what we have here is a failure to communicate

I finally got to spend some time with CP this weekend by going to visit him at his housesitting gig. We competed for worst movie pick of January, and he won. That is an honor I am willing to concede to him. Our dueling movies were:

Me – Jonah Hex – Dir. Jimmy Hayward. Writ. Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. Stars Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, and Megan Fox. USA, 2010.
Him – The Last Rites of Ransom Pride – Dir. Tiller Russell. Writ. Tiller Russell and Ray Wylie Hubbard. Stars Dwight Yoakam, Lizzy Caplan, and Jon Foster. Canada, 2009.

At least my movie had a fun cast! I wanted to watch Jonah Hex because a friend of mine actually worked on the film production. She made smoothies out of Brolin’s food so that he could get it into his distorted mouth – Jonah Hex is severely disfigured on one side of his face. That’s not his only problem. He also wants REVENGE, which is never a healthy thing to want. Malkovich plays the evil ex-Confederacy general who killed Hex’s family and is plotting to blow up Washington D.C. The movie is a mess, with western-type gunslinging mixed with oddly colored dream sequences. And then there’s the fact that Hex can talk to dead people. Weirdness abounds, and not in a good way. Both CP and I are convinced that the animated version of the movie shown as a trailer before this one looks infinitely better. I’ll get back to you on that.

The Last Rites of Ransom Pride is just plain awful. There isn’t a single frame of the film that wasn’t tampered with – all the coloring and light is artsy and artificial. Occasionally this is done to good effect (like in O Brother, Where Art Thou?) In this movie it just seemed contrived. The plot is difficult to follow, and the frequent flashbacks (sometimes to the past, but more often to something that happened moments before…??) did not help. Another sort-of-western, it’s about how Ransom Pride’s brother and girlfriend got his body back from a witch after he was killed in Mexico. There are half a dozen bizarre characters who either help or hinder them. Instead of this being a quirky and weird (in a good way) story, it was just…really bad. So the prize goes to CP.

While I am still trying to recover the brain cells that these two movies maimed, the last two movies I watched in January helped a little.

Despicable Me – Dir. Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud. Writ. Ken Daurio. Stars Steve Carell. USA, 2010.
I had seen most of this while working at the theater, but it was nice to watch it all in one sitting. It’s pretty funny and pretty sweet. A fumbling villain gets his heart melted by three children whom he adopted as part of one of his brilliant schemes. Animated, with the right balance of slap-stick humor and jokes for the adults, it’s enjoyable on several levels.

Inception – Writ. & Dir. Christopher Nolan. Stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, and Ken Wantanabe. USA, 2010.
Third time is the charm! Sort of. I didn’t like this movie when I first saw it, but it’s grown on me. I understood most of the plot and was impressed by the visuals, but I wasn’t blown away by the thing. The second time I watched it was simply because it was the only thing playing at the drive-in theater I visited while on a road trip. It still didn’t excite me much. CP announced that he wanted to see it again the other day, so we rented it. I put the last few puzzle pieces together and satisfied my need to fully understand the various plot twists, etc., and this time I actually found myself enjoying the movie. Maybe I’m just familiar with it now. Like can certainly develop with familiarity. Whatever. I guess Inception is all right with me.