The Last Five Movies I Watched

The Artist

The Artist won the Best Picture Oscar, so I thought I should check it out.  This silent movie holds the record for Netflix DVD I hung onto for the longest time without watching it-- three whole months.  I usually shoot for a weekly turn-around.  There was a feeling of taking my medicine when I finally sat down to watch this one.  The award season buzz played up that this was a fun and old-fashioned-- lots of clips of tap dancing and a cute dog.  I therefore did not imagine that (spoiler alert) Jean Dujardin would stick a loaded gun in his mouth before the credits rolled.  Surprise!  I ended up giving The Artist a 3 since that is my default score for movies I neither hate nor love.

The Avengers

I had high hopes for this movie for several reasons.  1) I really liked Iron Man.  Robert Downey, Jr. was fantastic in that movie.  The sequel was less enjoyable, so I should have probably drawn some unfavorable conclusions about this third flick.  2) I thought Thor was surprisingly good.  3) I'm not that big a fan of superhero movies (I have never enjoyed a single Batman, Spiderman, or Superman movie) but I do love the X-Men.  Like X-Men, this was another group superhero movie.  Unlike X-Men, The Avengers didn't do it for me.  Any movie that spends too much time on extended computer-generated action sequences tends to lose me.  I gave this one a 3.

Chimpanzee

I inherited my love of nature programs from my mother.  I could watch Planet Earth every day and still be enthralled.  So of course I enjoyed Chimpanzee.  I just didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped I would.  The problem was mainly that it was presented by Disney and marketed to children.  I love Buzz Lightyear, but I didn't find Tim Allen's narration a good fit for this.  At one point he did his cave man "Home Improvement" grunt and that irritated me beyond measure.  The little chimp, Oscar, is awfully cute though and the storyline that finds him (spoiler alert) orphaned and adopted by the alpha male of his group was compelling.  It is fascinating to watch these amazingly human-like animals.  I just really missed David Attenborough.  3 out of 5, but a high 3.

The Five-Year Engagement

The theme continues with this movie-- I thought I would totally love it and I was disappointed.  I really like both Jason Segal and Emily Blunt and it featured great actors in supporting roles-- Parks and Rec's Chris Pratt, Community's Alison Brie, The Office's Mindy Kaling.  Okay, basically they populated the movie with NBC's Must See TV actors.  The Five-Year Engagement started off strong and really floundered in the middle.  When Jason Segal's depression turned him into a nutty survivalist/hunter/mountain man, the movie lost me big time.  It pulled things back together by the end, but I wish it had maintained the tone it set at the start the whole way through.  I was hoping for a better romantic comedy than I got.  Another 3.

Snow White and the Huntsman

It isn't a revelation to say that Charlize Theron is beautiful, but I don't think I have ever seen her look as stunning as she did throughout this movie.  It was a bit of a stretch to buy that anyone was competition for her in the looks department, let alone cardboard Kristen Stewart.  I figured that Stewart might drag this movie down, but she didn't have much dialog and I liked the movie a lot more than I thought I would.  I wonder if part of the reason I liked it is that I've been reading George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series for months and I'm kind of in the fantasy genre zone.  Anyhow, it was a visually pleasing film.  Unlike the special effects in The Avengers that took me out of the movie and caused me to lose interest, the special effects in this movie were well done and pulled me further into the story.  Finally, a 4!