Movies For Grownups

Movie Night, by Andrei Z via Flickr

Mollie and I find most movie reviews unreliable.  The cause perhaps is that the movie industry increasingly caters to the younger crowd who spend more freely on movie fare.  Youth is also more attracted to scripts for romantic comedies and action flicks that put more emphasis on explosions and car chases than on subtleties and twists in the plot.

I did occasionally contribute to and derived some guidance from the Netflix web site’s discussion scroll, but we dropped that several months ago.  We seem to have caught up with and now outpaced the industry’s ability to satisfy our need for “movies for grownups” and have even resorted to re-watching some of the better ones.  We miss the excellent chemistry we used to get with Siskel and Ebert – Gene Siskel added an essential chemistry that could never be replaced, IMO.

That condition now motivates me to post a brief movie review, in case there are any like-minded people out there who have not seen one that we watched last night on DVD and which we liked very much.  It is “The Next Three Days” with Russell Crowe.  We had passed it over

when it first came out because of several discouraging reviews.  Thus the dissonance, because we thought it was outstanding.  In fact, we consider it the best movie we have seen this year.  It is an action story, but it is also a riveting human drama with moving and very human portrayals by everyone in the cast.  Even old Brian Dennehy is in it and gives, IMO, an Oscar-level performance notable for its subtle restraint.  Verisimilitude abounds in this movie, which makes the action all the more breath-taking.  I must warn you, though, the plot employs some flashbacks that may be a little confusing.  Never fear, all will be made clear.

Cover of Every Which Way But Loose

I recall a time in the 1970’s when we saw a Clint Eastwood movie, “Every Which Way But Loose”.  Yes, it was the one with the chimp.  I thought it was absolutely hilarious and recommended it strongly to all my friends.  A number of them took my recommendation and the feedback I got from most of them was that I was probably nuts.  So there are no guarantees here, just a cautious venture into an unexplored blogging area for me.  I hope only to conserve some enjoyment for some who might otherwise miss this rare piece of art because of undeservedly bad reviews.  But if you think I’m nuts, you can tell me that too.  I welcome all feedback and if we can somewhere encounter like minds, it could benefit all concerned in looking for future gems.  That would be nice.