Saturday, August 19, 2006

Snakes! On a plane! and a Lady! In the water!

Yes, I fell for the internet hype and saw Snakes on a Plane yesterday, and dammit, I liked it! Granted, I had low expectations, but I found it entertaining, scary, hilarious, icky, heart-pounding, eyes hiding behind fingers, good. And yeah, some of the acting was bad, but most of it was decent (Juliana Margulies was in this movie, how weird is that?), and it's great for the kind of movie it was. I've realized that it's all about expectations. This happens sometimes while reading manuscripts--after a while of not reading anything I like, I start expecting the worst, and then something comes along that doesn't suck and I enjoy it and then have to remember to compare it with good writing. But no, really, I enjoyed Snakes on a Plane. But yes, I did have very low expectations.

Speaking of low expectations and movies, a few weeks ago I also saw Lady in the Water and liked it. Now, lest you think I just have bad taste in movies...well, that may be the case, but I found the movie to be funny, heart-warming, and overall, unique. One thing you can say about this movie is that it's not like any other movies you've seen, and in a time when so little is truly original, I found that refreshing. I also thought it was a wonderful children's movie--not young children, but I thought it was probably made for that bright-eyed twelve-year old, rather than the jaded, pessimistic adult. And since I think I have more in common with the naive, optimistic kid, I liked it.

Any movie recommendations? I've been wanting to see An Inconvenient Truth and Little Miss Sunshine. If you seen these, let me know how you liked them...although maybe you shouldn't praise them too much, because then I'll be disappointed.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

We also saw Snakes On A Plane last night! Damon couldn't wait, and I just had to support him (along with a few other of our friends). Fun!!

And scary. I screamed a lot. I have a low tolerance for scary films, but this one . . . the internet hype was too much fun.

How was the crowd at your theater? Ours hissed the whole time (hilarious), and cheered. Especially for the snakes.

("Give me an 'S!'" --"S!" --"Give me another 'S!'" --"S!" --"Give me another 'S!'" --"S!" --"What's that spell?" --"Ssss!!")


I am so glad to hear you liked Lady in the Water! I'm still dying to see it, in spite of what everyone says.

Yes, see An Inconvenient Truth! It is a slick, compelling slide show (and will make you like Al Gore!).

I am looking forward to Little Miss Sunshine.

:D
rita

topangamaria said...

An Inconvenient Truth scared me much more than Snakes on a Plane.
Actually my teen daughter and I laughed so much at Snakes and felt the poor critters got a bad rap. Samuel L.is the man. Wordplay is the movie I loved this summer, a dream come true for a crossword puzzle making friend of ours. Even Entertainment Weekly gave it a B,
which is amazing for a documentary. Out on DVD is Brick, which is a really interesting teen noir. Those were my recent faves.

alvinaling said...

Thanks for all the recommendations! Topangamaria, I also saw Wordplay and loved it. I wrote about it here.

Rita, the crowd in my theater was into it, but not as over the top as I expected. But there was cheering and screaming and lots of laughing. It was fun.

Anonymous said...

Alina,

I haven't seen Lady in the Water but I did look at the picture book. Have you seen it? What did you think?

Most curious as to your take,
Katherine Tillotson

topangamaria said...

My bad. Of course you liked
Wordplay. Obviously I hadn't checked the archives. I'm a
newbie reader,just since the summer conference.