Thursday, June 5, 2008

Movies on my mind

I'm not a big movie-goer. I watch Ebert & Roeper every week on TV and ninety percent of the movies they review I DON'T want to see. By that I don't mean I believe whatever they say and adopt it as my own opinion. More often than not, Richard Roeper and his guest reviewer LOVE a movie that I know would be torture for me to sit through. I hate most high-action computer special effects movies. I could never sit through weird superhero movies like "Transformers" or "The Incredible Hulk."
I hate martial arts extravaganzas. One guy kicks and disables 15 guys. Yeah. The bad guys wait in line for their turn to get kicked like bored customers at the post office. And the hero leaps twenty feet into the air. GAG. Bite me.
I also hate extreme violence. I really believe the pervasiveness of gun violence, car chases through crowds of innocent bystanders, and bombs have an effect on young (or older, but unstable!!!) minds. I remember running out of a theater in horror during a McCauley Culkin movie. I think it was called "The Bad Son." The evil boy drops big rocks off a highway overpass causing a multi-car pileup. It was treated with nonchalance, not indicating the horror of the innocent families who would DIE from such evil.
I won't watch any movie (or TV show) where a serial killer is raping and cutting up children and women. I accidentally turned on the TV to "Law & Order: SVU" recently and I was shocked by the language of how the dead woman's body had been mutilated. I shudder to think of the fertile minds they're feeding with such crap.
After saying all that, I'll name some movies I am currently enjoying. The new "Indiana Jones" movie was a lot of fun. Like millions of people, I walked into the theater full of nostalgia for the earlier Indy movies.
I just rented and greatly admired "The Savages" starring Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The ending disappointed me, though. Honestly, I think the screenplay author is still working on it in a garret somewhere, saying, "One more week. I'll have an ending in one more week."
Next week I'll go see "Kung Fu Panda." And in a few days I'll post to the blog about old movies I've been seeing. [I just joined Netflix. A whole new world.]
What movies are YOU seeing?

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