MOVIES MOVIES MOVIES

I don't know if it's because the Academy Awards are coming up or just coincidence but I've been watching more movies lately.  Herewith, my amateur reviews.

"The Kids Are All Right".  I thought this one was kind of ehhhh.  Annette Benning was great as one half of a lesbian couple with two teenagers.  And Mark Rufalo was handsome and appealing.  But otherwise it kind of left me cold.

Next, a documentary on "Sacco and Vanzetti".  I was curious about this one because SWMBO, many years ago, got so intrigued with their case that she read the entire trial transcript.  It was pretty well done and left me feeling a bit outraged at the racism that I feel led to their executions.

"The Rum Diary", with Johnny Depp playing a drunken Hunter S. Thompson character in Puerto Rico . . . which of course was based entirely on Thompson was fairly good because I like both Depp and Hunter.

"The Village Barbershop" with John Ratzenberger as a cantankerous beer drinking barber whose partner has just died was a delight.  He is forced into hiring Shelly Cole to save his dying barbershop.  It's very funny, melancholy at times but well worth seeing.

And then I charged into our DVR'd collection of movies.  I started with "The Maiden Heist" today.  Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman and William H. Macy are all hilarious as they play against their strengths.  Marcia Gay Harden is equally funny as Walken's wife.  The three guys are all security guards at an art museum.  Each one is in love with a different piece of art.  When they are sold to a museum in Denmark they conspire to steal them during the move.

And finally, I finished today with an oldie but a goodie "12 Angry Men" with an incredible cast of Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, E.G. Marshall, Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Jack Klugman, and Robert Webber and others are fantastic in this 1957 movie that was Sidney Lumet's film directing debut.  The 12 are jurors in a murder trial that seems open and shut as the first vote is 11 to 1 for conviction.  But Fonda works his magic and the final verdict is aquittal.  Highly, highly recommended.

And that's where we are right now.  Some goodies in there but some stinkers, too.  The next thing coming from Netflix is the second season of "Treme."  I can't wait.