Movies Again

It started out with sin.

OK, maybe not quite sin, but those of us Girls who go to the movies decided to skip the Thanksgiving Eve service tonight at church and go to the movies instead. One of my friends had a rough day at work today, and she needed to get out for a while.

We were going to see "Syriana," but it wasn't in our theater yet. One friend will be seeing "Pride and Prejudice" tomorrow, so that was out. The other friend will be seeing "Walk the Line" again tomorrow, so that was out too. I suggested "Zathura," because it sounded safe after we walked out of "Derailed" a couple weeks ago. But it sounded too much like a kid movie to my friends, and one of them suggested "The Ice Harvest," which I hadn't heard or seen anything of yet.

My daughter pulled up the movie times online and clicked through to the trailer, and it had an interesting premise: steal two million dollars from the mob and try not to get killed. Billy Bob Thornton was one of the stars, which made me nervous about the potential Disgusting Factor. One of my friends pointed out that John Cusack usually provided a calming influence on a movie, but she hadn't ever seen "The Grifters," which made me feel nervous about Cusack's movies having the potential Disturbing Factor. Against our Derailed-induced decision to wait for other people to see a movie first, we went.

The first half hour of the movie was not rated R for violence. The language was blue from the get-go. And then the action moved into a strip joint, where the language got worse and there was a lot of focus on the strippers doing what I would imagine is realistic stripper stuff. We walked out, and this time we thought to ask for a voucher to another movie. While we were talking to the guest services person, a family joined us, and not long after that another man turned in his two tickets from the same movie. All together, there were nine people who walked out of "The Ice Harvest" before anything relevant to the plot had even happened, and all of us used words like "disgusting, foul, and revolting" to explain why we were dissatisfied.

This experience reinforced our decision to wait until someone else has seen and enjoyed a questionable movie before we take the plunge.

We should have gone to church.