We saw two films this weekend that we thought were great. Excellence is in the eye of the beholder, of course, and these movies may not be to your liking. But we enjoyed each of them enormously, even though they were very different from one another.
The Kids Are All Right features Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a lesbian couple with two teenaged children. The kids are intent on finding out who their father is — that is, who was the donor of the sperm each of their mothers used in conceiving. Mark Ruffalo turns out to be that guy. He’s a bohemian restaurateur, who unleashes a tornado of emotions in the family of four who find him. The feelings and emotions in this movie are about as real and raw as you will find anywhere. Very moving.
Salt is at the opposite end of the spectrum — a shoot-’em-up, non-stop action thriller, featuring Angelina Jolie as a CIA agent who is identified (correctly? wrongly?) as a Russian mole, long-ago planted in the U.S. with the ultimate goal of sparking a world war by killing both the Russian president and the U.S. president. So: is she or isn’t she? We don’t know, until the end (which is just the beginning, I suspect, of countless sequels). Evelyn Salt is one hell of an action figure — a lean, mean, fighting machine. Just as film makers of old pitted Godzilla against King Kong, we should hope somebody will soon pit Evelyn Salt against Lisbeth Salander of the “Girl Who . . .” series. Mmmmmmmm.
Don’t miss either of these movies. Each film offers its own wondrous pleasures.
Sense and Nonsense 
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo.I don’t understand how you could have liked Salt as someone who knows ~a few~ things about American history/politics. It made absolutely no sense and to me was beyond the point of suspending disbelief. Blowing up the entire Middle East to make lots of people pissed at the US? A Russian spy assigned to kill the president of Russia? Ummmmm….
Maybe I could have forgiven all of the ridiculous political/historical butchering, but no characters had any strong motivation to do what they were doing and the movie didn’t even have an ending.
Come on, Jack!!! That movie was crap. Although, fine, I was at least entertained for the duration.
Miss you though!
Silly, RED! I guess I didn’t make myself clear. “Salt” is “good” merely as mindless entertainment. Of course, the plot makes no sense! Of course, the characters have no motivation! Of course, the whole thing is utterly ridiculous! But it was entertaining to watch all the running-chasing-shooting, etc. Also, they changed the ending after audience reactions suggested they had a movie franchise on their hands, with opportunities for multiple sequels featuring Evelyn Salt.
Ha. Miss you, too. Hope all is good out in la-la-land.
Nah, you got your point across. I really like “bad” movies usually. But eek, I wish they could’ve put forth some decent acting to distract me from how much the premise sucked. Maybe could’ve made any of the relationships make sense. But oh well.