Fey and another actor I really like but forgot his name.  You likely saw him and remember him from the movie the 40 Year Old Virgin. In Virgin there’s a scene where you see his hairy chest and he goes to a salon to have his chest hair ripped off and it really hurts and he can’t continue.  But in Date Night, you get a little glimpse and his chest and all that manly hair appears to be completely gone, so I guess he completed the job after all.  It makes me wonder if he shaves or rips. Why are men doing this to themselves?  I prefer a little chest hair, of course, he had more than a little, he was covered like a monkey.

For the life of me I still can’t remember his name.

TV: Dexter — Season 4…

…is the best one yet!

Oooh, baby.  The season is flawless.  Almost poetic.

Well maybe there were a couple of flaws, but you have to be really discerning to notice them.

See, what happened was Season 1 wasn’t awful, but watching via Netflix, the first 4 episodes were way too bloody for my taste.  But I could see where they were starting to take it and was intrigued and knew if I could get past the bloody set-up it would be a good show.

My boyfriend couldn’t stand any of it, so we sent back the rest of the unwatched Dexters. Then I heard John Lithgow was going to play the bad guy in Season 4 and I had to watch season 4, because Lithgow is such a good actor you have to watch anything he happens to appear in. BUT I’m too anal to simply watch season 4 without viewing all the others.  No way, so while Season 4 was airing on Showtime, I was getting  caught up on 1,2, and 3 thanks to Netflix instant play. Here’s how it goes: Season one — too bloody, but still good.  Season 2 — very good.  Season 3 — Good.  Season 4 — excellent, it will be hard to top that one.

I wasn’t terribly surprised at the ending, but am curious where they will take the show, so in the meantime, I’ve come up with several scenarios. We’ll see if I’m right on any of them.  Dexter Season 4 is one of those shows that stick with you long after the season has ended.

Oh, here’s the kicker, my boyfriend who only likes old Star Trek Voyager repeats and wouldn’t watch the rest of Season 1 — that boyfriend. Well, I bribed him to watch just the very first episode of Season 4 and he had to watch the rest.  He won’t admit it, but he liked it more than I did.  I even saw him laughing at the dark humor.  He liked it, and he doesn’t like anything, (except for Star Trek Voyager, Prison Break, 24 and guy movies like Falling Down and Fight Club).  No really, that’s all he likes. Trying to get him to watch something new and different is like pulling teeth.  So maybe I can put Dexter on his list…but that’s a big maybe.

He said: John Lithgow made the show.

And I said:  The show’s good regardless, but Lithgow did present an interesting, complicated villain.  His character was so believable. I’ve known people like that! It’s kind of scary — but that’s the whole idea.

Seen Any Good Movies Lately?

I haven’t.

The best I’ve seen are a couple of so-so movies one was from the 70’s or 80’s.  I think it was called Better off Dead, if you’re in the mood for silly it’s okay. The other one was with Michael Douglass and some other actors who weren’t very good actors about a courtroom drama and it was called something…I think it was called Presumption of Innocence, but don’t quote me on that.  Anyway it was pretty good.  It wasn’t as predictable as one would think.  No, no it was called Beyond a Reasonable Doubt! Yeah, that’s it.

So what I’m doing is watching Heroes Season 1 online when I should be working, but I work for myself, so the only person I’m cheating is me.  Besides, getting out a review every now and then is important too.  I’m finding Heroes convoluted and confusing, but I confess, I’m not giving it my undivided attention.  It’s interesting background noise when I should be doing something else — like working. In many ways it is just silly.  But it is dark, and it has some interesting characters, namely Hiro, pronounced Hero with a Japanese accent.  Boy, I wonder how they picked that name.

The problem is, it has been really hot this summer, and we’re trying to do our part to be sustainable, so we’re keeping the air conditioning off, as in: my God it is F*!#ing hot in here.  And I wonder why are we doing this.  Like our suffering with the air conditioning off is really doing anything to help the planet.  Maybe I’m actually into some kind of self-flagellation because of low self-esteem, and think of masochistic ways to punish myself while at the same time making me look like a do-gooder.

