Hugh Jackman's Butt

I have been slack lately in writing movie reviews, but (the operative word) I have been jarred out of my slump.  I'm a late-comer when it comes the the X-men series, and I know I have a lot of catching up to do. But (!!) the latest "X-men: Days of Future Past" brings another spin to the series. If there is anyone more ubiquitous than Hugh Jackman on the screen these days, it has to be my girl J-Law. From Katniss Everdeen to Raven/Mystique, Jennifer Lawrence is one busy actor.

Sorry if I nodded off in the dark dark scenes, but I didn't miss much. Halle Berry even had a cameo appearance as Storm.  I give it four out of five stars. 

Another one for the Bucket List, and a movie review too

As I have said before, I don't know what's on my Bucket List until it happens.  As a retired geek, I don't shy away from techie stuff, but it's been a long time since I had a paid job doing techie stuff.  In today's information age, there is so much to keep up with.  I have to depend on my kids to tell me about the latest technology.

My latest new thing is Red Box.  Yeah, I know they've been around for over ten years, but I don't usually have a reason to rent movies.  With my Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, I find it much easier to focus on a movie in a dark theater.  If I watch a movie at home, I'm multi-tasking all over the place.

It took Quvenzhané Wallis to make me think I should rent a movie.  The Beasts of the Southern Wild didn't make it to any theaters in Raleigh, or Durham where #1 son lives, until after the Oscar nominations for movie, director, and bast actress were announced.  Now it's appearing at a theater in Morrisville near the RDU airport.  My son had some time to hang out at my house on a recent Sunday afternoon, and used my PC to find the movie for himself on Red Box.  "It's cheap, and it's easy," he said.  (A dollar, twenty-eight with tax)  I really wanted to see the youngest Oscar Nominee in action, so the next weekend, I signed up with Red Box, and drove three miles to the Hess station pick up my movie. I tried not to look like a newbie when I swiped my credit card on the machine and waited until the big red box spat out my video.  Then I looked around to see who was watching....nobody.  I felt so proud of myself.

The movie...hmm.  It has won awards at the Cannes Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, the Deauville American Film Festival, and a bunch of others.  What seems to have impressed the judges was a cast of total unknowns, filmed on 16mm film.  Five-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis, is an obvious standout.

But what the movie was about, leave it to your own imagination.  It's a fantasy set on the Louisiana gulf, on a fictitious island set apart from the mainland by levees.  There's a storm coming, and there are huge wild boars, and melting icecaps, and a little girl trying to survive with her sick Daddy, in a place they called The Bathtub where every day is a holiday.

The little girl gets five stars.  The movie gets a foot in the door for its young producer Benh Zeitlin.

Cloud Atlas

Sweetie took me to see Cloud Atlas on Friday.  He picked the movie this time.  He thought it was a sci-fi movie starring Halle Berry...score two points.  I had not seen a trailer, or heard anything about the movie, but I'll go see anything with Sweetie.

We were both unprepared for this movie.  I'll say I'm a bit more open-minded than he is, but even at that, I wasn't quite paying attention to the dates displayed at the beginning of each scene, until I realized we were going forward and backward in time.  And we were seeing Tom Hanks playing different characters in different stories going in and out of time.

Then it became a game to spot Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon, and a huge cast of people as native cliff-dwellers, Brits in the 19th - 20th centuries, 22nd century clones, 19th century slaves.  Mostly no transitions once the stories got cranking.  They could close a door on an ancient ship, and open it onto a city street in 1970's.

It was fascinating!  And long.  Almost three hours, but the time flew by for me.  But what is time anyway?  Are our souls in different forms, living on different planes, at different points in history...all at once? 

The message to take away is that love transcends death.  When we find that true love he/she will be with us again.  When we touch someone else's life through kindness, the kindness reflects back on us in the next life.

I give it 4 stars out of five.  Sweetie gave it one star.

PS.  Don't ask me what the title means.  The only reference to it I heard in the movie was the name of a symphony composed by a young man who expected to see his love again in the next life. 

