Film and TV reports

Moonrise Kingdom is a sweet little film about a misfit boy who finds a misfit girl and they run off together on an island in the mid 1960's.  He's a Boy Scout, but since the real Boy Scouts are such dicks about people using their name in motion pictures, they have to call him a Khaki Scout and the girl is the eldest daughter of a couple of lawyers.  The film is about how they run off and bring happiness to everyone in the end.

Like I said it's a sweet little film with no pretensions, it is what it is.  Since it's a Wes Anderson film everyone speaks in sort declarative sentences, bottles up their emotions until they explode, and plenty of oddballs come and go in the story.  I'm a sucker for films about orphan boys in glasses who fall in love with super cute girls.  I love this one, and it's been a few years since I really loved a Wes Anderson film.

Safety Not Guaranteed is another sweet little film about oddballs and finding love in strange places.  A jaded reporter takes two geeky interns on a trip to find the guy who placed an ad in a newspaper looking for a partner for some time travel adventures.  The female intern gains the would be time traveler's confidence and she helps him build his time travel machine.  Of course obstacles are placed in the path of their getting together but in the end they overcome them and things work out.

It's all very cute and sweetly heartwarming and I highly recommend it, mainly because I have a huge crush on Aubrey Plaza.

To Rome With Love is Woody Allen's latest uneven comedy shot in Europe.  It tells four stories that take place in modern day Rome, but it's a magical realism Rome where the rules of time and space don't really apply.  The stories don't run concurrently, some take place over the course of days and weeks, while one takes place over the course of one day.  The strongest story was the one of the young newly married couple who both are unfaithful to one another on the day they get to Rome.  The weakest was the one about the young American couple who are visited by a friend from the USA.  The funniest ones, and they were only mildly funny, were the ones about the undertaker with the beautiful singing voice who can only sing well while in the shower and the one about getting suddenly famous.

Several things bothered me about this film, although none of them had to do with how hot Penelope Cruz is.  The first thing that bothered me was the age of Woody's daughter in the film.  If this pretty 20 something girl was his daughter, then he had to have been in his mid 50's when she was born because Woody is showing every one of his 70 some years in this film.  Another thing that bothered me was Alec Baldwin's role in his story.  Was he seen by all of the characters all the time or was he a spirit like figure symbolizing melancholy?  Sometimes the females would see and talk to him, others they did not.  And another thing that bothered me was the miscasting of Ellen Page and Greta Gerwig.  Ellen Page is a cute young woman but she's not any where near the allegedly hot temptress who drives men wild like they assert in the movie.  On the other hand, Greta Gerwig is much hotter and would have been more believable as the super hot actress who  drives men to infidelity.

This one isn't bad, it's just not that good.  Woody has done much better many other times.

A small time mob enforcer tries to keep his family life separate from his criminal life but when the time comes when that can't happen, worlds collide and much shit hits the fan.

I really liked this not too violent not too long Australian crime saga.  It unfolds over 8 half hour episodes and it doesn't waste a minute in telling it story.  It's honest, true, and even funny at times.

I highly recommend it.  It's on Netflix Instant.