Movie Weekend

I went to the movies--twice--this weekend. Saturday, I took my daughter (who no longer works at the movie theater) to see "Harry Potter." If you love Harry Potter, you'll love installment four. My daughter loved it. I enjoyed it too. My only criticism would be that it didn't convey the same sense of the events taking place over an entire school year that the earlier movies had. But that's a tiny point and didn't detract from the movie.

Sunday, The Girls saw "Walk the Line," and we all loved it. Before this movie came out, I had thought Johnny and June had been married their whole lives, so I learned a lot. The point that stood out for me, like in the movie "Ray," was how big an impact parents can have on their children, good or bad.

This weekend's movie-going was way better than last week, when we saw "Derailed" and left about halfway through. We weren't at our usual theater, and the one we went to was creepy. The seats weren't comfortable, the clientele was less savory than we were accustomed to, and the commercials they played while we waited for start time were risque.

And then the movie started. My friend had really wanted to see "Derailed" because the trailer made it look like a suspense thriller. But the trailer kept all the suspense and didn't leave any for the movie. It was an uncomfortable exercise in watching a bored man make stupider and stupider decisions (Hadn't the character ever watched TV??? If he had, he would have known what to do). And then the movie got foul, and so we left.

The next night we talked to someone who sat through the whole movie, and she told us how it ended, which was what I had already figured out. And that means the "plot twist" was horribly obvious, because I never try to figure out a movie. I just let it happen.

So we'll be sticking with the good theater, and on the movies we aren't sure about, we'll wait until we hear from someone normal that it's a good one before we head off to see them.