More Mysteries, Sucker Punch and The Hunger Games

I haven't seen a ton of movies since my last post. In fact, I'm worried that I won't make it to 50 movies this year, which would really surprise me because I thought it would be so easy to watch that many. Anyway, here's my recent new-to-me movies:

Watched:

The Hunger Games – I read the books a couple of years ago, and I tried to put them down when I got to the point where it starts to be clear what’s going on and the extent of the disturbing-ness. But I just had to finish and to find out what happens. I also thought, when I heard they would make a movie, that there was no way I would watch it, too disturbing, but something about it just sucked me in. And I have to say, I really liked the books, and the movie was very satisfying and true to the feel of the book. I would not tell anyone to read the books or watch the movie, but I did enjoy them, which makes me feel a little guilty. After all, at the same time that The Hunger Games is in the news, so is Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, with his child soldiers kidnapped from their homes and forced to commit atrocities. Yeah, I don’t blame you if you don’t want to have anything to do with the books or movie.

Sucker Punch – visually interesting, I like the idea of the layers of imagination that the character retreats into in order to deal with her environment, but a lot of the themes were pretty weird and disturbing.

Gosford Park – I was expecting a lot more from this movie. Maybe I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped because we were playing Scrabble at the same time, and I find it hard to do both of those things at once, but we can’t just play Scrabble, because that is too boring for Lovemuffin, but Lovemuffin knew whodunit right away, and I had no idea what was going on most of the time. So what I'm trying to say, is that I'm not sure what to say about this movie. 

As for the books read since last my post, I’ve been on a mystery novel kick, and tried out two new-to-me authors.

Read:

Confess, Fletch (Gregory McDonald) – fluffy, short, interesting protagonist... but I didn’t love it and probably won’t read more of his stuff.

E is for Evidence (Sue Grafton) – Interesting that this mystery novel doesn’t start out with a murder as the mystery, there is a murder or a few later on, but it’s not the initial mystery to solve. This is the first Kinsey Malone book I’ve read, and it was okay, I might pick up more of these alphabet mystery books for road trips, easy to read, and pretty satisfying.

Nemesis (Agatha Christy) - Not my favorite Agatha Christy book so far. It’s okay, but just didn’t do it for me.

Agatha Christie,The Help, War Horse etc.

I've been meaning to blog for a while now and here I am finally writing about what I've read and seen so far this year.

I read Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.  I've never read any of her books before and I really liked it.  It was a page turner and the end was not what I expected, but it was good.   I will be reading more Agatha Christie books this year.

I also read How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell, which pricklypear talked about in an earlier post. It was an easy book and I found it quite enjoyable. 

The last book I've read so far is The Continuous Atonement by Brad Wilcox.  I really liked this book.  I liked how the author told stories to go along with the principles he was talking about. It helped me remember and understand what he was talking about.

Now onto the new movies I've seen this year.  Well I saw The Help, which I enjoyed! And it really got me thinking about American history and racism and slavery and servitude.  I would recommend this movie.

I watched Just My Luck with Chris Pine and Lindsay Lohan.  It was okay.  It is a chick flick but it was a little too cheesy for me.  (Although I must say that Chris Pine has really beautiful blue eyes:)

The last new movie I've seen so far is War Horse. It was also only okay for me. Some of my friends really liked it, but it was a little too much for me.  Too much of what, I'm not sure.  Just something.

Well those are all of my reviews for now.