watching movies one cup at a time

This is a sort of Vampire Western. A young guy named Caleb runs into a pretty girl named Mae who just happens to be a vampire that runs with a posse of vamps from town to town killing people and lighting stuff o9n fire. Caleb gets sucked in (get it?) and tries to fit in with the homicidal crew but can’t stand the necessity to kill. Eventually he escapes and is “cured” by a blood transfusion before having the final showdown with the vamp posse and rescuing Mae in the process. Read the rest of this entry »

Fun family movie with excellent acting. Jodie Foster doesn’t disappoint as agoraphobic writer Alex Rover. And Abigail Breslin wins us over to her island girl, Nim. There’s not much to this one, it’s pretty simple. Girl lives on an island with her dad, loves Alex Rover adventure books, Dad gets lost at sea, Alex Rover makes contact with Nim looking for research on volcanoes, winds up befriending her and when Nim begs for help, Alex Ross goes against her fear of everything and makes it to the very remote island. Dad returns, all is well.

The only thing I didn’t like was I felt the ending was too rushed. Alex Ross spends a big chunk of the movie trying to get to this island, and when she finally does, the movie is basically over. We get to see her on the island for maybe 10 minutes. And Nim has already driven out the tourists herself and her dad finds his way back soon after she arrives. So she really didn’t serve any purpose out there, but next thing we know, right away we flash-forward and her and the dad are in a relationship and a new family unit is created. Just too much too fast. There just wasn’t time in this movie to go deeper into the relationship between Alex Rover and Nim and her dad and how it grew. The movie could have been twice as long to tell the complete story. But we’ll just have to fill in the rest ourselves.

Still, that wasn’t a deal breaker. It was still an enjoyable experience for a family movie and it’s nice to see Jodie Foster doing something lighthearted.

This movie was very under the radar. It’s a small independent film released toward the end of the year and it just came out on DVD. I didn’t have high expectations but was pleasantly surprised at how good it turned out to be. I really liked this movie a lot and recommend you give it a chance next time you’re at the video store. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not really clear to me why everyone is going crazy about this movie. Sure it’s a good movie. But it wasn’t THAT great. Not great enough to be freaking out about it like people are. Read the rest of this entry »