The Avengers

I didn't have to ask Sweetie twice if he wanted to go to the movies today.  Total testosterone movie.  Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, The Black Widow, and Hawkeye team up to stop Loki.  You guys know who all these people are.  And Samuel L. Jackson as their fearless leader, Fury.

We went to the first non-3D showing at 1:15, and the theater was packed.  Hardly an empty seat in the place when we arrived at 1:15.  We managed to squeezed into the two seats at the top in the corner, which were better than the few seats down front, too close to the screen to watch without getting a pain in the neck.

The plot?  Does there have to be a plot when you have special effects and flying, crashing things?  It was a bit dark at the beginning, and too much talking, shouting orders, so I got a snooze.  They did break up the action with some frequent comic relief.  These are Marvel comic book characters, ya-know?  At the end of the movie, the audience applauded.

But I gotta love Samuel L. Jackson.  He has so many movies in the works, I can't see them all.  There was a time when I tried to keep up with his different hairdos.  He's had afros, and dreadlocs and jerri-curls, and most anything that a black man can have.  My favorite on him  is bald.  He has had so many hair variations that he started adding skin variations...scars, burns, wrinkles.  In this movie he has an eye-patch with a dreadful looking starburst of scars radiating from under it.  It's almost as mean as his face in The Dark Knight in 2008.

Anyway, I had to dig up my old chart.  It became impossible to keep it up, even with help from friends.

I give the Avengers three stars.

Samuel L Jackson Hairdo Rating Chart
Movie Title	Year Released	Character	Hair style	Sarah’s hairdo rating
Resurrecting the Champ	2007	Champ	locs	1
Snakes on a Plane	2006	Neville Flynn	bald	9
Freedomland	2006	Lorenzo Council	hat	3
The Man	2005	Derrick Vann	short locs	2
Star Wars:Episode III	2005	Mace Windu	bald	9
XXX2	2004	Agent Augustus Gibbons	short afro	5
Kill Bill	2003	The Organ Player
Blackout	2003	Mills
S.W.A.T.	2003	Lt. Dan “Hondo” Harrelson
Basic	2003	Drill Instructor West
XXX	2002	Agent Augustus Gibbons	short afro	5
House on Turk Street	2002	Jack Friar
Star Wars:  Episode II – Attack of the Clones	2002	Mace Windu	bald	9
Changing Lanes	2002	Doyle Gipson	short afro	5
Formula 51	2002	Elmo McElroy	long braids	4
The Caveman’s Valentine	2001	Romulus Ledbetter	dreadlocks	2
Unbreakable	2000	Elijah Price	“bed head” afro	1
Shaft	2000	John Shaft	bald	10
Rules of Engagement	2000	Colonel Terry L. Childers
Any Given Wednesday	2000	Willie Nutter
Deep Blue Sea	1999	Russell Franklin	black toupee	0
Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace	1999	Mace Windu	bald	9
The Red Violin	1998	Charles Morritz	bald & thinning	3
The Negotiator	1998	Lt. Danny Roman
Jackie Brown	1997	Ordell Robbie	fried & died	1
Eve’s Bayou	1997	Louis Batiste	short afro	6
A Time to Kill	1996	Carl Lee Hailey	receding afro	4
Pulp Fiction	1994	Jules Winnfield	curl	1
Jungle Fever	1991	Gator Purify	Short	2

The Hunger Games (movie)

I couldn't get Sweetie to go with me to see The Hunger Games. He hated the last two movies I took him to, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." Even a sci-fi post-apocalyptic young adult story couldn't lure him.

I am one of many adults who loved reading the Hunger Games trilogy. I attended the 11:45 AM showing at a suburban theater. The public schools in the area are on a year-round schedule so that some students are tracked out, when others are tracked in. There were enough young people 12 - 18 years old, along with a good number of retirees like me to fill the theater.

The movie is 2 hours and 22 minutes long. Even with that length much of the action from the book was abridged. The backstory of Katniss' mother and father was only briefly implied, and the Katniss/Galen relationship was condensed. Otherwise I found the movie was true to the book. The point of view of the book was all in Katniss' head, not something that would work well in this kind of movie. The movie gave us more of a global view, so we could see the actions of the game makers at the Capital, and their cool technology.

