Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

Okay, now that I've done my civic duty for the day, let's do something fun.

This was a pretty big movie weekend for me again. I watched a couple from Netflix.com and one in the theater. I'll go from worst to best.

First I watched Friday Night Lights. Ug. This movie is going to forever live among my most hated movies list. It takes a special kind of movie to hit that list and this one pulled it off. Really, what was this movie? A documentary? A drama? What it felt like to me was that a desperate football wannabe turned screenplay writer trying desperately to recapture the "glory days" in film. I never cared about one single person in the film, though there were enough "hardship" scenes to prove that someone was trying to make me care. Awful. No π for you!

I finally got to see Flightplan with Jodie Foster. I liked it but I didn't love it. I'll watch it again, but not today. This movie had all of the elements to make a really compelling action-packed story, but something was missing. And to be honest I really can't put a finger on what that element was. Watch this film for me, then tell me what was missing. 1.0π.

Lastly, I took my son to see Hoodwinked. When was the last time you laughed out loud in a movie? Well, this was it for me. I'm not a big fan of Shrek, though I like it well enough, so I've always been a little wary of the Shrek'ish films that have been coming out lately. This one is hilarious. The animation isn't quite as amazing as some, but the casting and the story make up for that in a huge way. If you saw Fletch, XXX, any of the Bond films and you like satire, you'll like this movie. 1.75π.