Sick Girls Rent Movies

I hate movies. I mean that I really hate movies. But I have been sick for the past two weeks and my eyes have been too fuzzy to read subtitles, so I've been stuck watching movies in English ... ick ... English. I also haven't had anything good to read, so I've been on my couch watching crappy movies that were filmed in ... English. So, today I get to rant about all these crappy movies I ended up watching. I went through the video store and almost rented them at random and since you've probably all seen them, I'm only going to post my opinion of them and not a synopsis for them. Oh, and I should probably warn you - they are all girl movies. I've been writing Tesai a lot lately and so I've been feeling kind of manish. This was almost meant to balance me out. Okay, here we go.

Hitch
This wasn't bad. It was well planned, well cast, with charming dialogue and cute climaxes. It was almost like watching a dating show without all the sleeze and much better photography. I remember reading a review on this in the paper after it came out. They said that sales for this film were only okay in the States, but that it did unbelievably well in Europe - almost explosive. What does that say about the Americans? They didn't like a comedy that wasn't sleezy?

Carolina
I think this one was a B movie, so you might not have heard of it. The only thing I could think of while watching this movie was a manga I read once where a girl wanted to marry rich and leave her trashy family behind. What she used to say was, 'I want to turn into a pheonix and fly to a higher branch'. The girl in the manga didn't give up on her dream, but Carolina learns that she can't fly to a higher branch because she is still more comfortable in chicken droppings ... great. I wasn't happy with some of the messages in this film, but it could have been worse. However, I believe that people should always strive to be better than they are. It just depends on what you think is 'better'.

The Devine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
I enjoyed this film. It had a lot more meaning, purpose and direction than I expected it to have from the previews. The cast was distracting, because there are sometimes three actors playing the same characters and they didn't necessarily pick very good transition people for everyone. But it wasn't very deep. It was mostly just entertaining, but who am I to complain about that?

Autumn in New York
This was the biggest piece of garbage I've seen in years. It's about a playboy who sort of, maybe, smartens up about his stupidity, but it was so weak compared to other stories on the same subject. I hated the movie 'Alfie' (the old one with Michael Cane), but there was serious growth in that. You can't be a playboy without leaving a few wild oats behind and it takes something 100% horrible to snap a person out of that kind of distructive pattern. Also, there is a manga called 'Bitter Virgin' that is along these same lines as well - reforming playboys - that was also a zillion times stronger. Actually, there wasn't a thing that I can think of to praise in this film. It really made me hate Richard Gere - a lot - and everyone else who was in it, too. It was the most wretched, miserable, pointless, icky, piece of trash that I have ever seen. YUCK!

Against the Ropes
This movie wasn't long enough. It felt like the success in it came too easily because there wasn't much time for development. It felt like 'We're going to do this unbelieveably difficult thing' and then I blinked and they'd done it. There was almost no struggle. I think it was supposed to be a 'feel good' film, but I didn't feel good. It's based on a true story and I felt like I'd rather be watching Biography than the movie.

The Perfect Man
I rented this because the plot reminded me of that one Simpson's episode where Bart starts writing love letters to his school teacher. That was a really good episode and frankly it's an hour shorter than this film, so you might want to watch it instead. However, this was a charming little film that could be enjoyed by girls about 10 years younger than me. I'm just not their demographic.

I watched lots of other stuff too, but these were the ones I'd never seen before. But I've made myself a promise. Next time I'm out on my butt, I'm going to go to the library and rent documentaries instead. I think I'll find it more fulfilling.