More movies

I've been wanting to blog about my camping trip but I won't have pictures to back them up until I return to Toronto so..

I saw another 3 movies. My parents have this deal with Hollywood Video (it's like Blockbuster here), they pay $10/month and get unlimited rentals for a month. It's $10 for the first 3 months and $15 thereafter. $15 is insane, if you ask me. I'd pay $30. Anyway, it's called the "MVP" deal, it's only for movies that have been around for like a month or more -- they have a "MVP" sticker when that time comes. We walked up and down the aisle for movies and almost every movie I suggested my brother said he'd seen it already.

So.. we grabbed movies that were a little more obscure. This time we saw "Primer", "Mean Creek", "The Pacifier". Pacifier just turned MVP a few days ago.

I made a lot of noise about "The Pacifier" with my friends, wanting to see it but no one else wanted to. I figured it was a breakout performance for Vin Diesel, like Kindergarten Cop was for Arnold. Arnold was great in Kindergarten Cop because of the awkwardness of having such a huge guy taking care of kids. Vin isn't nearly as big as Arnold was, but you get the idea.

Let's be clear -- Vin Diesel is as bad an actor as Arnold, if not worse. I think we are less forgiving because Arnold was one of a kind while Vin is like many other "big guys" out there these days. I'd give this movie 7/10. It was funny and cute. The kids were great, especially the younger ones -- very cute.

"Primer" was a Sundance Film Festival winner.. best drama in 2004. They must have had some really bad movies that year because Primer wasn't very good. (SPOILER -- as if you'll actually see this movie ever) The idea of the time travel was good.. The concept of only being able to travel back one day was cool. It wasn't like "Back To The Future" -- it wasn't about changing the time, it was more about the moral issues of it. They were engineers and were more concerned about the consequences if breaking the time continuum than about what actually happened. They tried to play it safe. But then when they started putting a time machine inside another one, then I got totally confused. By the end of the movie, the 4 of us looked at eachother and none of us had any idea what had just happened, what time they were in, who was still alive, and who was the "real time" person left. 5/10.

We saw the preview for "Mean Creek" while watching "The Machinist", so that's why we rented it. It was in the Cannes Film Festival and also the Sundance Film Festival. Anyway, Mean Creek is about these kids who plan a revenge on a fat bully (George), because the guy beat up one of the kids. They trick him into getting on a boat with them and the plan is to dare him to strip naked and swim home naked. Later on they find out he's kinda nice, and change their minds.. But things go awry and to make a story short, he gets pushed out of the boat and drowns because he couldn't swim.

The main character "Sam" was played by Rory Culkin, the younger of the Culkin (Macaulay, Kieren) boys. He has some talent..

Overall the movie plot wasn't spectacular but the kids did the right thing in the end by coming clean. One of the boys got scared and ran away, which I could see happening to certain "less stable" individuals. A little accident like this can completely ruin your life.. It's kinda scary because I do think the boy would have died if I had been on that boat. George got what he deserved -- I would have pushed him out of the boat too, and since I can't swim well I wouldn't have been able to save him. George, upon finding out about this grand scheme of embarrasing him, became defensive and started hurling expletives at each of the kids in the boat. He attacked each one personally. He was extremely offensive and hit people hard, picking on one kid's gay parents, calling the girl a slut. Ultimately he verbally attacked the biggest kid on the boat (the unstable one, "Marty") and made fun of the guy's father who had killed himself when he was younger. Marty was pushed to his limit and pushed George in. Anyway, I give this movie a 8/10 based on an average plot but one that makes you think, and based on the excellent performance of all of the kids.