I wasn't expecting any of the main characters to be black, except I had seen enough previews of Lenny Kravitz as Cinna. I didn't remember any references to ethnicity in the book, so I expected a white author to portray white people. After I saw there were two of the tributes played by black actors, I went home and searched the book (thanks to the Kindle "search this book" function). I really missed the references to brown-skinned people. That was a pleasant surprise.

I loved this movie. Some of the "Team Galen" girls were probably disappointed, but Galen is likely to get more action in part two.

I give it four stars.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (the movie)

I should have read the book first. It's on my to-read list on Goodreads, at the bottom with a bunch of other books I can't seem to get around to. Books that are best sellers, but I don't know anybody personally reading them.

I didn't expect it to become a movie so soon. I probably wouldn't have seen it, if not for Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, even though I knew from interviews they each spend less than 15 minutes on the screen. But they sold it to me.

They didn't sell it to Tinker. Anything about 9/11 has to be depressing. The reviews said it was uplifting. I asked him if he wanted to go to see it with me. He said, I don't want to, but I'll go with you.

I expected a story about a precocious nine-year-old in search for something about his father who had died on that "worst day." The boy turns out to be a little "Monk, the detective." Obsessive Compulsive, Aspergers, Savant, you name it. If you watch "Monk" you know how Trudy's death affected him. Halfway into the movie, I looked at Tinker, and I knew he hated it. I started thinking, "shoulda read the book first."

Then something changed (no spoilers here). The movie became uplifting. Hint: Max von Sydow received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor in this film.

Tinker still hated it. I give it four stars.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (The Movie)

I read the book months ago and reviewed it here. It was one of those books that grabbed me and wouldn't let go until I had read all three books in the trilogy. I like to read the book before I see the movie.

Books usually allow you to use your imagination for the details of a person's appearance. Even though Stieg Larsson left little to the imagination in portraying Lisbeth Salander with her diminuitive size, her piercings, and that graphic tattoo, in my mind she became less harsh in her appearance as the story developed. I started to see her as a frail victim of a system that treated her as disposable.

The movie on the other hand gives you this and you deal with it even as you see her softer side, the vulnerable little girl with a kick-butt attitude.

I saw Rooney Mara in an interview this week. She has dimples, and she actually blushed when Ann Curry talked about her Golden Globe nomination. Where could Rooney's portrayal of Lisbeth Salander come from? She said she had read the books, and fell in love with the character as millions of readers did.

I saw the movie today. Hubby hasn't read the book, and probably won't. While I was enthralled with Mara's performance, he was watching the time tick away. It's a loooong movie, at 158 minutes. I didn't notice the length until it got to the anti-climactic part after the Harriet story had been solved. Then I realized the movie had missed too much of the Lisbeth story that I read in the book, and the reason I kept reading through three episodes. The movie makes her a background character. I will say though that Rooney Mara made the most of her time on the screen. All the subtle looks of disgust, endearment, fear tell a lot about the girl fighting to have her life back, even without the backstory of confinement in mental institutions when she was a little girl. I suppose the screen-writer is saving that for the next installment.

I give the movie four stars.

Larry Crowne

The Movie "Larry Crowne" answers the question, "Can a man find happiness after he loses his job, his wife, his house, and can't afford to put gas in his SUV?" Of course he can, in Tom Hanks' latest movie, written, produced, and directed by Tom Hanks.

The bigger question is, when did Tom Hanks become one of the old guys? He still looks good, but he's getting a little saggy under the eyes, and doughy around the middle. Don't get me wrong, Tom Hanks is one of my favorite actors. I have seen a lot of his movies. That's saying a lot when you consider there was a time when I would refuse to watch him in anything. I absolutely hated "Bosom Buddies," which I consider the first of the all-time-worst stupid white guy shows.

He redeemed himself with "Big." He made a believer out of me with his convincing portrayal of a little kid trapped in a grown-up body. I got on a roll with Tom Hanks after that.

