thebaldgeek

Fresh out of high school, and after standing up his high school sweetheart on the alter Conner Layne (Christopher Masterson – Malcolm in the middle) embarks on totally the opposite ideal honeymoon alone and learns plenty about himself in the process. While trekking through Central and South America, he befriends a young couple (Johnny Messner and Brooke Burns) who help him move forward, both physically and emotionally.
Of course there is a major love interest along the way and by leaving her (I aint spoiling anything here, if any of you lot see this, you deserve to have it spoiled!) he really gets a hold of who he is and what he wants to do with his life.
Some really bad acting and scripting in here, but we all just totally fell in love with the movie and to some extent the characters.
While the notion of just traveling around the world is not necessarily our thing, there was enough human stuff in here to keep us hooked (either that or we wanted to see how they rescued each bad scene as it popped up).
Even if it is on BluRay, do me a favor and don’t get it…. My already poor reputation of a movie fan will really suffer after this one!

If this one had not been based on a true story, it would have been hard to take.
Slow, with short violent sections thrown about it was a tough ride.
Wladyslaw Szpilman is the real guy, played in the movie by Adrien Brody (The Brothers Bloom (‘review’ coming), in this case well cast, who is a well known pianist in pre-war Poland.
The movie is basically a blow by blow account of his remarkable survival of world war two. The Jews were treated badly, and you get a sense of this via very short very graphic sections of the film.
I have not had the time to look and see how accurate the story is told in the film, seemed real enough.
At 150 minutes its a long movie, but it barely manages to hold your attention all that time, so seems very long.
Hard to rate this one. If you are interested in getting a taste of the times, or have some other interest in the time period you will probably soak it up.

Did not know a lot about this one going into it, just that it had Denzel Washington as the lead. Since hes one of our fave’s he gets into the movie queue automatically.
Turns out, it was a pretty good flick. One that we have mentioned around the house more than once since we sent the disk back. (Any movie we talk about more than a day latter is always a good sign of a good flick).
Set in a post ‘flash’ world, it takes a slow start which reveals little for a long time, left to guess whats going on with very little dialog. (Note, Matt B will LOVE the opening sequence).
Before long we get to the usual action sections and it really rolls from there.
Of course we have a female thrown in around the middle…. Thankfully not too forced, but sometimes unnecessary just the same.
Not going to let too much out of the bag, but it is a move about a book and the man who carries it.
Some blood, no sex, some swearing, pretty standard fair, shot rather nicely.
Out on BluRay for sure. If you see it, let me know.

(I should come up with a rating system…. 0 to 5 stars… is that too course? Hmmm)

One of the movies we have really enjoyed the past few days is this trilogy.
You have to read this movie… It’s in Swedish, so yeah, it’s all subtitles, but it’s well worth while in our view.
Not for the squeamish, there are a few uncomfortable scenes, but they are not there for yuck’s sake, they add to the movie and the plot.
As I said, it’s one of three; we have watched them all and found them all of the first’s quality. (The first one is the ‘big’ one. Hard to say how many people have tracked down the next two and watched them).
They really do need to be viewed in order.
The second is “The girl that played with fire” then the last “The girl that kicked the hornets’ nest”.
They revolve around a young woman that had an abusive father; she is very much the introvert and lives a pretty rebellious life. She is also quite the computer savvy girl (we still have to forgive her for using a Mac and Nikon, but hey, it’s a movie) and to top it off, she has a photographic memory…. All in all, the girl is just a really cool dude with some major hang ups.
Don’t want to give too much away, but she befriends a reporter that is asked to investigate a 40 year old murder. It gets pretty complicated, but the director and writer really string it together and even I failed to get lost.
While each story / movie can stand alone, it’s really best to just set aside three nights in a row and enjoy the ride.
We watched it on Netflix. All three are available on Bluray over here.