I have been negligent in writing up all of this week’s viewing fare, but I got distracted with, gasp, reading. But here’s the full summary of everything from the Netflix queue that I got around to watching this week.
Wallace & Gromit: Loaf and Death (2008) – I had high expectations for this, and frankly needed something fun to watch after a particularly bad day at work, but it was inevitable after three amazing shorts and a really good full length movie that the quality of Wallace & Gromit movies would go down a bit in quality. Still better than most stuff I watch, but this one just lacked some of the kooky inventiveness of the previous outings, 3 stars.
Place of Excecution (2009) – This was a Masterpiece Theater thing that I missed watching when it was first broadcast. Not bad mystery piece, but I figured out the major twist pretty early on (which is really a problem for me since I’ve seen so many movies), but in general it was pretty entertaining and well-done, 3 stars.
The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) – The one thing this movie has in it’s favor is that it’s only an hour and a half. Otherwise it’s pretty much an incoherent, pointless mess, 1 star.
South Park Season 11/12 – Yeah, well I don’t have cable so some of my instant viewing is catching up on some TV viewing.
The Ghost Writer (2010) – I like to think of this as a good movie gone bad. It all held together until the last 5 minutes where a character that has behaved throughout the movie in a relatively smart way suddenly does something really, really stupid for no reason that I can tell than to wrap up the movie. This might have been 4 star fare if not for the ending, 3 stars.
Boy A (2007) – This was probably the best movie of the entire week, but again I wasn’t a fan of the ending. This movie follows the assimilation a young man who was convicted of murder as a child back into society. The best thing about this film was the actor playing the main character. I haven’t seen Andrew Garfield in anything before, but I’m looking forward to seeing more of his work in the future (which I will be doing soon since he’s in the Red Riding Trilogy which is going to be available via instant viewing this week, hey sue me, I really like British Crime Thrillers). I wish Netflix would allow 1/2 star ratings because I would give this 3 1/2 stars, but I guess I have to round up to 4 stars.
