I’ve blogged before about my growing distaste for seeing movies in actual movie theatres, but it’s taken me forever to give Netflix a try. The first batch that arrived consisted of movies we were vaguely interested in seeing but not enough to subject ourselves to the companionship our fellow citizens.
Alien Vs. Predator was hardly worth the time to watch, much less to talk about. Um… except for that.
We saw The Bourne Identity in the theatre and liked it. I saw lots of reviews saying that The Bourne Supremacy was better than TBI, but I disagree. I thought it was too mired in intelligence agency politics, though Joan Allen is always a welcome presence in any cast. There’s something fundamentally wrong with a sequel that gives you less Franka Potente and more Julia Stiles than its predecessor. The chase sequences probably would have worked better on a big screen than on our TV, where they just seemed kind of long.
The rental we enjoyed the most was Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. How is it that someone getting beamed with a dodgeball never stopped being funny? I can’t quite figure that out, and maybe it’s just me. It fell apart at the end, but this kind of movies (whether presented seriously or in a satirical vein) almost always does. And, sure, it had plenty of really tacky bits, but they didn’t bother me that much, mostly because the whole movie had this very pleasantly casual vibe to it. I thought Justin Long was adorable, and I was thrilled to see Missi Pyle, a favorite from Galaxy Quest. Best of all, though, was Christine Taylor, who I think is really underrated as a comic actress. (She’s Ben Stiller’s wife and played Marcia perfectly in the two Brady Bunch movies.) While she does the “pretty, sensible girl surrounded by goofballs” thing about as well as anyone, she also seems to have no shame in pursuit of a laugh. It’s always nice to see her in a movie, and she’s such a great fit with Stiller’s comic sensibility.
So, all in all, seeing movies without having to deal with other people? I like it. Will it probably lead to me watching movies that I would have never seen otherwise and probably weren’t worth the time? Hell, it already has, but the minimization of effort and expense almost offset the fact that I’m contributing to my own mental deterioration. (Like that’s ever been a deterrent.)