Movie Day

Over the Christmas break, Julia made me watch her new DVD The Croods with her, and I came upon the depressing realization that it was the only Golden Globe nominated movie I’d seen. The Oscars noms will be coming soon and I’m woefully unprepared. So, in a desperate attempt to get a jump on what may be nominated for Oscars, I had a movie day yesterday.

I figured I’d better see this before it’s out of theaters. The black hole between theater release and DVD release has wrecked many an Oscar-readiness attempt. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. The visuals are stunning and the story was unexpectedly moving. Also, after being reminded what a dreadful, horrifying void space is, I felt anew the amazement that NASA was able to rescue astronauts Lovell, Swigert, and Haise. Space is a nightmare.

I didn’t enjoy this as much as I thought I would. I loved the clothes and the music (it has got a marvelous 70s soundtrack), but it felt like the story was trying to be Goodfellas or Casino with the voiceover narration and telling of a true but retro story, and it wasn’t as good as either of those movies. Also I felt like Christian Bale was doing a DeNiro impersonation the whole time and I wanted to slap Bradley Cooper every single moment he was onscreen, which is a new experience for me.

I love the Coen Brothers. If you love them, you will love this film. It’s more in the vein of Barton Fink and A Serious Man than Fargo and Raising Arizona. But the real star is the soundtrack. I downloaded it as soon as the credits began to roll.

I capped it all off with a midnight showing of the 1984 masterpiece The Neverending Story, and left the theater with this wonderful sound in my ears: