Some Movies

This week we watched Christmas with the Kranks. Now, you don't need to tell me that it's not exactly the right season to be watching a Christmas movie. I'm fully aware of that. But I have this husband-dude who found a Tim Allen movie that looked funny, sitting there on the library shelf, pleading, "Take me home and watch me. I promise to make you laugh." So he did.

It was funny. Not entirely devoid of foul language, but nearly. (Okay, Mom?) I found it amusing to see the peer pressure and societal reactions toward the family who decided not to "do" Christmas. For societal misfits like us, it was enjoyable. Another thing neat to see was how the neighborhood could all come together with love and graciousness toward the misfits when they needed the help, due to a change in plans. Just a real nice, fun, wholesome movie. Even if it's not Christmas. I had to laugh, though, at the way the techies arranged the fake-snow piles on the lawns. The techies never lived where they had to shovel much snow or observe drifts or watch piles melt!

Last night, I was teaching Gary how to fill out a 1040. He wanted to watch Invincible, a story about Vince Papale who joined a losing football team during open try-outs and brought back some spirit and life to the team and to Philadelphia. Whenever I had to run to the computer to download another set of tax forms+instructions, he'd grab another 10 minutes of the movie. So I didn't see the whole first half, but I did watch all the second half. It appears to be a new movie: the date on the DVD says 2006. But it's got an "old" feel to the coloring and the way it's done. The true story the movie was based on was from the mid-70s. It was fun to see people in a movie need a phone booth to make a call, or crank up the car window with the handle. (We just recently gave up on our rotary-dial phone, and we still have a car with non-electric windows.) Somebody said this was a formulaic movie. I suppose it is. But it's decent enough for kids to see, and it's a feel-good movie with a sports theme. We really liked it.

Tonight, we will be working on the state tax forms -- another lesson for the guy who never does those sort of accounting things. Maggie turned on Ice Princess. When we watched this once-upon-a-time, I loved it because it was about a mathematician. The girl in the story decided to do a science project on the physics of ice-skating. She studied the math and science behind it, and then proceeded to learn to skate, using the physics. The movie was good in showing the pettiness of some of the competitors. It had a nice "homeschool" touch (even though it was set in a school) in that the main character didn't start skating at a ridiculously young age, but waited until later and then learned much more quickly than the others had. Another nice decent happy feel-good movie. We batted 1000 for our choices during our Too Much TV Week.