Saw A Cinematic Quintet

I spent yesterday at the AMC Lynnhaven 18 Theatres out in Virginia Beach.



Over 12 hours in a movie theater, an endurance feat! I can sit like Lance Armstrong can pedal! I also won a Babel t-shirt, nice try Paramount Vantage, but you can't sway my opinion with a measly gray garment! I'm going to need something more...maybe a plot to your movie that doesn't make me ask, who the hell cares?

The Departed was the only film I had seen before, and it was the coolest of the five movies, but it didn't have the most substance. Letters From Iwo Jima was the best "from the other side's viewpoint" film I have ever seen, as it was the greatest reminder that the Imperial Japanese troops weren't all automatons dedicated to mindlessly following their Emperor's will. I still can't decide which movie was more graphic, The Departed with its cinematic litany of headshots, or Letters From Iwo Jima with its banzai charges and grenade seppuku. Letters From Iwo Jima still won out in my mind because it showed both the external and internal struggles of a doomed group of warriors from a nation on the road to defeat.

Babel was alright, but the purposely disjointed plot was its own worst enemy. Maybe someday I'll figure out if the movie had a point, I may have missed it while I was distracted by a naked and deaf teenage Japanese nymphomaniac, geographically orphaned (and pale as ghosts) children and their illegal immigrant nanny, and a Moroccan version of Cain and Abel who enjoy taking potshots at tourist buses when they're supposed to be herding their goats.

The Queen featured a good performance by Helen Mirren which should win her an Oscar, and while the film wasn't boring and provided a good argument towards the useless antiquity of English Monarchy, I felt that a citizen of the U.K. would have found the film much more captivating.

Little Miss Sunshine was almost as funny as Borat. The dysfunction of the family seemed reminiscent of the show Arrested Development, but with much darker humor that reminded me of a cross between a Wes Anderson film and Napoleon Dynamite. It was a good choice for last film of the evening, as it lightened my mood after the emotionally-heavy World War II epic that preceded it.

I hope for AMC's sake they received better attendance at their other theatres, but I wasn't complaining, prime seats = a-okay with me. I doubt they'll do this again next year, but if they do, I invite anyone to take the challenge! Sit all that you can sit, at the movies!

Thankfully, all the theatres at the base in Rota are $3, even the drive-in.