February, the month of sickness and DVD rentals

Ok, so Daryl and I got sick. So I rented a bunch of movies. After Daryl got sick, I got sick. After two weeks, I am still sick. But here are my impressions of the movies. Hey, I was wrong about THE ARISTOCRATS. They did have it at Blockbuster. It was a really good movie about comedy and comedians. I recommend it to anyone who likes comedians. MARCH OF THE PENGUINS was a little overrated. I had seen a documentary on penguins much like this on the Discovery Channel a while ago and knew the crazy behavior that ensues when, like most species, they have kids. The parents stuff themselves, then go on a marathon to a remote part of Antartica to mate and then spend months sitting around taking care of their offspring while alternating the marathon, stuff food into belly, marathon, aaaand, switch off until they feel they can leave the kids alone. Like all species that decide to procreate, the kids drive the parents to do crazy things for their welfare and what do the parents get out of it? Only some of the kids make it. That's how it goes in the coldest place in the world. The problem with the movie is that they liken a lot of animal instincts to human behavior, which, come on, they're penguins. But hey, the babies are cute, and the cinematography is great, so enjoy. Just don't buy into the sentimentality. Nature is harsh. No less for humans than for penguins. Moving on, JUST LIKE HEAVEN was a nice romantic comedy. If you like romantic comedies, then this is a well done version of the boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love with each other, but girl is a ghost, and so on... I cannot hate anything that Reese Witherspoon is in, not even LITTLE NICKY, so this is no exception. And I've found that I really like Mark Ruffalo. I am waiting to see more of his work where he's not crazy or depressed, but it may take a while since that seems to be the only kind of role he gets. Way to go Hollywood. But I guess I should just be glad that they even hired a guy like Mark Ruffalo, because he can actually act. THE BROTHER'S GRIMM was a feast for the eyes, as is typical of a Terry Gilliam movie. The forest is hideously beautiful and the special effects are marvelous. They story was not as great as THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, but it was well done and it was a great take on fairy tales. There's a little red riding hood, a wolf, a woodsman, an evil witch in a tower, hair that's used as a rope to get up to the tower, an enchanted mirror, oh, all sorts of crazy fairy tale stuff, even a nice take on Cinderella with Matt Damon and Heath Ledger wearing bonnets and aprons. Heath Ledger is great as a bespectacled lovesick geek. He makes you believe that he's a nerd, when, seriously, even with glasses, he's gorgeous. There is no way a guy that looks like that is ever going to have a hard time finding a girl. Or a guy since he swings that way in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, which I haven't seen yet. Look people, I know the Oscars are Sunday, but I'm still trying to get out of the house without coughing up a lung. WAR OF THE WORLDS was a typical Speilberg movie, although I did like the rather narrow vision that he had in concentrating on a single family's struggle to survive. Tom Cruise is typically annoying, but I didn't feel the Tom-hate I usually feel when I see him onscreen-as much. Dakota Fanning is alarmingly good. And the special effects are so good I watched a bunch of scenes over and over again. One scene, of them driving down the road, was one long continuous take that was fantastically done. I watched the original on TV many years ago and while there are a few moments that I remember, I mostly only remember the end. It's a really good ending. But this movie's ending wasn't nearly as good because Tom Cruise was in it. And really, does everyone have to use Morgan Freeman to narrate their movies? Can't they find someone else? Although, he does have a great voice. It's just that he seems to be narrating everything. I had read a review of DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN so I got it and I did like it. It wasn't terrific, but it had a good story about forgiveness and an unbelievably sappy love story. And it had a few really funny moments that I appreciated. A lot of Christian movies are really awful, mostly because the filmmaker's get more concerned about their "message" than about making something entertaining. Not that I mind their message, it's just that if it were entertaining as well, I would actually watch it. This movie has a great message, but it's also somewhat entertaining, so I was glad to see that. We also saw the movie KONTROLL which is a movie about the subway, and the subway workers in Hungary. Apparently the whole idea of paying to use the subway there is on sort of a honor system, so you get a lot of people who simply don't buy a ticket. So they have subway workers whose job it is to collect tickets from people and try to get money out of people who don't have a ticket. And most of the time those people are scary. Plus, the subway workers are sort of like gangs and have rivalries. And they do stuff like race the trains. Crazy. The movie follows one group of subway ticket takers, who seem to be the losers of the group. There's a mysterious person shoving people onto train tracks, a cute girl in a bear suit, and a regular ticket scoffer who's faster than the subway workers and shows them up--way too many times. Some of the stuff that happens is beautiful and some of the stuff that happens is fun and some of the stuff is hide-your-face scary. The actors are all very good and it's a good film from a young director and a country you don't hear about that much here. And we finally got to see GRIZZLY MAN on the Discovery Channel. It's a very good documentary about a guy who filmed grizzly bears. He and his girlfriend got mauled by one and they had a tape of the actual mauling. You don't want to hear it and they don't play it and I think it's a good thing. Remember the thing about anthropomorphi-sizing animals? Well this guy goes a little too far. It sort of an amazing picture of human nature vs. real nature. Real nature wins. We still have a bunch of movies to get through, but I guess that's just going to have to wait until March.