Weekend movies

Shrek Forever After - I took the kids to see this (supposedly) final chapter of the Shrek series. I only saw the first one in a theater - I'm not sure I even saw the 3rd one. But we all enjoyed it very much. Sort of a knock-off of It's a Wonderful Life - Shrek is aggravated by his mundune life and he gets to see what life would be like if he'd never been born (thanks to Rumplestiltskin). It was cleverly done and quite poignant.

The Secret In Their Eyes - This won the Oscar for Best Foriegn Film, so my expectations were pretty high (too high, as it turns out). Not sure what aspect of the film garnered it the award. It's essentially a crime drama with a few complications thrown in (including a rather odd romantic side story). I found it uneven and not terribly satisfying. It reminded me a little bit of The Lives of Others, but I thought that was a much better movie. I kept thinking of Cache, another widely-lauded movie that I didn't really enjoy and thought I didn't "get" - I think this was just like it, in the sense that you need to understand the history of the country to get some aspects of the story - the film does not totally stand on its own. Not a bad movie, not a waste of time, but not a terrific film going experience. On the up side, I had dragged Rachel to see it, and she actually liked it more than I did, so I was glad that she saw it because of me. Best line: "If you keep going over the past, you're going to end up with a thousand pasts and no future."

Near Dark - Finally watched this video, which we've had for weeks. Not as much "there" there as I had expected. Great cast, but pretty formulaic, and the ending was sort of clever, but also sort of ridiculous (good vampires cured by transfusion). It struck me as the opposite of Twilight, with vampires behaving excessively badly, reveling in their opportunities to be brutal. Not a bad movie for what it was, but something I could just as easily have lived without.