Like many Tammy and I haven’t had a “typical” date night during the pandemic. Restaurants are take out only. Movie theaters are closed, and would be a pretty bad idea with Covid. But we were thinking how the Tesla has Netflix and Hulu so we decided to have a Pandemic Date Night in the car! We got takeout from Lake & Irving, one of our favorite places.

Then we went to Lake Bde Maka Ska, parked along the parkway, and watched Hunt for the Wilder People on Netflix in the car. It was a fun change of pace, and a really good movie.

When Tesla added Entertainment options like Netflix and Hulu I thought that would be possibly interesting when waiting for someone. But hadn’t ever thought we’d watch a whole movie. 🍿 Also, running the heater, seat heaters, and entertainment system for the whole movie used about 10% battery. Also, the audio is really good. The surround sound was very immersive. I think we may do this again. 👍

We enjoyed watching My Octopus Teacher tonight. It is a touching story capturing the year that Craig Foster spent visiting this octopus every day. My favorite scene was toward the end when he captures the octopus playing with a school of fish. Beautifully filmed, with great underwater scenes. 🍿

We watched Mulan tonight on Disney+ with Premier Access. The movie was great. None of us had seen the animated version so the story was all new and hooked us right away.

The film itself was impressive and the action was phenomenal. Watching it at home was just fine. We don’t have a full home theatre but it was still a great experience. We forgot to make popcorn though. 🍿

It would be a welcome change to be able to see movies right away on digital platforms.

Watched Avenger’s: Endgame on my flight. I think nearly all the Avengers movies I’ve seen have been on flights. Very enjoyable movie, but the time travel angle is always a problem in Sci-Fi. 👍✈️🎬

We saw Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse today and I was completely blown away! I enjoyed the story thoroughly and the visuals were amazing. It feels like you are in a comic book! The soundtrack is great too! 😎🎬

Tammy and I went to La La Land tonight. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Tyler and I went to see the Jungle Book. It was the first time him and I went to a movie by ourselves. It was a fun movie, very well done. Tyler liked it a lot, didn’t find it scary at all.

Watched this on flight back from Ukraine. Pretty good movie. Interesting to see the back story behind N.W.A.

Nice feel good movie for the whole family. Even Tyler watched the whole thing and I thought he might get bored.

Tammy and I saw Spotlight last night, part of our watching each Academy Award Best Picture nominee. I was blown away. It was a fabulous movie and I can see why it won the award. It also highlights the critical role of journalism in our society, the kind of journalism that is happening less and less. The movie does a great job of showing how this massive scandal was being covered up. It’s also interesting to watch the movie while this issue continues to reverberate through the Catholic church. The story isn’t done being written yet.

Tammy asked me if I would give Best Picture to Spotlight or The Big Short, which I thought was fabulous. I would have given it to Spotlight but it was interesting to consider. I thought they were both fabulous movies with amazing acting, great cinematography and incredibly gripping. I felt like the edge went to Spotlight for the somewhat silly reason that it is “more serious”.

Tammy and I are trying to watch most (all?) of the best picture nominees. Room was an interesting movie with a lot of depth. The movie has two distinct halves, in the room and then after. Almost like two different movies in a way, and both very good. The acting from Jack, the kid, is amazing.

We saw The Big Short last night and I was simply blown away. Parts of it hilarious, suspenseful, gripping. It had me hooked all the way through. As a story on what really happened it’s also terrifying. See it for some amazing acting, or great cinematography or just for a night at the movies. But take some time as well to just think about what you saw and how much of it is real.

Watched Barista last night. For coffee lovers, this is a fun movie that will intrigue you with creative drinks and coffee culture. How about some distilled coffee?

It will also make you cringe when you see someone going on and on about coffee, and realize you do that too.

Great movie. Very entertaining. As usual, book was better and the movie cut out a lot of stuff but still highly recommend.

Tammy and I went to Ex Machina this evening. Cool sci-fi movie with a very good story. Recommended.

