Longtime readers know I like movies. They’re fun as a stand-alone proposition.
But movie-going is almost essential when Arizona’s solar-intensifying sprummer has come, gone, and Satan’s excessive heat warning says it’s 109 outside. Overnight it ‘cools down’ to the high 90’s.
So when outdoor activity partners with heat stroke, getting out often means movies. This weekend, it was Wonder Woman — highly enjoyable and big fun. Although I enjoy all genres, there’s nothing like a well done action film.
As some of you know, I’ve also seen my share of movies featuring lawyer protagonists. Admittedly, it’s been a while since there was one I liked. The Lincoln Lawyer is perhaps the last one I thought entertaining — but that was 6 years ago.
It’s not like I rush to see movies featuring lawyers. Quite the opposite. I think most are to be avoided. 2014’s The Judge was awful.
Nearly always they get the law and the ethics wrong. For instance, I missed last year’s The Whole Truth, starring that latter-day Olivier, the wooden thespian known as Keanu Reeves. I’m sorry to say I finally caught it online.
Of The Whole Truth, movie critic Rex Reed said, “A guaranteed cure for insomnia, an abomination called The Whole Truth is a courtroom movie that looks like a colorized version of an old Perry Mason TV show, starring Renée Zellweger’s new face and Keanu Reeves, who has the charisma and animated visual appeal of a mud fence.” Keanu plays that over-used movie stereotype, the ethically challenged criminal defense lawyer.
And why always an ethically challenged defense lawyer? Why not an amoral ERISA or corrupt water rights lawyer? In truth it’s probably because ERISA and water rights lawyers would have to arm-wrestle to avoid the title of most boring field of practice.
In any event, Keanu’s much better as pup-loving legendary hitman John Wick not as a lawyer. Just the same, I admit to liking his turn as the lawyer son of Satan in The Devil’s Advocate.
Recliner movie watching.
Glenn Whipp amusingly reported this past Friday that theater chains have “decided that the best way to sell tickets is to replicate moviegoers’ living rooms.” See “When moviegoers treat theaters like living rooms — texting, talking, even diaper changing happens.”
It’s true. Recliners have arrived at the cineplex, including the one in our neighborhood. I’m not sure, however, that Wonder Woman was better because my feet were up. The Whole Truth, on the other hand, is a different matter. The recliner would’ve meant In dormis delicto.
Fortunately, the movie-going pleasure of Wonder Woman was mostly unmarred unlike other recent movie experiences involving serial chatterboxes and obsessive texters. Save for a movie patron twice checking his cellphone two rows in front, we escaped Glenn Whipp’s exponentially worse experience with the in-the-theater toddler diaper-changing mother. “Because,” as Whipp explained, “that’s what those adjustable armrests are for, right?”
And that Bill Kilgore is not the smell of napalm in the morning.
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Photo Credits: Empty cinema movie theater, by Iwan Gabovitch at Flickr Creative Commons Attribution; First movie of the year, recliner chair theater, by stupid systemus at Flickr Creative Commons Attribution.
