Right before my first kid was born I collected a list of the things people watched while they were home taking care of their newborn children. I already can't remember too much about what I watched with Paul except I do recall that ESPN "30 for 30" films were good because it took that kid about an entire film to eat one bottle (that's 60-90 minutes.) My viewing habits are a bit different this time around because--and I hope I don't jinx things--James eats quickly and then pretty much sleeps right away. At night feedings when I even feel like putting the TV on I watch "30 Rock" (which should just come out with some extra seasons just for my husband and me) or "Happy Endings." I would really like to try "Transparent" but, not to sound like an old woman, my TV is being weird and I have to get it set up to watch Amazon on it. I need to just suck it up and watch it on my laptop. In the meantime, over the last few weeks Steve and have watched a bunch of movies, both on our own and together. Here's what we've seen so far:
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau
I found documentary this after listening to the "How Did This Get Made?" episode of the movie. It's a fun watch if you like learning inside baseball type stuff about movies that were a total trainwreck, and this was a gigantic trainwreck. It's worth it just for the stories about Marlon Brando, which are a scream.
Supermensch: The Legend Of Shep Gordon
This is a documentary directed by Mike Meyers about a beloved longtime Hollywood manager. It's an entertaining watch except that the premise, which is that Gordon is this magically wonderful human being, seems quite flawed. If you want to know more how I feel about this movie read Nathan Rabin's review of it because he pretty much sums up everything that's good and bad about the doc.
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
I was never a huge Nirvana fan but I couldn't deny the impact the band had on my formative years. I still remember a twinge of fear and titillation watching those cheerleaders from the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" music video. When this doc came out I realized I knew very little about Kurt Cobain and decided to check it out. It's an intensely sad watch no matter what, perhaps especially so if you have small boys at home (I kind of hated the decision to include footage of adorable baby Kurt right before the end of the movie) but it was interesting to learn more about him. This might be a strange reaction but the movie made me quite nostalgic for the '90's. It was rather lovely that right when I was in high school it was not only okay, it was in style to write and listen to angsty, angry, semi-nonsensical lyrics and be (or pretend to be) sad and deep.
The People Vs. Larry Flynt
Steve had never seen this before and I said we should watch it after we saw the Cobain movie so we could get a glimpse of Courtney Love doing a very good job of playing Courtney Love. No complaints. Fine movie to watch once every five or ten years. Larry Flynt is terrible in his cameo as a judge.
A Most Violent Year
We actually need to re-rent this because we still have 20 minutes left of the movie but we had to go to bed Monday night before we finished watching it. We both like it a lot so far: we're fans of the director, J.C. Chandor. I like how ambivalent the movie is: there's nobody clearly good or bad in it. I'm also becoming a fan of its star, Oscar Isaac, who is a newcomer to me. I also really like the music in the movie. It's moody and spooky but what I really appreciate is that it's not pop-culture driven. The movie's set in 1981 and I like that the obvious choice wasn't made to include a soundtrack full of '80's tunes. If Chandor went with that this would seem a lot more like it was trying to be Goodfellas and sometimes even Goodfellas is too much for me in re: the musical choices.
Meanwhile, Steve has watched the following movies without me and has the following (brief) reviews:
Good and dumb:
Bad and dumb:
Star Wars: Phantom Menace & Clone Wars
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