Somewhat surprisingly good movie with lots of fun kitchen scenes. Not going to challenge you to new places, but a great way to spend a Friday evening.

Watching Fresh tonight. I have no need to know anything more about this topic. I believe I’ve read and seen all I need to, but it seems too important to not stay focused on it.

I can’t remember where I first saw Margin Call referenced. The movie depicts a 24-hour segment of the 2008 financial crisis. I’m a sucker for high-finance movies (Wall Street, Boiler Room) and knew I wanted to see it right away. Then I saw the cast and that Kevin Spacey was in it, one of my favorite actors. I was happy to see it on iTunes as an “in theater rental” so we watched it in the new family room last night.

It was an odd movie. The movie has 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, which honestly surprises me a bit. I think if you took some of the star power out and just went on the screenplay it would be much lower. Spacey is awesome, as always. The pacing of the movie I think is what had me off. It would go for long moments at a crawl and then without transition speed along. Similar to one of my favorite movies, Glengarry Glenn Ross, there are no heroes here.

If you watch it, share your thoughts. I’d love to know what others think of it. The Margin Call website is one of the better movie websites I’ve seen though.

Last night Tammy and I went to Moneyball. I read the book a while back and really liked it. I was curious what the movie was going to be like since, to me, the book didn’t read like a movie at all. Brad Pitt as Billy Beane seemed odd to me, but was actually really good. Check out the movie, however, I would still recommend reading the book. If you’re just curious about the numbers behind the book in the movie read up on sabermetrics and Bill James. I was a little disappointed that the word sabermetrics wasn’t even mentioned in the movie, however Bill James was given a number of references.

Last weekend Tammy and I had a nice dinner at Kings Wine Bar (one of my new favorite places) and then went to a movie. We went to Contagion. It was a good movie, and if anything underplayed the kind of pandemonium that would follow the kind of epidemic depicted.

When I got up at the end of the movie all the other people in the movie theater seemed like something to get away from. 😀

I finally got a chance to watch Inside Job tonight. Wow. Very good documentary on the financial collapse. For those that have read a bit about the issue the recap of CDO’s and Swaps will be redundant, but it’s not much. The skewering of the ratings agencies and the economic profession is pointed.

Watched Wendy and Lucy. Sad movie. Wendy is broke. Her car needs a new engine. She loses her dog, Lucy.

Mazie was ecstatic to see Up. She was giddy running to the theater to see it. We all really enjoyed it.

Tammy and I went to Star Wars Episode III today. We made a point to go to the DLP theater at the Eden Prairie AMC. The theater did a really great job with the entirely digital movie.

I liked the movie more than I expected. I figured it would be good, but it exceeded my expectations. The Star Wars crowd did not let down either, the nerd ratio was definitely on the high-end. The story was great. Perhaps my only negative, and it’s minor, was that I didn’t care much for the idea behind the droid general, although his saber moves were pretty impressive.

So the second arc of the Star Wars saga is concluded. I’m left really hoping that Lucas takes a stab at the final third arc with episodes seven through nine. We’ll see!

I’m looking forward to the War of the Worlds and the Chronicles of Narnia series to come to the theater.

This Tuesday we got the opportunity (Thanks Chad!) to go and see a sneak preview of Team America. This is the newest movie from the creators of South Park. The schtick for this is that the entire thing is filmed using puppets. I have to admit that I found the fight seens with puppets banging against each other and strings clearly visible was pretty funny.

Don’t go to this expecting any cerebral entertainment. If you went to anything from the creators of South Park expecting something other than just mindless chuckles you are sadly confused. It’s a funny movie, and the political overtones are humorous. However, I may wait and catch this one on video rather than shell out hard earned dollars for it.

Tammy and I went to Napolean Dynamite this evening. I have to admit right off that this movie did not endear me in any way at all. I generally thought it was stupid, without any interesting characters and even the couple of laughs were minor at best. I’m sure my experience wasn’t helped by the fact that the theatre was crowded with young teenagers.

