Monday, August 20, 2012

Movie Monday 8/20

Sorry I missed Movie Monday - and everything else! - last week.  One more week of insanely crazy busy and then hopefully things will slow down to just normal crazy busy.

We spent a nice weekend with my family.  I was able to relax completely on Saturday and enjoy my family's company, especially my wonderful niece and nephew and little cousins.  But I woke up at 6 am Sunday morning, with the to-do list spinning around in my head again! 

Anyway, movies.  Here are the movies we enjoyed the past two weeks:
  • Last weekend, with Jamie and Craig both occupied with friends, Ken and I watched Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.  Yes, it is a bizarre title, but it's a good movie, better than the average romantic comedy.  Emily Blunt stars as Harriet, a British consultant who manages the affairs of a wealthy Middle-eastern Arab named Sheikh whose latest project is to bring salmon fishing to the Yemen River in the desert region where he lives.  The British government is behind this crazy-sounding plan in order to create a good PR opportunity in the Mideast and assigns Fred, an expert from the national Fisheries department played by Ewan McGregor, to help Harriet.  What follows is funny and sweet but also has some emotional depth.  We both enjoyed it.
  • The next night, we watched Chronicle with the kids, a movie Jamie has wanted to see for a long time.  It was completely original, a sort of sci fi fantasy type movie.  It features three high school boys who discover a strange spot in the woods that gives them mysterious powers.  It is mostly shot as if with a handheld camera (one of the boys brings his video camera everywhere with him).  As time goes on, their powers grow.  At first, it's all fun, but then things get serious...and then it all starts to go awry.  It was fast-paced and suspenseful, though quite dark.
  • Last night, after arriving back home from our weekend, we watched Men in Black.  We had all seen it before but enjoyed the funny, action-packed movie again.  Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are both great in it!
Have you seen any good movies lately?

4 comments:

Renee said...

No movies here, we tried but Redbox had nothing we even wanted to see! The Fishing one sounds like it might be good.
With your over the top busy life right now I am amazed you got in a post! Hang in there......

Sue Jackson said...

Me, too, Renee! I wouldn't expect much more from me this week - lol

I think you and Joel would like Salmon Fishing - nothing too heart-pounding, but a sweet, gentle story - and we got it from Redbox!

Sue

Baffled said...

Salmon Fishing is on my to see list. Love the Men in Black movies. The new one is really good. It is fun to try and notice all the references to the prior movies in it. The pug's picture is all over the new movie although the dog isn't in it.

I just watched Thor again. It is surprisingly good. I also watched Captain America which I didn't like as much. Now Avengers makes much more sense and I would like to see it again. Maybe when it hits Redbox.

We went out to see Bourne Legacy and we both really liked it. Jeremy Renner is my new fav action hero. He played Hawkeye in both Thor and Avengers and also across from Tom Cruise in the last Mission Impossible movie. He has been nominated for academy awards twice now but hasn't won yet.

I've been watching Grimm on TV and looking forward to Fringe starting up again.

Sue Jackson said...

Sounds good! We will have to watch the rest of the Men in Black series.

We've seen lots of superhero movies but not Thor yet - I remember you saying you liked it a lot.

Jamie LOVES Grimm!!

Sue