Sooo…. between vacation, snow, a trip to Arkansas and a trip to Michigan I don’t really work anymore. For my clients this is not necessarily a bad thing as I am not messing up their matters but leaving them to my staff. Coupled with the disjointed work schedule it is my wife’s “busy season” which as near as i can tell goes from November until May. Bottom line is that I have been left with a large amount of time on my hands.
I like to see movies. My wife likes to see movies. But there are a lot of movies which we cannot see together because she does not like anything:
1. Two stressful;
2. Too violent;
3. Too filthy;
4. Too stupid…
You get the idea. So I like to see movies and they release a lot of movies during the holidays. Apparently not a lot of good ones. Over the period I have seen:
Nebraska (with my wife);
The Hobbit Movie (with my adult “sort of” sons);
The Hunger Games Movie (by myself);
Wolf of Wall Street (by myself); and
Inside Llewyn Davis (by myself).
Not a million movies but a lot of movies. A lot of people find seeing a movie by yourself to be a weird thing… a creepy thing… a...a…. Mike Becker thing. But I like it. I don’t have to worry about whether the other person is having a good time and I can walk out if I want to. In spite of my stomach difficulties I ate buttered popcorn and drank water. I only walked out on one. So here is the short and the short of it:
Nebraska: Good but not great. Heartfelt. Bruce Dern should not win an academy award. Will Forte surprisingly good. It was kind of draggy but had nice message sort of… but was overall just relentlessly sad…
The Hobbit: The Hobbit. It had great special effects, was better than the first of the three movies and reinforced that they should not have made one book into three movies.
Hunger Games: “Catching Fire” was well done, true to the book and frankly made “Nebraska” look more like a dystopian future. The movie is saved by Jennifer Lawrence who you can look at forever and who can really act. If you have the heart for it, rent “Winters Bone”. It is a better use of your time but I read these books. I cannot wait to see the third one where if it is like the book I will be cheering shamelessly for Katniss Everdeen to die.
Inside Llewyn Davis: I saw it for the music and because it was the Coen brothers. It is a really well done, stupid move. The main character is just a self involved, dick. He shits on everyone and everything pursuing a career that is really not a career. It is well done in that it seems to catch the spirit of the Village and the folk scene, before Dylan came, was brilliant and killed it. Justin Timberlake who I hate, shows again just how talented he is. If you saw the trailer, you saw every funny line. If you're not a fan of the music or the Coen’s miss it and if you love the music, catch the Showtime special with T-Bone Burnett gathering musicians to do music of the similar period. It is awesome.
Wolf of Wall Street: I walked out. 3 hours long. How many times can you watch someone snort coke off of a strippers breasts? How many times can a they say fuck in a movie? 506 times according to Rolling Stone:
The movie, reflecting on it had some brilliant scenes but Scorsese was just relentless in remaking “Goodfellas” complete with diCaprio narrating just like Ray Liotta. It was exhausting and sad and not interesting enough to last three hours. It was lovingly filmed but I just felt stupid sitting there and it is really hard for me to feel stupid.
Sooo… all of these movies are missable but… all have some merits. I think “American Hustle” is next. Maybe things will get better.
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