What is it with groups of young teenagers!? They all have cell phones. They take calls in the movie and yack on their phone right in the middle of everything. Grrr! Tammy turned and told the three particularly moronic girls behind us to “shut up and turn off your phone”. Didn’t do a lot of good though.

Anyway, the movie reminded me of the film equivalent of a Ween album. However, unlike Ween which I find a little interesting, Napolean Dynamite just went on, and on, and on… 90 minutes of meandering nothingness.

Tammy didn’t dislike this as much as I did. Aside from the teens in the theatre, she thought it was an OK movie. Seems the critics also side more with her than I. Your milage may vary.

Last night Tammy and I went to The Forgotten. The movie was moderately entertaining, however I certainly wouldn’t make a huge effort to see it. Renting the DVD would probably be fine. The theme of the movie reminded me a bit of Dark City. The movie successfully provides a number of shocking adrenaline scenes that will definitely make you jump in your seat. The rest of the time it takes an eerie, 3rd party perspective for the camera. If you’re bored and looking for something pretty simple but exciting, check it out.

Tammy and I went to see the new version of the Manchurian Candidate last night. Much more suspenseful than the original, however lacking Frank Sinatra. Maybe it’s just my particular political views but the concept of the movie seemed a little closer to home than I would like.

Tonight Tammy and I took it easy and went to a movie. We decided to check out Garden State. I really liked the movie. If you enjoyed movies like Lost in Translation or Niagara, Niagara, I’m almost positive that you will like Garden State. I left the movie also thinking that it reminded me a lot of The Graduate, even though I couldn’t figure out why.

It took me a moment to get over Zach Braff. Braff wrote, directed and starred in this. I’m not that big of a fan of Scrubs, and while this movie has nothing to do with Scrubs I kept on thinking about it with him on the screen in front of me. However, given the quality of this movie and that it was his deal, I left with much more respect for him.

I’m tempted to get the soundtrack. The music in the film was perfect.

Tammy and I went to The Bourne Supremacy last night. Fun movie with a lot of action and suspense. Lacked the excitement of The Bourne Identity in part because Identity was all new and we knew what to expect in Supremacy to an extent. Still very fun to watch. I did note that it seemed like most of the movie was filmed handheld or something. If you get motion sick easily (like me), watch out.

Oh boy, we did it again, went to yet another movie in Paris. This time the Stepford Wives. Fun movie, probably better to rent. This time the theatre had air conditioning, what a plus!

Tammy and I went and saw Spiderman 2 this evening in Paris. I always think it sounds kind of wierd to go to a movie when you are on vacation, but it’s always a lot of fun. Anyway, movie was very good, better than the first. Luckily it was in english with french subtitles. The theater had no air conditioning and was rather a dump, and the tickets were only 9€50! Ouch! Paris is not a cheap city.

Tammy and I went to The Terminal tonight. I gotta admit that I liked this movie a lot more than I expected I would.

You start with Tom Hanks. Granted he’s one of the best actors alive today. He’s right up there with the greats, but he is Tom Hanks and for some reason I don’t have the desire to see him in a movie like I do Al Pacino, or Marlon Brando or even William H. Macey! But every time I do see him in a movie I really enjoy it. Spielberg is also a great director but falls unfortunately into a similar category as Hanks.

Anyway, the plot sounds really boring, a guy stuck in an international airport terminal, however it is really fun and enjoyable. You leave the movie feeling good and happy, which is sometimes exactly what you want a movie to do.

We went and saw Dodgeball tonight and I have to admit that while it’s a pretty stupid movie it is really funny. Don’t go expected any type of intellectual experience, this is chewing gum for the brain, but fine chewing gum it is.

Just got back from seeing Super Size Me! Great movie, I’ll fill in some more detail later.

Should be a wake up call to everyone.

Also saw a preview for The Corporation which looks very good.