Larry Crowne is a "nice" feel-good movie, with a stellar supporting cast. Julia Roberts, of course. But then Hanks gives work to a bunch of my favorite black actors...an extra star for that. Cedric the Entertainer, and Taraji P. Henson are Larry's neighbors. Where did Taraji get that housewife voice? Girlfriend has so much untapped talent. And Gugu Mbatha-Raw...remember Kodjoe's wife from "Undercovers" the series that Kodjoe couldn't save. Gugu really found her element as a flaky free spirit in this one. And Pam Grier!!! Foxy Brown herself!

With the extra star that makes four stars for Larry Crowne.

The Green Hornet

I like comic book superhero movies. Superman, Batman, Spider-man, Iron Man, I've enjoyed them all. I expected The Green Hornet to be another one of the rich playboy turned protector of the innocent and down-trodden, a la Robert Downey, Jr. in Iron Man.

What I wasn't expecting was another stupid white guy movie. I should have checked the cast list before going off with Sweetie for our afternoon's entertainment. Seth Rogen would have been a big red flag. He was the guy who "Knocked Up" Katherine Heigl. And he played the same dufus who doesn't recognize his own classist, misogynist, racist tendencies. I thought Cameron Diaz selected better movies for herself. Slapstick reached a whole new level with martial arts, big cars, big guns, explosions, and crashes through skyscrapers. All in 3D. A cheap third dimension that barely had one person standing out from the background.

Sweetie gave it two stars for the one big laugh...front wheel drive. I give it one star.

For Colored Girls...

If anybody went to see "For Colored Girls" expecting to see Madea, they were sadly disappointed. I have to give Tyler Perry his "propers." He made millions giving (some) people what they want, now he's giving the people what he thinks they need. The credits for the movie list Tyler Perry as screen writer....based on the play by Ntozake Shange "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf."


I never had the opportunity to see Ntozake Shange's choreopoem, as it is called, performed, but I have read the 20 poems that make up the performance. In the original, seven women are known by the colors of the rainbow that they represent. TP uses the words of those poems and assembles them into a story, adding transitional scenes and men who don't appear at all in the original. They are the men whom the women are talking about, or talking to in the original.


I thought the screenplay was well constructed, sometimes moving quickly from one issue to the next, so there was no point where the story dragged. The scenes are emotionally draining, covering the worst experiences women can live through. The poem about rape was originally performed by several women, in the movie it becomes a monologue by the victim in closeup. (Spoiler alert!) This was an outstanding performance by Anika Noni Rose. I also loved Loretta Divine, Kimberly Elise, and Thandie Newton.


I have seen mixed reviews for "For Colored Girls." I give it four stars. I think it's Oscar material for somebody in the cast. I would vote for Anika Noni Rose.

The Social Network

The year was 1986. (Mark Zuckerberg was two years old.) I was honored to be sent by my company to CADRE, the National ADR Users Group meeting. ADR was swallowed up by a bigger database company a few years later, but at the time, I considered myself the data bigot, the one in charge of relational database design. I had come up through the ranks as a programmer, my coding days were over, but I was still, the super-geek, super-geek. (Apologies to Rick James.)

The keynote speaker at CADRE that year was Bill Gates, a senior citizen at age 30, and he talked about his new operating system, Windows. The audience was other main-frame geeks like me, who were fascinated with the future of PC development as described by Gates. We had not even heard of the internet yet. I remember Bill Gates was a nerd, but he had a certain charm, a self-deprecating humor, that kept his audience enthralled with his vision of the world to come.

Fast-forward to 2004, the Harvard dorm room of Mark Zuckerberg. If you believe the movie which claims to be fiction, he's the ultimate nerd with no social skills, no scruples, no morals, and after building a site with 500 million users, has no friends.

I thought I was going to get a nap during the movie...it's been one of those weeks when I couldn't get a nap. But it kept my attention every minute. And who else was in the Friday matinee, but other old geeks, probable Facebook members like me. I suppose some might have been wondering how they missed the chance to be a billionaire.

