Movie MOAR-athon: 3 Mini Reviews

So for some reason, I ended up seeing three theatrical releases in four days over the weekend. Beautiful Creatures on Valentine's Day, Warm Bodies on Saturday, and A Good Day to Die Hard on Sunday. Spoiler alert, these are going to be reasonably positive reviews because, since I am not a professional movie reviewer, I don't watch movies that I think suck. So in order of awesomeness, in my not so humble opinion . . .

Honorable mentions:
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Watched this on Netflix Saturday night. Surprisingly good show, for a quiet evening at home. It even made me want to see MI:III some time, even though I heard it sucked.

Much Ado About Nothing. Watched on Friday evening. A perennial favorite (see my "avatar" on the far right of this page). I love the rapid and natural delivery Branagh gets from his Shakespearean players. It made sense that he was tapped for Thor.

And now for the main events (again, in order of awesome):

#3: A Good Day to Die Hard

It's been 25 years since John McClane saved most of the hostages in Nakatomi Tower from Hans Gruber and his pack of Aryan bond thieves. I think each of those 25 years is etched onto Bruce Willis' face. Seriously, why are all of these geezer action stars from the 80s suddenly appearing in movies again? It was cute in The Expendables, but it's getting kind of ridiculous now. That's all I'm gonna say on that.

Die Hard 5 is a fun flick. I haven't seen a Die Hard movie in the theater since the original, and I am not fully confident that I did then. I missed Die Hard 4 entirely. So I can't really speak to the "this isn't truly Die Hard, and it sucks" camp. If you want to see an awesome car chase or two, spectacularly unrealistic gunfights and big explosions, this is your movie. There's a plot, I don't know if it really twists unpredictably; but I was along for the roller-coaster ride, and had a lot of fun watching it.

#2: Beautiful Creatures

OK, is it Twilight for Witches? Ish. In the sense that it's based on a Young Adult novel, about a teen witch—sorry, "Caster"—named Lena, and the boy who loves her, yes it's exactly like Twilight. The plot is much more epic in its consequences though, since Lena's mother wants to subvert her power to exterminate mortals and take over the world. Plenty of PG flavored romance and special effects. And who can pass up Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson chewing the scenery as aristocratic Southern mages? I would say their accents are atrocious, but I know people from the Deep South who talk that way. All in all, a charming bit of popcorn fun, especially if you are in that target audience, or are capable of channeling your inner 16-year-old girl. (I don't know who gave Alice Englert those sunken cheeks in the poster. She doesn't look like that at any point in the movie.)

And my personal favorite of the weekend:
#1: Warm Bodies

This one is adorable. From the shades of Romeo and Juliet (he loves her, her dad wants to shoot him in the head) to the funny, eloquent inner monologue of the main character who can speak only in moans, this is a great date movie. While there are a lot of "messages" in the movie, what I took from it was the inference related to my own life. "R" wanders through his unlife like a zombie, until he meets and falls in love with Julia. I think many of us wander through our lives like that: not feeling much, not fully alive until we have someone to share it with. We may even think everything is fine, until we realize that it wasn't, that there is something more. Maybe it's not romance or love we need. In my case, it was. Go see it. The poster is right, there's nothing hotter than a girl with brains.

I love you, Sctrz—my Julia.