Paradigms...where shift happens!

Movies to miss!

I’m not a movie reviewer in any sense of the word but the piece of crap I saw Sunday was so bad I can’t let it go by without telling you what a total waste of time and effort it was. Descriptions on line of “Untraceable”, Diane Lane’s newest movie made it sound as if it might be another take on the cyber drama like “War Games”. As it turned out whatever suspense that might have provided was dispensed with in the first 30 minutes of this 2 hour disaster of a film.

If you like gory disgusting perverted death scenes and a predictable plot then this is the film for you. If you feel you absolutely must see it, please, save yourself a few bucks and wait for it to come out on DVD. The wait shouldn’t be very long I think, maybe 20 minutes max.  

The highlight of the afternoon was the popcorn. That should tell you something.

Suspension of disbelief!

Several weeks after seeing previews of “The Astronaut Farmer” with Billy Bob Thornton I finally got to see the movie last night and I just have this to offer. Movie critics be damned! What a fun movie that was. The critics have been tearing it up, calling it improbable and far-fetched. It’s a story of a

Texas

rancher who, after having had to drop out of the NASA astronaut training program, determines to build his own rocket in his barn on a

Texas

ranch and launch himself into earth orbit and then return safely.   

Now if a critic wants to go after a movie technically or artistically that’s fine. Those are good enough reasons I suppose. But it’s a movie for crying out loud! Reminds me of the uproar about “The DaVinci Code” which will be found in the FICTION section of any bookstore that stocks it.  I’ll bet that not a word was written about Star Wars being far fetched and unrealistic and I’m pretty sure that the Harry Potter movies and the Lord of the Rings trilogy escaped that accusation as well.

I did feel that Billy Bob Thornton’s characterization came up a little short of the kind of heroic sort I would have preferred to see. Moments that might have had the audience cheering just didn’t quite make it. I did notice that a lot of the people stayed until the bitter end of the credits trying, I think, to get that last sweet detail of emotion from the material that ran behind the scrolling print on the screen.  

Word Of Warning from the previews: There’s yet another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie looming ominously on the horizon later this year.