If you've seen the trailers, you know the movie chronicles the building of Facebook, intertwined with the depositions of the lawsuits that follow. Did he really stiff his best friend, his only friend, who put up the start-up money? They settled the lawsuit with an undisclosed amount. And did he really print those business cards? (Apologies again to Rick James)

I've seen a few interviews with Zuckerberg, and Jesse Eisenberg who plays him, has him nailed...the obsessive talking, the fidgeting, the lack of eye-contact...spot-on.

Justin Timberlake was impressive as a sleazy Sean Parker, the founder of Napster.

I give the movie three stars.

The Heir to the Summer Blockbuster

Will Smith owned the slot for the summer blockbuster since "Independence Day" the summer of 1996. As long as he was the favorite goofy hero, he had the summer locked up. After he slid into the dark side with "I am Legend" and "Seven Pounds" he relinquished the summer.

Now that spot belongs to his son Jaden, in "Karate Kid." My sons were big fans of the 1984 release of "Karate Kid." But this latest release speaks to a new generation of urban youth who have a greater degree of martial arts exposure than the kids of 30 years ago. The international element keeps it from being just another black movie. If you can buy the premise of a single black Mom being transferred from Detroit to Beijing to work for an auto manufacturer, you can believe the frumping-down of Taraji P. Henson as the Mom (even a hottie has to work).

Jaden is a natural, and young enough not to appear weak when hiding from the bullies. I loved the interplay with Jackie Chan.

The movie is rated PG. The fight scenes are not bloody, but there was enough punching to make me hide my eyes a few times. The audience when we saw it at noon today was mostly white parents and kids around Jaden's age. The local Karate School used the opportunity for a promotion, with flyers and passes for a month of free lessons. The ticket sellers were even dressed in robes.

I'm awaiting the reports from my green-belted grandgems when they see it. I give it four stars. (I didn't fall asleep at all.)

Vook You!!!??

That's my chair. My One Enormous Chair. You know the one, "Oh wouldn't it be loverly," chair. It kinda symbolizes how I like to read. I'm not always in that chair. Sometimes I'm in a pile of pillows on the bed, or on the sofa, or my new swoop chaise, or in a deck chair on a cruise...with a book, cosy and comfortable. When people have discussions about whether they like to read the book or see the movie first, some don't care one way or another. Some prefer the movie first. I prefer the book. The book lets me paint the scenes in my head, and usually gives me a more complete story. Sometimes the movie makes clear the things I didn't understand until I got to the last page of the book. You know when you get to the last page of a Toni Morrison novel, and you think, "OOOOH, so that's what that was about." The movie can save me from having to read that book again. I still have it on my list to read "Paradise" again. I don't see a movie forthcoming.

I'm a geek at heart, but I still love to feel the pages of a book. I'm starting to wrap my brain around the idea of an ebook. I don't have an eReader yet, but I'm working on it. (Kindle: hint! hint!) Bear with me, I'm working up to the vook thing.

When I first learned that my favorite author, Tananarive Due, and her husband, screen-writer Steven Barnes were collaborating with one of my all-time favorite hotties, Blair Underwood on a mystery book, I thought it would be a great idea. It took me a while to get on-board and buy "Casanegra," and by then they had published the second book in the series, "In the Night of the Heat." After reading, "Heat" I became a true fan, and bought Casanegra as well. They are both page-turners, but I liked "Heat" more. There was less of the "Die Hard" (You know how Bruce Willis is so beat up by the end of the movie, you wonder if he will live.) and more of the Walter Mosley, "Easy Rawlins' transported to the twenty-first Century. The third book in the Tennyson Hardwick series, "From Cape Town with Love" just hit the stores in May. I bought it and convinced my book club to make it our selection for the next meeting.



Since I'm a Facebook fan of (I "like") Blair Underwood, I get his promotional messages on my Facebook home page. He is now promoting the VOOK for the latest Tennyson Hardwick book. That's Vook as in Video-Book. I went to www.vook.com, clicked on the link for Blair Underwood, and got the sneak peek. I don't know if I want this. OK, it's enough that Blair is on the cover of the novels (" Blair Underwood Presents"), as the character Tennyson Hardwick. I'm OK with that. I have Blair in my head as Tennyson. But I had already visualized Chela and April and Dad in "Heat," only to add a different layer in Casanegra, so that in my mind April looked like Tananarive Due, not Taraji P. I'm not ready to see the movie at the same time that I'm reading the book. I feel like you're messing with my head, and even making casting decisions that may be changed when (not if) the book makes it to the big screen.

