More Movies

I watched another group of three movies from Netflix this weekend. Here are some thoughts:

Rocky Balboa

I’d heard this was good, and it was. I think Stallone is one of those guys who makes a really, really good movie once every ten years, and then spends the years following just producing garbage. Now that he’s really too old to be an action hero, it’s interesting to see the choices and chances he’s taking. I think he’s an intelligent man with the ability to be a good actor. Watch the first Rocky, First Blood, Copland, Judge Dredd (okay, that last one was a joke), and you should agree. I think he’s a good writer, too. But still, he’s written a few good movies and a lot of really shitty ones. Anyway, it was a fun movie to watch, and brought the 80s training montage back a little and the fight at the end was well shot. They didn’t go cheeseball with it, and the ‘love interest’ was well done.

The Queen

I expected a British biopic. What I got was a week in the life of the Queen of England and PM Tony Blair, centered around the death and fallout of Princess Diana. A great bit of storytelling. Only thing weird for me is that I have a huge, huge crush on Excalibur- and Long Good Friday-era Helen Mirren. She’s a wonderful looking woman at her age now, but man, her Morgana drove me crazy.

Dead and Buried

This is another movie that took me a while to figure out what it was doing on my queue. A little research showed it was written by Dan O’Bannon, who co-wrote the original Alien. Alien it was not, but it was a pretty cool Lovecraftian zombie story. Small east coast town where people who visit end up dead, killed by the townspeople, and then suddenly reappear as new citizens who’ve ‘been there all along’. Cheesy and dated, but fun.

This weekend I’ll be watching the new Rambo, Beowulf, and Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Wish me luck.