Nebraska

My mom was from Nebraska.  Sidney, Nebraska, a small town in the Southwest corner of the state.  If you wanted to fly there you would fly to Denver, then rent a car a drive Northeast to Nebraska.  I've been there a few times.  The last time was when my grandfather Louis Bert Neuman died.  I think that was 1989.  So that is mostly why I went to this movie.  And Will Forte in a serious role was interesting.  I really liked the mother in this movie, she reminded me of my mom.  Being "honest" often means just saying what's on your mind, which goes against the idea of if you don't have anything nice to say, say nothing.  It also reminded me of my mother as she was losing her memory I would often just go along with her ideas because it was too exhausting to correct her.

Delivery Man

This is Vince Vaughn's latest movie.  I enjoyed it.  Funny in parts and touching in others, they even squeezed a tear out of me.  It is the story of a guy that sells his sperm and it is used to conceive over 400 hundred people.  These people all file a class action suit to find out the identity of their father.   Vaughn's character stumbles into a meeting with all the people that are his kids that leads to a touching moment.  I think maybe they used montages with music a little too much, and the legal stuff was kind of silly.  But other than that it was a fun movie.  They wrap it up with Vaughn becoming a father one more time and all the half siblings being around for the moment.

Thor: the dark world

Good god y'all.  Thor the god of thunder that carries a big hammer fights bad guys.  And a love story too.  Gosh Natalie Portman, who doesn't fall in love with her?  She should be in a movie about a guy that doesn't fall in love with her.  That would be interesting.  Also, they should start testing for performance enhancing drugs in Hollywood.  Chris Hemsworth is a beast.  Come on Congress hold some hearings a la steroids in beisbol.  Any awards won will have to have an asterisk.  I have to admit I was tricked by Loki and Thor's act at the critical moment, you think Loki is the bad guy.

Abducted

We saw this one at the Asian film festival.  It is a Japanese film with English subtitles.  It was so bad that it ended up being almost good.  It was based on a manga.  Dude is abducted and wakes up in a shipping container bound and gagged, he frees himself from bondage but is still stuck in the container.  Dude starts communicating through the wall with other abductees, and they figure out they are headed for China, they were all on a plane that was flying over China many years ago when a mine explosion had forced a landing.  So they all have something in common.  Turns out vatos daughter is in the shipping container next door.  Oh, I forgot to mention the rock, the single rock that is in the container with each abductee.  The rock is DELHITO.  For days after this movie all I had to say was, DELHITO and my wife and I would laugh.  I'll try it right now and see if it still works.  Yep, we both laughed.  That alone makes it a good movie to me.

Gravity

Gravity was an interesting movie, mostly done with green screen, so kind of a cartoon, but with actors faces.  I liked the main character solving problems in her dream.  But of course it was Hollywood so the main character lives to fight another day.  Not that I wanted the character to croak, just that sitting there being aware of how broke our country, and underfunding education and space exploration programs, while we are still spending billions on the military industrial complex, and for spying on our own people, killing people in Afghanistan, etc.  Just kind of disheartening. 

This movie also featured George Clooney mostly as a voice.  In general, the movie was suspenseful and kept my attention. 

Prisoners

This movie starred Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenwhatsits.  Jake plays a cop with a neck tattoo.  I didn't think that was very realistic, and kind of pulled me out of the film.  But other than that it was an interesting film with twists that caught me off guard.  I usually have a hunch about what is going to happen in a movie and was pleasantly surprised to find out my hunch was wrong about this movie. They make you think one character is a bad guy but it turns out he is just a troubled victim.  Interesting.  David Dastmalchian does a great job in this movie.  He plays the troubled victim.  Of course Hugh Jackman's character mistakenly kidnaps someone after his daughter is kidnapped so maybe the theme of the film is mistaken kidnappings.  I enjoyed the rationalization of the actual culprit that they wanted to teach parents that god was bad after their son had died.  Victims being victimized by police and by the parents of the victims.

Lee Daniel's The Butler

This movie was an interesting overview of the Civil Rights movement in the US from the 50s through to today.  The film was inspired by a Washington Post article written about the White House butlers and their take on Barack Obama being elected president.  Forest Whitaker did an amazing performance as a long suffering fellow.  Oprah Winfrey was his pain in the ass wife.  Whitaker's. character showed the travails of the 30s through to the 50s.  His two sons were used as vehicles to show the 60s through to the present.