Last night the three of us finally went to see the movie Wild. I say "finally" because we expected it to come out on Dec. 5, but I guess that date was just a limited release. MT and I both read the book and enjoyed it, so we were excited to see the story brought to life on the big screen with Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl. Sadly, I wasn't blown away by the movie adaptation. I thought it would be a prettier movie than it was, for one thing. Also, when you get down to it, most of the book was about Cheryl's adventures on the trail and the thoughts she had and the people she met. A movie about walking hundreds of miles couldn't be that great. The book really describes Cheryl's feelings about the walk and the pain she is in. It's hard to capture that in a movie. The movie did go into flashbacks to give us Cheryl's story, but the step-dad was left out of the film (maybe he wanted it that way) and some scenes that I thought would be more well done did not measure up for me. I did like Reese a lot as Cheryl. I thought she was the right amount of tough and vulnerable, skanky and sweet.
This afternoon, T and I went to see Top Five, the new Chris Rock movie. My only expectation with this movie was that I wanted it to be funny and there were certainly scenes where it was very funny. It was sort of Birdman-ish in that it's the story of a comedian who doesn't want to make funny movies anymore. (Birdman was about an actor who was famous for an action hero role that he no longer wanted to be so closely associated with.) The difference for me was that Andre Allen (Chris Rock) had a reason that he didn't want to do comedy and it was articulated throughout the movie. It was thoughtful and I want to say less pretentious to me than Birdman. I thought Chris Rock was great and I liked Rosario Dawson also. One of my favorite parts of the film was that as Andre and Chelsea were walking around, you would hear people call out, "Hey Hammy!" or just "Hammy!" which was the character Andre played in his movies that made him so famous. It was a good touch.
There are several movies coming out on Christmas day that I would like to see, most notably Unbroken, a movie based on one of my favorite books that I read this year. Into the Woods is another film I'd like to see. Also on the radar: American Sniper and Selma.
During the Christmas break last year, MT and I binge-watched Scandal. I wonder what it will be this year?
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