Fantastic Mr. Fox

Thanksgiving holiday movie. Went with the ENTIRE family. Grandparents, brothers, cousins, oh my! I wasn't excited to go. I hadn't heard of the movie before. It couldn't be good if I hadn't heard of it, right? Then I read a little about it. Wes Anderson, George Clooney, Jason Swartzman. That's all I needed. I was excited. And it didn't disappoint. I laughed more than I've laughed in a while during a movie. And it was a kid's movie? No cussing way. I can't wait to see it again. Because then I can put the movie in my top 5. I'm serious.

Runaway Bride

Hey, those two were in Pretty Woman, too. (Cough). I've seen this movie probably twenty times, and I just figured that out. Maggie's cute in this movie. But she's not really cute, if you know what I mean. Gere's character has a great arc (I'm sounding like a creative writing teacher). He defends Maggie in front of her family, when that's the whole reason he went down there. Then I fell asleep. I was tired.

Away We Go

You mean that was Jim from The Office? And that was the girl from SNL? She was very serious. And he wasn't really that Jim-like. They were both good, though. Rach is pregnant, so she was feeling a lot of the jokes. The part where the airline doesn't believe that she's only 6 months pregnant. Rachel gets that all the time. Annoying. A comedy with heart. My favorite.

My Sister's Keeper

Holy crap. Haven't cried that hard in a while. It made me sad, but I was really happy during the movie as well. It made me happy to be part of a family. Even though I knew she was going to die, I was comforted. I don't want to say it was a spiritual experience, because it was just a freaking movie, but it was in the same neighborhood. I kept thinking about the power of art (namely film and literature). How it can help us understand that we aren't alone in the world. That other people go through stuff. We all deal with death. It's been a couple of days and my head still hurts a little. Man, it was just as bad as I Am Sam.

The Ugly Truth

Very crude. But I laughed. A lot. I can't believe that dude is the same guy in Phantom of the Opera. I can't believe that girl is the same girl in that one movie where her dad is the chubby foreign guy and he waterskis. (Terrible memory). I wonder just how desensitized I am to crude humor. Oh well. Nothing I can do about it now, right?

The Ref

Classic. Reminds me of high school. Not that any of the stuff that happened in the movie happened to me in high school. But I remember acting out a lot of the scenes from this movie in drama class. I don't know why, of all movies, we were so drawn to this movie. It must've been the F-bomb. I was fascinated by that word when I was young. I guess I'm old now. But it's still funny.

Zoolander

"What is this? A center for ants?" It's hard for me to talk about this movie without quoting lines from it. It teaches us so much about life. "Who am I?" About dealing with our parents. "Mer-man! (Cough, cough). Mer-man!" About resolving disputes with our enemies. "No, I was wack." About the fragility of life. "Anyone could die in a freak gasoline fight accident." About empathy for other people's insecurities. "I throw up after lots of meals." I could go on and on. Instead, I'll end with a life-changing revelation: "I'm sure there's more to life than being really ridiculously good looking. And I plan on finding out what that is." Amen, D-Rock. Amen.

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Mr. Holland's Opus

I guilted Rachel into watching it. It's a sappy movie about teachers. Yeah, well, I cried, and I liked it, so there. As a teacher, I'm afraid I'm a lot like Mr. Holland. What is my opus? Is it my writing or is it my teaching profession? Or is it neither? Maybe the point of the movie is that it should be my family. It's amazing how much influence we have. Especially as teachers. 180+ students each year multiplied by each year you teach. In ten years that's 1800 people. In twenty years it's nearly 4000. Wow. I doubt anyone will ever throw me a graduation symphony, though. Maybe they'll get together and act out one of my plays. I better make sure I've taken out all the swear words, then.

Gran Torino

I've never felt so guilty laughing in a movie. Maybe in Something About Mary when the guy was making fun of retards. Great story of sacrifice. Peace. Friendship. Courage. I wonder what he would've done if they didn't shoot him when he pretended to take out a gun. That would've been an awkward walk back to the truck. Good ending. Except for that song sung by Clint Eastwood. Man, he may be a good actor, but he's a horrible singer. He sounded like Freddy Krueger at Karaoke night. The original song is pretty sweet, though. "Heart locked in a Gran Torino."

High Fidelity

Love it. One of the few movies adapted from books where I've actually read the book. I laugh throughout the movie. I wish I got more of the music references, but I get a lot of them. Rach mentioned how often it said the F-word. I noticed too, but I don't care as much. Jack Black's character is absolutely hilarious. I love the scene where Ian shows up and Rob imagines what he'd say to him, then having to get held back from beating him up, then actually beating him up. The shy guy knocks his teeth out with the telephone. Awesome. I think it's top 5.

The Soloist

Well, Rachel finally agreed to watch it. It was alright. At the very least, it made me look at homeless people as real people. That's saying something. I liked the passion Mr. Ayers had towards his craft. He asked the reporter if he thought about writers the same way Ayers thought about musicians. The reporter said that he writes for a living, so it's different. So true. So true. It almost makes me wonder if it's better to have your passion be your side job than your main job. I don't know.

Jerry Maguire

One of my favorites. Watched it on VHS. "Help me, help me, help me." I love Cuba in this. "I am a valuable commodity. I go across the middle. I see a dude, coming across, trying to kill me. I tell myself 'get killed, catch the ball.' Boo-yah! Touchdown. I make miracles happen." I love when he wakes up in the middle of the night to write. Says he's not even a writer. Then goes in to make copies and the copy guy says, "that's how you become great, man. Hang your balls out there." So true. So true. One of the few football movies Rachel will watch with me without complaining.

Men in Black

I've seen this movie a hundred times (okay, 13). It's funny. The music video is corny. I'm starting to understand why Will Smith raps about black folks not thinking he's black enough. Maybe he did sell out a little bit to get White America to like him. It worked. I like him. I guess I'm part of White America. I watched this movie with my in-laws and my two boys (Cy 5, Bo 3). It was a little intense for them. A couple of kill images that I only noticed because they were sitting there. Makes you wonder how desensitized we really are. I loved the end when Tommy Lee Jones gets swallowed by the alien to get his gun. The boys were glued to the screen with that scary alien ready to kill the Fresh Prince. Then Agent K blasted him from the inside. Cy cheered, "yay!" It was awesome. Rachel and I couldn't stop laughing.

The Secret Life of Bees

Don't get me wrong. I got emotional. I didn't like the title. I thought the bee metaphor was a little forced. I didn't like seeing the actor who played the father's character (the same guy who played Geoffrey Chaucer in A Knight's Tale) play such a dirt bag. I love Alicia Keys, but thought she was trying too hard to be tough. We all need to be loved. The little girl thought she was unlovable, but she's not. This movie made me feel like a good dad. I've never made my kids kneel on grits. I can't believe the '60s were as bad they're portrayed in the movies. A bunch of whites beating up a black girl in public and nobody does anything? I know racism has changed over the last 40 years, but has humanity changed that much? Crap. We checked out The Soloist from the library, but Rachel didn't want to watch that.