Movie Reviews

We had the opportunity during our ski trip to watch a bunch of movies in the evenings. We rented them on iTunes and watched them on the computer. I usually give my movie reviews only when I travel on planes, but since I have nothing better to do, here you go.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Very clever and entertaining movie. It's based on a graphic novel and does a good job translating that visually. The movie follows Scott (Michael Cera) as he battles the seven exes of the girl of his dreams. It's very creative and funny. We liked it.

Easy A
We wanted something mindless and fluffy, so we went with Easy A. It was both mindless and fluffy, so exactly what we expected. We laughed a good amount. Nothing in the movie was necessarily new or different than any other high school comedy, though this was a bit smarter and had less nudity and vulgarity, which is either a plus or a minus (depending on how you look at it). It was supposed to loosely relate to the Scarlet Letter, and we know this because the main character, Emma Stone, wears an A on her clothing for most of the movie. I have never read the Scarlet Letter because my high school English teach chose the Blithedale Romance instead for some reason, but believe it or not, I was still able to follow the storyline. The writing was sharp for the first half of the movie but got pretty lazy in the second half. It's definitely not one you need to rush to see, but if you're bored or it's playing on TV one afternoon, you'll probably be entertained.

Wall Street 2
I guess this answers the question, if Oliver Stone took a dump and planted a sign in it stating it was created by Oliver Stone, people would in fact come and sniff it. I'm not sure why anyone felt that a sequel was necessary. Why can't Hollywood leave well enough alone? It should have been good. There isn't much storyline, but what is there is so dull and unoriginal. It basically takes bits and pieces of news stories from the actual economic meltdown and tries to mold it into a fictional tale, but it doesn't work at all. I think Oliver Stone was trying to get a message across, but what it is, I am not certain.

Eat, Pray, Love
I didn't get this one at all. I am not sure if it was Julia Roberts being Elizabeth Gilbert or just being Julia Roberts, but I found her pretty annoying. I'm all for food appreciation, so the scenes with pasta and pizza were great, but I can (and do) get that by watching Top Chef every week. Maybe the book is better, but the story didn't do it for me, though I realize that I was not the target audience. It's great that Liz Gilbert took a year of her life to "figure things out", but the whole thing seemed preachy to me. And again, not sure whether it's Liz or Julia, but she sure seemed awfully proud of herself for what she was doing. I've talked to Jenn about this, but I'll be interested to do some more reading on the internet to find out exactly what it is that spoke to so many women about this story. Maybe I should just read the book, but like going to the Turkish bath, that just seems like a bad idea from the get go.

I also finished the book I've been trying to get through for months, called "Traders, Guns, and Money" by Satyajit Das. It was recommended on "Planet Money", which is the NPR podcast I listen to regularly. This was a miserable read and I do not recommend it to anyone. I am not a finance nerd, but I thought a book by a guy who has spent his career within the derivatives sector of the finance business sharing his experiences would be interesting along the lines of "Liar's Poker" by Michael Lewis, which is fantastic. This one reads like a text book and getting through it was like trying to finish an entire plate of something that tastes awful. Each page was agony. If I wanted to learn the technical details behind various derivative instruments, I would have actually picked up a text book. I wish Satyajit would have thrown in some personal stories and entertaining anecdotes, or anything to make this dry material a bit more readable.