Two in a Row!

I watched two films this week and liked both of them. Yeah. I know. Completely unheard of.

My son came over last Sunday and we looked through a host of trailers trying to pick out a film that we thought would be fun. We settled on COLOSSAL. It stars Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis. Now, I have to say I have never been too keen on Hathaway. I tried to watch a couple of her chick flicks with my wife but I just couldn't handle them--ephemeral and cheesy.

However, this movie was really good. She turned in what I can only say was an excellent performance, and frankly I've never found her so attractive. Yeah. We dug this one.

The film has a really superficially silly plot of a giant monster appearing in Seoul (a "kaiju" for the geekier among us). As the film progresses the heroine realizes that the monster's movements correspond to her own. Interesting.

Then another monster--a giant robot--appears and its movements correspond to those of Jason Sudekis who plays a bar owner who is obsessed with Hathaway.

From there, the film remains an interesting read of Hathaway's character and her interactions with the various male players (there aren't really any other females in the film). There turns out to be a reason and a cause for the monsters and their connections to the two leads, but it's of course silly, but you know what? Giant monsters are silly.

The underlying themes of the film are deeper than that, of course, dealing with relationships, obsessions, addictions, and--more or less--feminism and independence.

We both enjoyed it.

The other movie I watched was THE ARRIVAL. It stars Amy Adams (who i rather fancy) and is about aliens suddenly appearing on Earth in vast ships that have stationed themselves at twelve spots around the planet. Adams plays one of the world's leading linguists who is recruited by the military to try to communicate with the aliens, which she finally does.

Jeremy Renner--another actor I admire who seems to be somehow stuck in action and superhero flicks--portrays a physicist also recruited to try to break the code that will allow humans and aliens (eventually called 'hexapods') to talk to one another.

Over all this hovers the threat of military violence from several of the other nations who have found themselves as parking spots for alien craft. The two scientists have to figure out how to talk to the aliens before it is too late and before anxious military types start shooting.

Woven into all of this is the recurring back-story of Adams' daughter who died of some type of rare disease years before the events with the aliens.

I found the film to be entertaining, and it has a decent--and appropriately subdued--moral message. And of course there is a rather sweet twist that takes place at the end of the film which had a good romantic, and hopeful, development.

I rather liked it.

Not only didn't these movies piss me off, I had a good time watching both of them.

I think I'm going to run out and buy a lottery ticket before my luck runs out.