Movies: the Famous, the Fantastic, and the Forgotten

Hello hello.

That's all the greeting I can muster up right now. I assure you, it was very heartfelt.

Just thought I'd clear my head of the thoughts that are bouncing around in there about some movies that we've watched recently. I promise to do my best to just get to the point on each one, since there are three of them and all...

"Valentine's Day"

I dubbed this one "the Famous" because, seriously, who isn't in this movie? I'll tell you who's not not in this movie: Julia Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Hector Elizondo, Patrick Dempsey, Taylor Swift, Taylor Lautner, Jennifer Gardner, Queen Latifah, Shirley Maclaine, and Jamie Foxx. Just to name a few.

I felt like this movie focused on all the wrong things and very few of the right. There are a million different stories going on and while they all tie together to some extent...there are some that you seriously could just care less about. The only story I loved involved Jennifer Gardner and Ashton Kutcher. Totally predictable, but they were such freakin' adorable characters I didn't care too much.

Bottom line: An over-advertised movie that falls short of the spectacularness you would expect from a movie with Julia Roberts in it. Poor Julia.

"Alice in Wonderland"

AKA "The Fantastic." Not in a "This movie was fantastic!" kind of way...but more of like a "This movie is about fantasy and 'fantastic' is the adjective to communicate that!" kind of way. Not that it wasn't good, because it was!

I thought the acting was pretty impressive. Alice (Mia Someone-I've-Never-Heard-Of) was great, and then with Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter (love her), and Anne Hathaway thrown into the mix, you've got pretty quality materials. It wasn't as funky as you'd expect from Tim Burton, but was definitely more twisted than the Disney version and had a darker feel to it than the book. Alice also wears some dresses that I would love to wear for maybe like a day...they have a whimsical punk rock-ness to them that I think is fun.

Bottom line: Not boring, not craaaaazy, good acting, and a mature-ish twist on a classic story. It was fun to watch and I think it's worth seeing.

"Beyond a Reasonable Doubt"

I hurt for this movie. Did you ever hear of it? Neither had I. But we rented it with some friends a few weeks back.

In this movie, a reporter gets suspicious that a DA is falsifying hard evidence in his cases. To prove it, he decides to incriminate himself in a murder with only circumstantial evidence and see if any "new evidence" turns up to convict him. As you might have guessed...things kinda go wrong.

Sounds like a pretty good story, right? I think so. But I guess they couldn't prove that beyond a reasonable doubt, because someone didn't give them the money they needed to make this movie halfway decent. Bad acting, a horrible soundtrack, and just general not-put-together-well-ness make this movie a true disappointment, and prove that a good plot doesn't always cut it.

Bottom line: Heartbreaker. If you can feel bad for movies, that is...

So...yeah. Glad to get those off my chest, get another blog post out into the wide wide world, and make my eyes tired so that I can hopefully fall asleep quickly tonight.

Anyone else seen any good movies lately?