This Week in Netflix: Volume 3

A Bleh, two Mehs, and a Hi-larious:

• Nacho Libre


• Snakes on a Plane
  
• Dreamland


• Farce of the Penguins

I usually love Jack Black, but I couldn't get into the whole setup. I was working on other things while Nacho and Snakes was on, so maybe being distracted played a part of it?

Not paying attention probably allowed me to upgrade Snakes to "meh," actually, although I was paying a lot of attention to the scenes with Taylor Kitsch (aka Riggins on Friday Night Lights — an amazing show, people! Watch it!). Sadly, he only has about five minutes of screen time, max. Since I thought the whole thing was supposed to be a cheesy B-movie, I was confused to see a novelization of the movie on the shelf at the library yesterday. Why would you read the book instead of — or in addition to — the movie?

Dreamland is also meh. Parts of it struck me as funny, although I think the movie wants to be a serious coming-of-age drama. It's hard to believe the situations and choices and not yell at the screen about what idiots these people are. (Note to self: If you need a ride somewhere, do not tell the person who is driving you through the desert that you want to break up until AFTER you get there — unless you are wearing comfortable shoes and carrying a canteen.) I did like seeing John Corbett again, and I liked the song that Gina Gershon and ? (the guy who played her husband — I could IMDB it, but I don't really care) played.

So, the big winner? Farce of the Penguins. It's stock penguin footage that Bob Saget, Lewis Black, Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Applegate, Mo'Nique, and a ton of other funny people do voice-overs to. It's a hoot. Highly recommended, and it only makes me more excited about seeing Saget at KSU in a few weeks. (I never thought that I would ever say that I was excited to see anyone in the cast of Full House, but times change.)

An aside: Shooter was awesome. Mostly because we giggled throughout the last third or so. Also funny and worth the money: Coffee Date, which I saw at the film festival on Sunday. I wasn't that impressed with Relative Obscurity, and had the most fun picking out the locations since it was filmed in and around OU/Athens. Severance was good for a horror film, but those really aren't my bag. Beautiful, Ohio was memorable mostly for the collective gasp from the audience about five to ten minutes before the movie ended.