Iron Man

Movie: Iron Man
Like/Don't Like: Like

Did you know I hate guns? I mean, I really don't like them at all. If I had my way I would have everyone turn in their guns and we'd melt them down and build schools out of the metal. And I don't like movies that have a lot of guns in them. All that shooting makes me really jumpy and uncomfortable. So through the first part of this movie I kept thinking in my head, "All those people who told me this was a great movie clearly don't know me AT ALL. Have I no friends? How did I become so misunderstood? I thought I was pretty clear on all of this."

But I DO have friends. (I'm sorry I doubted you. And thank you for still being my friend even though I sometimes spout off extreme opinions.) Because that first part of the movie was just a ploy to make all of you see my side of things. That weapons of mass destruction are bad and we need to be accountable for the evil things we put out in the world. Even if the accountability comes through Robert Downey Jr. putting on an robot suit and chasing down bad guys. That it a message I can get behind.

I can also get behind great acting. I thought this movie had plenty of it. Good acting is what puts an action flick ahead of the rest in my book. Because we all know what to expect with them, right? There's going to be a lot of explosions and fighting. But it's the scenes in between that need to be good and if there's just bad acting,then all you have are explosions.

Robert Downey Jr. was AWESOME in this role. I've always been a fan. He just has a way of making any character he plays completely believable. And not just that he's believable as the character but that his character is believable as a real human being. He played him strong throughout. He was a type-a in the beginning and him getting a conscience did not change that, it just redirected his energy.

And Gwyneth Paltrow was terrific. And that's telling because I usually find the female lead in action movies to be annoying (Kirsten Dunst in Spiderman, Katie Holmes in Batman, Kate Bosworth in Superman) mostly because they always overact it on the tough-as-nails part but in the end all they're really good for is standing there either screaming or looking pretty. Gwyneth did look very pretty (I liked her with the red hair) and she screamed a bit, but she was so good against Robert Downey Jr. She was vulnerable at all the right moment and sassy when she needed to be. Plus, she did most of the action scenes in 6 inch heels. Just that she can walk in those was impressive.

And let's talk about Jeff Bridges. Who knew that his face was so large? Was it that big in Tron? It's like the size of a hubcap. And not like a compact car hubcap, but an SUV hubcap. He's like the Denali hubcap of faces. Maybe it was the combo of the bald head and the giant beard. That beard took up half the screen. Am I going too far with this? Well, whatever made his face balloon up like that, it really helped with the who bad guy thing.

My one complaint, besides all the gun shooting, was that it seemed more like a prelude to a franchise than an actual movie. Like a pilot episode where they just introduce the characters and tell how they got to be the way they are. Obviously there will be sequels and I'm happy about that. But I just wish that they had spent a little less time introducing us to everything and more time making a movie that would stand alone.

The Host

Book: The Host
Author: Stephanie Meyer
Like/Don't Like: Um, kind of a medium here

I'm going to have to come up with a new category for this one because I can't say that I actually liked it, but then I didn't really dislike it either. I should say up front that if you recognize the author as being the one who wrote those Twilight books, I have not read them. I specifically read this one first because I didn't want to get sucked into a series if I didn't really like her writing style.

And I don't. Except that it's not all bad. See what I mean. It's tough to categorize. I think most of my problems with it is that it needs some serious fine tuning. She's got it in there, she just needs to learn how to edit herself. There were a good 300 pages that she could have cut to tell the exact same story. And it would have been a better story for it because she would have had to use less prosaic terms to describe things. She certainly would have had to cut out all the times she described characters' eyes as "denim" or "sienna" or "chocolate". Well, now I'm just being picky, except to be fair, I think the exact same thing about J.K. Rowlings. Their editors need to start reading the manuscript and stop looking at the dollar signs attached to it.

The story was an interesting one and I wanted to finish it but the characters were dull as cardboard. They were so one-dimensional and she never gave us any background on them to let us know why they were that way. Or any hint as to why they weren't changing. It was all very manufactured conflict and I found myself wishing that something drastic would happen about every 20 pages. A cave-in, a bomb going off, a hang nail. Anything.

I would like to hear from people who have read both this book and the Twilight series and let me know what you think. The girl who recommended this one to me said that she liked it better than the series so that doesn't give me much hope. But her taste is a little different from mine so I don't know.

Grey Gardens

Movie/Documentary: Grey Gardens
Like/Don't Like: I liked it so much I'm going to be Little Edie for Halloween

Liz had good reason to be afraid to watch this by herself. We all agreed afterwards that if any of us had attempted a solo viewing we would have burst into tears from despair over such a tragic story. But watching it with several very funny friends made it more than bearable. Hilarious, in fact. Because these ladies are CHARACTERS. Staunch characters. It's a crazy mother and daughter who live in this dilapidated mansion in East Hampton with a bunch of raccoons and cats. I really can't describe it. You just have to watch the clips. And then throw your own party (we all wore fabulous head wraps like Little Edie), because you will weep if you're by yourself.

