So the gf was sick this weekend, so we relaxed and ended up seeing a bunch of movies for the first time.

Sixteen Candles

So, because I am so hip and ironic, I am always expecting things that are old to be stupid.  This 80’s movie was fun, funny, witty and hip, even 20 odd years later.  Two points:

1. Man, check out that initial clothing montage in the beginning, those 80’s clothes are totally what is in fashion now.  It was pretty wild seeing fashion come so totally full circle like that.
2. The movie’s tacit approval of date rape really sours the whole last quarter of the movie and taints the two main male protagonists.  The whole thing is very 50’s with the woman feeling totally ok about it afterwards; she was sort of “raped straight,” if you know what I mean, all she needed was the “loving” of a good man to correct her hard partying ways.

Cool Hand Luke

I have seen the famous egg eating sequence a few times before, but this is an interesting movie throughout.  Watching the whole thing, you get a much better sense of Luke’s thoughts, desires, motivations and what drives him.  You get to see the restlessness and endless drive in him that runs his whole life before and during the movie.  Two points:

1. I finally learned where the “What we have here is a failure to communicate…” line from the beginning of Guns and Roses “Civil War” comes from.
2. Also, like most good prison movies show you, no matter how often you have some reasonably fun times in prison, you really do not want to be there, they will break you and it will be depressing as hell.

National Treasure:  Book of Secrets

Ok, after accomplishing the fifth or sixth totally impossible thing with ease, this movie kind of started to get boring.  It was all PG-13 excitement, I never felt anybody was in danger and again, they had so many fairly impossible things to do in an hour and a half  that the whole thing felt kind of glossed over and rushed.  Three Points:

1. One interesting thing I did learn is that there are apparently three Statues Of Liberty spread around the world, all of different sizes.
2. I did like that even though there were all of these traps and machines that still existed after 300 odd years, they all started to break and disintegrate once someone started using them again, almost straight away.
3. Apparently, a City of Gold is not very interesting or impressive to look at.  It just looks kind of like dirty bronze.