Movies you saw for the first time January

The Hunger Games (2012) pretty good futuristic "gladiator" style fantasy with pretty much non-stop action once it gets into "the game". I would say it's worth watching. it's on the new EPIX1 channel next weekend Friday the 4th thru Sunday the 6th

  of three

Lincoln...Daniel Day Lewis outstanding as usual. It was so quiet in the theather you could hear a pin drop. Can't remember the last time I didn't hear a bunch of talking & coughing etc.

James Spader was great as well playing a degenerate lobbyist.

I've just been watchin whatever s-h-i-t on youtube

how about Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens? pull up Stevens Wikipage and Jones in the movie was a dead ringer for for the man . IF Jones doesn't get the Best Supporting Actor Oscar this year it's a highway robbery.

just re-visited Goon (2011) on Showtime. GREAT hockey themed movie. VERY funny in spots. Seann William Scott as Doug "The Thug" Glatt (The "Goon") and  Liev Schreiber as Ross "The Boss" Rhea are both excellent. check of one time NHL fighter Georges Laraque in a bit part as one of Doug's opponents in a fight. IF they had a movie awards catagory for "best use of classical music in a movie", it would win for the use of cuts from Puccini's opera "Turandot" esp in the movies finale.  

it's on Showtime again Saturday Jan 5th, Sunday Jan 6th, Monday Jan 7th and Wednesday Jan 9th. highly recommend  even IF your not a hockey fan. it's just an all around fun movie   

 

Safe (2012) Jason Statham's latest action drama with non-stop action, oodles of ordnance, some great chase scenes and "kung-foo" style fighting packed into 95 minutes. somewhat similar basic plot to Jean Reno's "The Professional" only with Statham's character protecting a preteen Chinese girl who's a genius with numbers against corrupt NYC cops and both Russian and Chinese mobsters. definate must see for Statham fans as it's one of his best recent films.   

btw, two more Statham films play on various premium movie channels the next couple weeks. Blitz (2011) is on The Movie Channel Sunday Jan 6th and Wednesday Jan 9th. The Bank Job (2008) airs on the HD Net Movie channel Wednesday Jan 9th

The Lincoln Lawyer (2011) crime-mystery drama with Matthew McConaughey as the sleazy defense lawyer main character who works out of the back of his Lincoln Town Car, hense the name of the movie. loads of "plot twists" and a very unexpected ending. not a lot of "action" BUT a VERY riveting plot. was NO "filler" in this 2 hour movie as the situation with McConaughey's defense client is almost constantly changing. airs in EPIX2 again Friday Jan 11th @ 9:30 pm and Saturday Jan 12th @ 6:30 am pacific time.   

watched Lost in Space (1998) on the Fox Movie channel. pretty good SciFi space action movie based on the 1965–1968 TV series. Gary Oldman  was excellent as the villainous Doctor Smith although NO one could beat the late Jonathan Harris, who played Smith in the TV series. Harris was famous throughout his 40+ year career as a pompus villian. the movie had excellent CGI for 1998 and good action in spots . I would say  

also re-visited Stanley Kubrick's 1971 classic A Clockwork Orange with Malcolm McDowell as "drooge leader" Alex LaFarge. great use of classical scores from Rossini,  Elgar and Beethoven throughout the film but esp Rossini's Overture to "The Thieving Magpie" used in the casino fight scene early on. it's been running on the HD Net Movies channel.   

The Bone Collector (1999) good mystery crime thriller starring Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie with Queen Latifah, Luis Guzman and Ed O'Neill ("Al Bundy" in the "Married with Children" TV series) in supporting rolls. lots of "twists and turns" throughout the movie BUT I did think that Jolie was somewhat "mis-cast" as the rookie forensic police officer Amelia Donaghy.   for those that like a good mystery.

 Pretty good flick............didn't like how they forced a romance into the movie but I guess that's the rule. I enjoyed it.......... even though Schreiber had a limited role til the end I thought he was great.

 Kim Coates, the coach (never knew his name), was funnier than hell........

