Picoreview: Mockingjay Part 1

Picoreview: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1: Pretty good, actually. I’m not really a fan of the whole split it in two thing, but this worked a lot better for me than, say, Deathly Hallows Part 1 did. I felt pretty strongly that DHP1 could have been neatly tucked into 10 minutes at the start of Part 2 and nothing would have been lost, whereas MJP1 was at least a chance for a lot of emotional resonance. It’s the audience’s chance to see just how badly damaged and PSTD everybody,…

Continue Reading

Picoreview: Serena

Picoreview: Serena: I walked out. Spoilers after the cut, including How I Would Have Done It.

Roadhouse

So I just got done working and went downstairs and glanced into the living room as I walked by, and a shirtless Patrick Swayze was on TV, and I said to Ted, “Roadhouse?” And then I thought, and said to Ted, “Why have I seen Roadhouse often enough that I can identify it by those particular two seconds of half-naked Patrick Swayze?” and concluded (also aloud) that the answer was probably “Well, Patrick Swayze.” A few minutes later there’s a sex scene and it’s up against a rough stone wall…

Continue Reading

Picoreview: The Grand Seduction

Picoreview: The Grand Seduction: Charming! The Grand Seduction is sort of Doc Hollywood meets The Full Monty (in terms of small town whose main source of employment has dried up, not in terms of stripping :)), with a bit of Waking Ned Devine thrown in. It stars Brendan Gleeson, who is always wonderful, and Taylor Kitsch, who appears to be trying to rebuild a career after his meteoric rise culminated in two gigantic box office flops. (I *like* Kitsch, and in fact liked both John Carter and Battleship, so I’m…

Continue Reading

10 movies

I’ve been working on this list for a while, and in the past few days an actual meme of it seems to have popped up on Facebook, so I don’t know, maybe it’s in the gestalt. It was surprisingly difficult to come up with the list. Ten movies I will watch over and over again, in no particular order: 1. While You Were Sleeping 2. The Cutting Edge 3. The Replacement Killers 4. The Hunt for Red October 5. A Knight’s Tale 6. Sliding Doors 7. Maverick 8. Robin Hood…

Continue Reading