I'm all about expanding your audience, but it feels like dumbing down a good novel by adding video. And it raises the question of what is Blair's role in the collaboration. The copyright says "Copyright (c) 2010 by Trabajando, Inc., Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes." Is it Blair's role to get the book to the silver screen?

"Just Wright"

One "guy movie" deserves a "Chick flick." We saw Iron Man 2 last week, so this week it was my turn. Everybody loves Queen Latifah, even hubby who doesn't like rap. I didn't tell him until we were leaving the theater that Common is my favorite rap artist. The only rap CD I ever bought was "Be." Besides I like it when the authors of "Explicit Content" can get a PG rating for their movie.

If you saw the previews, you know what happens in "Just Wright." There were no surprises, except maybe Paula Patton's dumbing down. But she was convincing. Can somebody tell me what is a "god sister?"

Hubby liked the basketball scenes...lots of NBA players being themselves. I always like it when the big girl gets her man. Queen was her usual fun and sassy self.

The story dragged in spots....OK let's get to the part where she gets her man. But it was fun to watch. I give it two and a half stars.

Iron Man 2

Hammercy. I thought I had fallen into a testosterone pit. We went to the 12:30 showing. (After the 12:00, and before the 1:00, 1:30, 3:00, 3:30....) I think I was one of five women in the theater. First we had to see the previews of coming guy movies, "The A-Team," "Prince of Persia," "Robin Hood." Shrek got in there too, and next year's Spielberg movie. After all that action, the guys were really stoked. (Where do all these guys come from for a matinee on a Friday? I heard one say, "one of the advantages of being self-employed")

If you saw the first Iron Man, this one is more of the same, but more action, more villains, even Mickey Rourke as a Russian Physicist. And Samuel L Jackson is back. I'll have to update my Sam Jackson hair chart. This time he's bald with an eye patch. Robert Downey Jr as himself, same self-indulgent playboy, with the same arrogant sexual innuendos. Good guy fun. His side-kick "Rhodey" is played by Don Cheadle this time, taking over Terrence Howard's role - because, you know, they look so much alike. (stole that line from our local critic, Craig Lindsey, click here.)

I enjoyed it. I caught a snooze in there when they went into too much techno-babble. I give it three stars.

Michael Jackson - "This is it!"

I went to see it at 1:00 today with my sons. Tinker says he'll wait to see it on DVD. I wanted the big screen experience. I never had the privilege of a live Michael concert, and I hoped this would give me a taste of what had missed while he was living. I knew this was rehearsal footage, but didn't know what to expect.

First of all, Michael was very much in charge, vibrant, not at all sickly. The movie merged multiple rehearsal sessions of individual songs (you could tell by the change of clothing), and he was dancing, singing (at the same time)...how many of you 50-somethings can sing while you walk upstairs? He was directing singers, dancers, and musicians, singing the instrument parts, getting the perfectionist's sound and tempo.

There was new movie footage for the Thriller sequence as well as new black-and-white footage of Michael with Bogart and Edward G. Robinson for Smooth Criminal. Just a wonderful small morsel of the concert that might have been.

Michael was demanding, but gentle. He treated the whole team of singers, dancers, musicians, technicians, directors as family. He thanked them with "I love you," when they responded to his changing demands for perfection.

I lost count of the songs. There was a taste of the Jackson Five, and he went through the decades of hits, every one you would want to request. I was dancing in my seat. There were times when he held back on the voice, said he was saving his voice. But other times he got really into it and gave it his top performance.

I guess you can tell I'm a fan.

Attendance was light at 1:00. There were fewer than 20 people in the theater. Many of us had bought tickets in advance, expecting a crowd. Most of us stayed through the credits at the end.

Some critics have given this documentary 1/2 star. I give it four.