"This Ain't F**KING BASEBALL!!!"

silver linings playbook was pretty damn good

I saw 0 dark 30 . My friend gets all these movies on dvd before they appear in theaters because she works for Fox. It was quite good. 

highly entertaining

watched The Brave One (2007) on Cinemax last night with Jodie Foster. think it's here best performance after her 1988 The Accused and (of course) the 1991 Silence of the Lambs. excellent "vigilante" crime drama. it's on Cinemax again Thursday Jan 10th, Saturday Jan 12th, Tuesday Jan 15th and Wednesday Jan 16th   

also watched Storage 24 (2012) on a HD Net Movies "sneak preview". was basically the plot of Alien in a London storage facility with a "love triangle" thrown in and a bunch of Brit "no name" actors. had some decent "startle" scenes BUT I definately would NOT pay to view it. pretty much 

Saw Zero Dark Thirty.  Would say overall a very good movie, and even though you know the story, the final scenes were pretty dramatic.  The main female lead did bug me in a few scenes with her pushy/bitchy attitude with not once really being taken to task about it.  I know I would've told her to knock it off with the over the top bitchy writing on the window thing in no time.

Case 39 is a 2009 American Action film / dark fantasy / psychological thriller directed by Christian Alvart and starring Renée Zellweger, Bradley Cooper, and Ian McShane. The film was shot in Vancouver in late 2006 and was released theatrically in the UK, European and Latin American countries on August 13, 2009. The film was initially scheduled for America release in August 2008, but was delayed twice before its final release date on October 1, 2010. And this is my movie

with all the Oscar buzz for Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln. I decided to revisit one of his other great parts as Gerry Conlon in In the Name of the Father  (1993) with the late Pete Postlethwaite as his father Giuseppe Conlon and Emma Thompson as lawyer Gareth Peirce. all three were nominated for Oscars along with the film itself which is about the falsely convicted "Guildford Four" who were sent to prison for the IRA's Guildford pub bombings which killed four off-duty British soldiers. it's on the Sundance channels again Monday Jan 14th @ 4:45 and 11:00 pm pacific   

also watched another great movie about a false conviction The Hurricane  (1999) about the railroading of middleweight boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, played by Denzel Washington. he won the Best Actor Golden Globe and was also nominated for the Oscar. check out the late great Rod Steiger as the judge in one of his last movie rolls. it's on Cinemax again Sunday Jan 13th @ 6:30 am and Thursday Jan 17th @ 3:35 am pacific   

A Dark Truth (2012) was an HD Net Movies "sneak preview" action thriller about an international water treatment corporation trying to cover up an crime they committed in Ecuador, stars Andy Garcia and Forest Whitaker and was a pretty good plot with some excellent action although it did "drag" in spots too. it's definately an "all corporations are corrupt a**holes that will do anything to protect their profit" themed movie. might consider a $4 or $5 pay-per-view BUT wouldn't go view it in a theater 

Dragon Hunters (2008) just happend to be the next movie on HD Net Movies after A Dark Truth and I got hooked watching. was a fun  80 minute non-stop action childern's fantasy action cartoon with excellent CGI. it plays on HD Net Movies again Wednesday Jan 16th @ 4:45 and 10:45 am pacific. worth recording for the kids   

Rat,    Jodie Foster is great. I respect her silence about her sex preferences and don't care even a little.  I think she is sexy no matter.

Pec, you definately need to check out BOTH "The Hurricane" and "The Brave One" IF you have never seen them

My Week With Marilyn (2011) depicts the making of the 1957 film The Prince and the Showgirl, which starred Marilyn Monroe (Michelle  Williams) and Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh). recorded for the Mrs because I thought it might be similar to the HBO film The Girl about the relationship between Tippi Hedren (Sienna Miller) and Alfred Hitchcock (Toby Jones) during the making of The Birds which we both liked. ex for a couple of scenes with Toby Jones as Marilyn's publicist Arthur Jacobs and  Judi Dench as English actress Sybil Thorndike, the movie is pretty much a waste of time and seemed to "drag on and on"

it's on The Movie Channel again Thursday Jan 17th and Sunday Jan 20th IF you want to be bored

Rat, I Have thoughts on "Brave One" and "Marilyn" but must get going on "The Hurricane"  I want to talk about that one.

