long weekend movie reviews:

we are marshall - loved it. love sports movie, love inspirational movies, love good writing, love how crazy-ass coach gets it done. best work matthew fox has done, outside of that one episode of snl he hosted last season.

be kind rewind - eh. i only really wanted to like it because mos def is so likable. but having gone through film school and seen my share of really, really, really badly made homages to the greats, it was hard to suspend my disbelief that even well-intentioned crap would really be so captivating to the average movie renter. but again, the mos def factor so i'm reluctant to say anything bad.

definitely, maybe - at the risk of sounding like a total chick here, ryan reynolds.........damn. it was like a feature version of how i met your mother without the hijinx, but i give it props for being better and a thimble deeper than i expected, though little miss sunshine abigail breslin will always seem like an alien child to me. michael was very patient with me commenting in awe over how cute ryan reynolds was every few minutes. i was surprised he had that effect on me without jumping in a lake and coming out with water dripping down his sweet, ripped torso (see: the amityville horror. i think i cried from pleasure overload during that scene). actually, now that i'm remembering that scene from amityville, i can't remember a single other thing about this movie.

walk hard: the dewey cox story - i can't remember who insisted that i see this and said that it's surprisingly funny. i worried it would be 90 minutes of "cox" jokes, but it did get a few laughs out of me. you definitely feel like the movie was written for will ferrell and they settled for john c. reilly who did a great job. the film laughs at itself, laughs at the evolution of music, laughs at the everchanging drug scene. it has great cameos in it, particularly one scene where dewey drops acid with the beatles played by paul rudd (john), jack black (paul), jason schwartzmann (ringo) and justin long (george). justin long is consistently adorable. have you seen him as a jilted robin?

in bruges - i saw that roeper and whoever, the guys who replaced siskell & ebert, named this movie as one of the best movies of the year thus far. it stars colin farrell and brendan gleeson as hit men hiding out in belgium until their boss gives them the all clear. the dvd case said this was a comedy, but it's a comedy in the sense that pulp fiction is a comedy as it's pretty graphic at times with its violence. there are plenty of midget jokes for those who think a comedy isn't a comedy unless there are midgets or someone loses an eye. oh, someone loses an eye as well. the best scene is the shoot out between ralph fiennes as the angry boss and colin farrell, where they negotiate the terms of the shoot out so they don't get a pregnant innkeeper caught in the crossfire. this is a great little british indie that debuted at sundance, written and directed by the guy who won an oscar a few years ago for the short film, six shooter (which incidentally, is on a dvd compilation of oscar-nominated shorts that i watched half of on the trip, but haven't gotten to that particular film yet). how my dad managed to rent it, i don't know, but as much as he hated it, i enjoyed it. colin farrell redeems himself as a compelling actor; i haven't felt so compelled by him since minority report, before he publically came out as a man whore.

beowulf - another one that my dad rented that i watched because it was there. i had to read this book for like 6 different classes as an english major, and if you ask me now, i can't tell you what it's about except a dragon who was pissed about all the noise people were making, and his vengeful mother. and this guy who had balls the size of war vessels. but i had just read a review of wanted that mentioned that angelina's amazing in this, so of course, i watched it for her. the animation is amazing but at some point, it got a little old as the story unfolds so painstakingly. and really, i wanted to indulge my chick-crush on angelina so i fast-forwarded to the part where she seduces our hero (who by the way, had all his old-man fat CGI'd off. i saw sexy beast. i know what ray winstone really looks like. you can't trick me with those beautiful, beautiful fake abs that even made my dad exclaim, "wow, look at those abs." by the way, there's a naked fight scene. i mean, seriously. he couldn't even be bothered to put on a codpiece). i watched the rest of the movie on fast forward because my dad had grumbled that he didn't like the movie and had fallen asleep, and i really just wanted to see angelina who apparently gave birth to a humongous dragon who's beowulf's child. hmmm. i don't remember that being in the book i studied in school, but i partook in quite a bit of contraband between then and now so i could very well be wrong. i don't know. the movie's visual eye candy, but i found it a little boring.