My Antonia

Book: My Antonia
Author: Willa Cather
Like/Don't Like: Like

You know how people always say nice things about Midwesterners? How they're straightforward and honest and good natured? That's how this book is. No pretense or guile. Just a simple, charming story about real life on the prairies of Nebraska. It was a joy to read.

Lorna Doone

Movie:  Lorna Doone

Like/Don't Like:  Like

This is your standard BBC period drama.  If you like BBC period dramas, which I do, you'll like this.  If you're Laura, you won't.  It wasn't my favorite, certainly not up to Pride and Prejudice or North and South, but it had all that it was suppose to.  It's set a little earlier than most, like the 1600 or something.  This only means that there are more wigs and ruffly cravats.  Bonus!  It's kind of like Romeo and Juliet in the Highlands.  Poor farm boy falls in love with a girl from the local family of outlaws - their love is forbidden but they go for it anyway - war ensues.  The content was good, although at times a little confusing.  You might want to bone up on your English kings and queens if you haven't studied it in a while.  Aside from that the only real problem I had was how it was shot and edited.  The fight scenes were horrible.  They were all so jumpy that you couldn't tell who was getting hit or shot or run through.  

Speaking of bonuses...James McAvoy was in it!  It's a bit part so don't get too excited, but we all sighed a little sigh when he showed up, much to our surprise.

Jesus Camp

Documentary: Jesus Camp

Like/Don't Like: I liked it, but was very unsettled by it

This one is tough to categorize because it was an excellent documentary but very hard to watch. I thought it was fair and accurate, and sadly, that only made the people in it look very real and very scary. Being Christian, and a comparatively conservative one at that, and coming from a faith that is easily misunderstood and often misrepresented, I have a lot of sympathy for the people that were portrayed here. It's tough to get a solid view of anything that has been filmed then edited out of context. But it's also tough to argue what was shown and said and done, in or out of context.

The film followed three kids to Bible camp. More specifically, a fundamentalist Evangelical camp for kids. It showed them arriving and meeting up with friends and talking like kids do, then going to hear sermons on how it's their duty as Christians to take back America for Jesus and be a driving force for future changes in the government - specifically in regards to abortion and prayer in school - in a pretty hard-core fashion. I'm talking about them speaking in tongues and laying hands on them and working them up into such a frenzy that the kids were huddled on the floor sobbing over their sins and the sins of the world. Some that looked as young as five.

It wasn't what was being taught to these kids that bothered me. It was how they were taught and what the end-goal was. This camp, essentially, is making fanatics for Christ, and that's scary, especially when two of the kids were talking about how cool it would be to be a martyr. I had a hard time seeing much of a difference between these kids and kids shown on videos of al Qaeda training camps. The only real difference was that these kids didn't have weapons in their hands. Well, unless you count the hammer they were wielding to smash a cup that had "the government" written on it. They both speak the same language of fanaticism, that it's a war they're fighting, that they're right and everyone else is wrong, and that they have to take action now, even dramatic action. It's fanatics who take the true principles that religions have and warp them into something horrifying. That was the unsettling part. The uncontrollable fervor in their eyes. The ministers and parents at the camp were hoping that they were training kids who would one day grow up to be world leaders, but it looked more like they were training kids who would one day grow up to bomb an abortion clinic.

*I feel like I should put a disclaimer here since I've already received (and deleted. I'm the only loon who can post on this site.) one comment that started out, "You sound as if you think bombing or burning abortion clinics is wrong." Um, yes. I actually do. I think abortion is wrong too. But fighting against it with acts of terrorism seems, I don't know, a little hypocritical.

Cranford

Movie:  Cranford (On Masterpiece, you can Netflix it)

Like/Don't Like:  Loved

You all know I will pretty much watch anything on Masterpiece Theater (side note:  did you know it's just called Masterpiece now?  That, my friends, is an outrage!)  And I will also watch pretty much anything with Judi Dench (side note #2:  I have never seen a James Bond movie.  Not ever.  I tried watching the last one and was mesmerized by Daniel Craig's rugged good looks but only for about 10 minutes then I was through with the movie and turned it off.)  So Cranford was a sure bet for me.  It's set in England near the time of the industrial revolution in a small village called Cranford, that is populated primarily by single older women - either widows or spinsters, mostly all meddlers.  A young doctor comes into town and stirs things upa bit and because it's an adaptation of an Elizabeth Gaskell novel, loads of people die.  But don't let the death stop you from watching this.  Or the fact that it is a 5 hour mini-series.  It is a very sweet, funny, charming and touching movie.