Ada Strauss,  Not familiar with the director.  What is this movie about?  I would guess it's a spy loves spy and there is a lot of shoot em ups and they get together at the end.  Am I close?

was "famous English Prime Ministers that were NOT Winston Churchill" night in the RinkRat house Saturday...

The Iron Lady (2011) with Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher and Alexandra Roach playing her when she was young. basic biography told in a "look back" scenario when Thatcher was an old women starting to fall into dementia. think Streep definately deserved her Best Actress Oscar BUT Roach should have gotten some kind of "honorable mention" for her roll too. definately recommend. it's on Showtime channels again Jan14th, 15th, 18th, 19th and 20th   

The Prime Minister (1941) the biography of Benjamin Disraeli played by a then young Sir John Gielgud with Diana Wynyard as his wife Mary and Fay Compton as Queen Victoria. excellent English 19th century history and very well acted by all involved BUT NOT as good as the 1929 Disraeli with George Arliss in the title roll. that one is definately worth looking out for on Turner Classic Movies

  2009 movie called "Exam"   Pretty good thriller.

A roomful of strangers discovers their dreams of a new career may be more difficult and dangerous than they imagined in this psychological thriller. Eight bright and ambitious people are in the running for a position as a top executive with a major bio-engineering firm, and they've been invited to corporate headquarters to take a test that will determine who gets the job. The assembled applicants are met by a man calling himself the Invigilator (Colin Salmon) who explains the testing process -- they'll each be given a sheet of paper with a single question, and they have eighty minutes to answer it. If they leave the room, attempt to ask him questions, talk to the security guards or mark the question sheet, they will be immediately disqualified. The eight applicants learn this isn't an ordinary test when they discover their question sheets are all blank, and the applicants are forced to turn to one to unravel the puzzle behind the cryptic question.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) second offering of the Robert Downey, Jr. as Sherlock Holmes / Jude Law as Dr. John Watson fim series with Jared Harris, son of the late great British actor Richard Harris, as Professor James Moriarty. the ending is taken directly from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Final Problem".

excellent mystery action drama with plenty of ordnance and fights BUT Downey and Law, or anyone else for that matter, will EVER supplant Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as the premier Holmes and Watson in film no matter how much modern CGI you throw in. still, it's a definate "must see" for Holmes fans.  it plays again on Cinemax channels daily Monday Jan 14 thru Monday Jan 21st.  of three.

Why We Fight (2005). just happened to watch this on Starz Edge channel. it opens with President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address where he warned of "the military–industrial complex" and goes on to chronicle the rise and maintenance of the United States military and "defense" industry and their 50 year involvement with the wars and "interventions" led by the United States to with emphasis on the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. "Liberals" will probably LOVE it and "Conservatives" will probably HATE it. it's on the Starz Edge channel again Wednesday Jan 16th and Tuesday Jan 22nd and also the Independent Film Channel (IFC) saturday Jan 19th. IF your a Fox News viewer, you probably don't want to bother with this one

watched two "dark comedies" last night...

Waking Ned Devine (1998) VERY funny story about an old Irishman, Ned Devine, who wins the lottery BUT it SHOCKS him so much he has a heart attack and DIES. the comedy is when two other old geezers in the village, played by Ian Bannen and David Kelly, try to figure a way to collect the money. it's on HBO family Wednesday Jan 16th @ 10:20 pm, HBO2east Monday Jan 21st @ 4:40 am and HBO comedy @ 5:05 am (all times pacific). worth recording   

Burke & Hare (2010) I thought it would be a new version of the old 1945 Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Henry Daniell horror movie The Body Snatcher which was based on the 1828 Edinburgh murders by Burke, played by Simon Pegg, and Hare, played by Andy Serkis, who sold the bodies to anatomy instructor Dr Robert Knox, played by Tom Wilkenson. the history is pretty accurate BUT it's PLAYED for LAFFS. both Burke and Hare are VERY cartoonish killers and the murders are right out of the Keystone Cops. I laughed through out the movie. it's one "sight gag" or "quip" right after another. it's on The Movie Channels again Wednesday Jan 16th @ 5:15 pm and Monday Jan 21st @ 7:30 am (all time pacific). DEFINATELY worth recording. it's actually one of the FUNNIEST movies I have seen in the last year