Movie round-up

I've seen several movies recently, been meaning to blog about them...

Adventureland

Of course this one was a long time in coming when we learned it was shooting at Kennywood, and Kennywood is awesome. My expectation was that the park would largely be background, and that's exactly what it was. No surprises there. I liked that it was set in the 80's as well, since that was such an unfortunate time for music and culture.

The movie was being sold as a comedy, and while there are comedic moments, it's actually a lot darker than that. It's another coming-of-age story, though one set after college, which we don't see enough of. While not the most gripping story ever, it was definitely entertaining enough. Not sure I understand all of the hype around Kristen Stewart though. Yes, she's ridiculously cute, but fuck, someone make her smile, please. If she's a good actress, you wouldn't know it until she gets something more to work with.

State of Play

This one I saw solo to fend off the stir crazies last week. I actually kind of hate Russell Crowe, but I am a sucker for Rachel McAdams. And Ben Affleck I guess I'm mostly indifferent about outside of Kevin Smith movies. But it was a pretty good story for the most part, and it was very topical in the way it treated the decay of newspapers and questionable credibility of electronic media. I really liked that angle. The plot twisting made it somewhat hard to follow toward the end I thought, which made it harder to maintain the tension. It's probably a forgettable movie overall, but still entertaining.

Frost/Nixon

We rented this one on the AppleTV tonight. Still playing Oscar catch up. Despite being alive at the time, Nixon's resignation and Watergate are part of that stretch of American history that never make it out in the schools, so I'm still very interested in it. History seems to put the Frost interviews as a footnote (when you research it), but the movie, and presumably the play, portray the event as a turning point for Nixon to begin repairing his soul and coming to terms with the things he did wrong. Hard to say if that's the way it really went down, but it certainly makes for interesting cinema. Amazing performances all around. Except for Kevin Bacon.