With Christmas upon us and new TV episodes dwindling down, my wife and I have been catching up on more movies in our queue. Here are a few of them we recently saw, and my thoughts:

21 was a movie about how MIT students were able to "beat the system" in Vegas and count cards at Blackjack. It was somewhat interesting after hearing the book which it was based on, Bringing Down the House, mentioned multiple times from Jim Rome. A bit more Hollywood-ized, but still enjoyable, especially with Kevin Spacey playing a great role as usual. Just a rental unless you are a gambling fiend and/or big fan of Spacey.

 

 

 

 

The Astronaut farmer sounded interesting at first - a NASA astronaut is forced to retire to save his family's farm, and then still itching to return to space, creates a rocket in his barn. The movie is a bit far fetched, but isn't about NASA or space or rockets, but about people. Billy Bob Thornton is an underrated actor, perhaps due to the name Billy Bob, or his previous relationship with Angelina Jolie. He does well in this picture (which also features a nice cameo from Bruce Willis.) Very family friendly, unlike my previous review of Death Race :) and recommended for rental.

 

 

 

 

After all the hype surrounding this movie with the great ensemble and the Golden Globe nomination, along with the direction from the Coen brothers, I was very disappointed. There were a few funny moments throughout the film, but overall the purpose of the movie was non-existent. While most critics will look toward acting subtleties and how well something was directed, I look toward how much enjoyment I had from the movie. Perhaps there was too much emphasis on the cast - Clooney, Malkovich and Pitt did a great job - but there was too high of an expectation that it fell short. A rental, at most.

 

 

 

 

Vantage Point was one of the better movies I have seen in some time. A "thinking movie," it takes the perspective of eight different people to piece together the attempted assassination of the President while overseas. I'm a big fan of William Hurt, Matthew Fox and Dennis Quaid and they played great roles in this. The movie requires great attention to detail, as we found ourselves rewinding just a bit to replay a scene or see more detail. Each of the perspectives offers only a small amount of detail into the greater picture, which is finally revealed at the end with some nice plot twists. Highly recommended for rental, and perhaps purchase.