The Visitor: Richard Jenkins is up for an Oscar for his leading role in this film. I enjoyed it, and he does a great acting job, but the movie itself wasn't that great. It was really slow, and for some reason I found it frustrating. It is worth watching, but you are going to have to focus in order to stay with it. Maybe I was just overly ADD the day I watched it.
Kung Fu Panda: This was an alright animated movie. I feel like it was hyped up quite a bit and it didn't live up to those expectations for me. I am not a Kung Fu fan, so a lot of the draw of this movie was probably lost on me. I enjoyed it, and it definitely held my attention. I could even probably watch it again if I had to.
The House Bunny: Wow, this was pretty bad. A few laughs in a movie riddled with horrible acting. The sad thing is I actually watched it twice in the time we had it from Netflix. I guess that says something about it. I don't watch many movies multiple times, especially in that short amount of time. I didn't watch it twice by choice, it just happened, and the second time I only half paid attention. It is not a good movie.
The King Of Kong: I really wanted to dedicated a post to this documentary, but I didn't really have much to say about it. I was pleasantly surprised by this film about the race to hold the high score for the classic video game, Donkey Kong. It is difficult to believe, but it made me get this tense feeling as I was wondering how this was all going to play out. That just goes to show that the people behind this documentary did a good job putting it together. I thought it was great, and would recommend anybody to see it if you can get your hands on it.
Wall-E: I started writing a post about this one, but never took the time to finish it. Going into this movie I probably had some unrealistically high expectations. All I heard about was how great this movie was; one of the best animated movies of all time. I really loved this movie for the first 45 minutes. I could see the magic that everybody else was talking about. I just really liked the feeling of watching Wall-E cube up all the trash on Earth, all by himself. When he leaves Earth I think the movie changed for me. I still liked it, but it didn't have that same tone that made me like the beginning so much. It was very funny and clever in the space ship, but it just wasn't the same. Overall it was still a wonderful movie. I am looking forward to watching it again sometime. I think it should win the Oscar for best animated feature film, but definitely not the one for best writing (original screenplay); especially when In Bruges is nominated in that same category. I will definitely be pulling for In Bruges to take that one.
American Teen: This is a documentary about high-schoolers from Warsaw Indiana. Aside from the fact that Warsaw is just a little ways from where I grew up and went to high school, the premise of this film was interesting to me. I liked this movie a lot, but it is not without its faults. In fact, there are quite a few things that compromised the authenticity of what they were showing us. It was cool to watch because they showed clips of a basketball game with East Noble. They sectionals that Warsaw played in was held at the East Noble gymnasium. Those type of things made it seem more real, but other times I felt like I was watching a reality TV show. Overall it was definitely enjoyable. I would recommend it, but don't come in with too high of hopes.
Wit: This is a film starring Emma Thompson about a woman undergoing cancer treatment. It was originally a stage play, then adapted for this movie. I didn't like how obvious it was that this story was meant to be told on the stage with a live audience. For some reason that bothered me. At the beginning of the movie I was not emotionally connected to it at all. Actually, through most of the movie I felt very little emotion at all. To the credit of this movie, it did hook me in towards the end, and it impacted me more that I thought it could. It deals with serious subject matter, and sad situations. I can't really say it was an enjoyable experience to watch.
Mr. Woodcock: This had been sitting on our DVR for quite a while, so I figured it was finally time to watch it. I really didn't like this movie. It does have some laughs, but for the most part it is just stupid.
-deric