It’s been so hot, I think my brain is starting to melt.

What’s more, we have rattlesnakes in our yard.  I saw a “juvenile” the other day when I was taking out the trash.  I froze and stared at it, and it didn’t move.  I was going to move in closer to see if that was what I thought it was, but it was a good thing didn’t because I would have been in striking range.  I went down the hill and disposed of the trash and came back it was gone.  So I’ve been researching timber rattlesnakes online and it was indeed a rattlesnake…I’m afraid it’s going to come in the house. Or lie in wait until the next time I take out the trash or get in the car or something like that.

My boyfriend says: We live next to a forest, so what do you expect?

Oh well, life is always a mix.  I can work from my home and gaze at the beautiful forest that is our backyard, (Whoo-hoo!) but we have rattlesnakes, so we can’t actually take a walk in the forest, and it is so hot we can barely breathe. There you go.

Movie: Little Miss Sunshine

Little Miss Sunshine is one of those movies worth seeing again, and maybe even watching it a third time.  The blurbs about the movie describe it as a family determined to get their kid in a beauty pageant.  Or an “endearingly fractured” family on a road trip a lot about the VW bus.

Quite frankly, these descriptions have the effect of making me want to pass up the film.  There’s plenty of fractured family movies, there’s plenty of road trip movies, and who cares about some kid in a beauty pageant.

This movie is really about losing and being a loser and especially about losing your dream.  Heavy stuff, handled in a delightfully humorous way.  It’s not sad at all,  and it puts a realistic spin on Hollywood movies and self-help gurus that tell us dreams really do come true.

Movie: The Bounty Hunter

Under the genre of:  divorced couple, or couple on the brink of divorce, or couple in dull lifeless marriage have something extraordinary happen to them that forces them into a situation whereby they are forced to be together and deal with their issues and see each other in a whole new light and — surprise, surprise — decide they love each other after all; hmmm,  haven’t we seen this like — I don’t know — a million times before; The Bounty Hunter was better than most.

Jennifer Aniston was so much better in this than that stupid movie Management that falls under the category of: this is supposed to be a romantic drama but it’s not intense enough so we’ll call it a comedy because technically it has a happy ending, however it is not funny and is long, drawn-out and boring. She looked better in The Bounty Hunter too.  In Management she looked sort of worn out and old.

But Bounty Hunter brought her back to her cute perky self, and it had a mystery to solve and other kinds of fun action that kept me interested.  My boyfriend could of cared less, but he did watch most of it.  A couple of times he had to ask what was going on.  It was really hard not to be snide and say, “Well, if you’d sit and watch the thing instead of playing on your computer.”  In fact it was too hard not to be snide, so I did say something kind of like that.  In which he said I was mean.

Movies: The Ugly Truth vs Ugly Me

Knowing the Ugly Truth was out there and forgetting the title, I ordered Ugly Me, which turned out to be in Spanish and decided that was probably the wrong movie.  We watched it anyway.

I thought the Ugly Truth was going to be the American version of the Spanish version and am always curious to see how different cultures handle the same story. When the Ugly Truth came I’m waiting for it to be like Ugly Me, and it turns out, it was a totally different plot — sort of.

They’re both about beautiful women dealing with obnoxious men and then they fall in love. Hmm.  Where have I seen this plot before?  About every week out comes a new movie version of:  Boy meets girl, hate each other and/or have not-so-funny things that are supposed to bring out rip-roaring laughter happen, and then they fall in love.

Yet, we’re succors. We watch these stupid movies anyway and like them.  The Ugly Truth, predictable and not funny, was still okay.  I stayed awake during the entire movie and my boyfriend never left once to go check the computer.  He did say that Heigl should go back to Grey’s Anatomy and that she wasn’t a strong enough actress to carry a movie.  Ouch!

Ugly Me was good too. If you don’t speak Spanish, it’s one of those movies you have to read all the way through, but it’s still cute.

On the other hand if you want something funny and more original try: Little Miss Sunshine.  That one’s back on our queue list — we going to see it yet again.