At the Movies with B.E.

Okay, so not really 'at' the movies.  I'm home.  I'm always home and I don't do theaters anyway.  Still, I've been watching some things that I'd like to share.  Maybe I'll make this a regular post.  We'll see.

The first movie up is A Birder's Guide to Everything (2013).  If you know me, you know I'm a bird nerd, so when I saw this title on the Roku movie list, I had to stick it in my Save pile.  I sat down to watch it on Saturday morning.  It was fun and lighthearted in places, serious and heartwarming in others.  It's about a teenage guy who's into birding.  He sees a duck he hasn't seen before and he's pretty sure he's identified it as one thought to be extinct, so he convinces his friends to take a trip to try and find the duck again.  So, here's these three boys and a photography-nerd girl on the road, looking for a duck, and things happen.  It's kind of a coming-of-age thing, and a friendship thing, and a family thing with birds.  Think The Big Year combined with Stand by Me.  The main character was played by an actor I've never seen, but the MC's best friend was Spencer in the newer Jumanji movies.  And Ben Kingsley was in it, too.  I really enjoyed it.  So far, Hubs hasn't seemed interested in it, but I'll convince him to watch it.  I think he'll enjoy it almost as much as I did.  

Next up is an older title... The January Man (1989).  It's a quirky suspense starring Kevin Kline and Mary Elizabeth Mostrantonio.  Kline plays a disgraced police officer called in to help with a crime the NYPD hasn't been able to solve, because he's some kind of crime-solving savant.  Once a month, someone is strangling a young woman and this has been going on for 11 months now.  (Which is a little far-fetched that they wouldn't bring in help earlier than after the 11th death, but I rolled with it.)  The movie also has Alan Rickman, which was cool.  Love Alan.  I'd seen this ages ago and loved it, and it held up pretty well to my memory of it.  (Although, I don't remember the nudity.  Maybe I'd only ever seen it cut for TV. :shrug:  Eh, it was the '80s.)  Hubs liked it, too.  

We also watched several Jesse Stone movies.  They star Tom Selleck as an ex-LAPD officer who's now the police chief in a small town in Massachusetts.  They're gritty and suspenseful, and we really enjoy them.  We'd seen a couple before, but we're trying to work our way through them all. We're going to start over from the chronological beginning and re-watch the first five before we move on to #6, just to get everything straight in our heads.  (And because they're awesome enough to re-watch.

Next up on my watch list was Dragonslayer (1981) - a movie I haven't seen since my folks took me to the theater to see it when it came out (probably because my brother wanted to see it and I begged to go, too).  It's still pretty awesome.  A group of townsfolk show up at a sorcerer's place to get him to come take care of their dragon problem, but something happens and the sorcerer's apprentice ends up going instead.  There's daring-do and magic, surprises and romance, and a happy ending.  Yay!  

Finally, I found a movie from 1980 that my father loved.  I mean, he must've loved it because he rented it like every other weekend.  And I loved it, too - but hey, I was a kid.  It's called Hawk, the Slayer.  I made it about 15 minutes in before I gave up.  It's really really bad.  Hokey beyond measure.  Bad acting.  Bad writing.  Bad special effects.  So bad I'm not even linking to it.  Sorry Dad, but it's the truth.  Even for 40 years ago, it's bad.

All in all, not a bad week for movies.  I have several movies ready to go on my Save list for the coming week.  No spoilers in case I do this again next week.  I really should spend less time in front of the tube, but I doubt that'll happen.