Category Archives: Movies in Bed
Movies in Bed: Gods of Egypt.
Post by Mark T. Locker.
Gods of Egypt has finished its brief run in theaters and is now available to watch in the comfort of your own bedroom. Set in ancient Egypt, at a time when the gods walked among the men, larger than life and powerful. All is well and at peace until the banished god Set comes back with an army and usurps the throne and blinds his brother Horus, who was to take the throne. The fate of the kingdom of Egypt falls into the unlikely hands of a young thief, whose only reason for fighting is to get his girlfriend back. He uses his amazing thieving skills to recover one of Horus’s eyes. Horus in turn agrees to help fight Set for the throne.
This is not what I would call a “good” movie; it’s full of too much CGI, lots of Europeans and Australians posing as Egyptians, and weak dialog. It’s difficult not to think of Liz Taylor’s famously overbudget Cleopatra when watching this movie. Loads of money spent on what was meant to be some kind of epic, but just wasn’t. That said, it’s a very entertaining movie. It’s a movie that is easy to just relax and enjoy in all its ridiculousness. Plus, who doesn’t like to see fleshed-out ideas of what Egypt would have looked like in its heyday? Even if those interpretations might make Egyptologists (like my wife) cringe just a little. (Though I must say, the bit in the Underworld with the awesome jackal-headed Anubis is pretty cool to watch.)
This movie is a fun way to end a busy week. If you want something with lots of action that lets you just turn off your brain and immerse yourself in a fantasy world of gods and monsters, this is the movie for you.
Movies in Bed: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Post by Mark T. Locker.
It’s crazy to think that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is closing in on FIFTY YEARS OLD. And if it weren’t for a sneaky sickness keeping me home from work I might never have seen it. But I saw it for the first time just the other day.
If you’ve been living under a rock like I apparently have, here’s what you’ve been missing out on. Robert Redford and Paul Newman are a pair of old West bandits. Butch Cassidy (Newman) is a charming train robber. He’s a bit older, a bit calmer, but dangerously charming. Sundance is young, hotheaded, but a dead aim with a pistol. Together they have been hitting trains and banks all across the West along with Butch Cassidy’s Hole in the Wall Gang. But after an unsuccessful train heist, Butch and Sundance find themselves unable to shake a sheriff assisted by an incredible Indian tracker who goes by Lord Baltimore. So they flee to Bolivia with Sundance’s girlfriend Etta.
I was amazed by how good this movie was; well-written, cleverly assembled and funny. Paul Newman’s Butch Cassidy is particularly likeable and even though they’re outlaws, you can’t help but root for them the whole way. It’s a great movie to end a long week. Fluff up the pillows and get ready! Butch and Sundance are coming!
Movies in Bed: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Post by Mark T. Locker.
Guess what’s out on video?!? Or, I guess in this decade I should say: guess what’s now available from iTunes?!? That’s right! The newest Star Wars movie, the one intended to get the bad taste of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones out of our collective mouths. Seeing as the big-screen release grossed over 2 billion dollars (!) I’d say that it was successful.
I’m inclined to agree. If there is a chance you actually haven’t seen The Force Awakens and you enjoyed the original trilogy, there is no good reason not to watch the movie. It honors the spirit of the original without relying too heavily on them to carry it forward. One of the biggest complaints against George Lucas is that in his later work he let CGIs do all the heavy lifting, even egregiously adding computer-generated parts into the original movies, something nobody was asking for and few likely approved of. J.J. Abrams went back to the series’ roots, insisting on building sets for everything, including the massive Millennium Falcon. Despite the improvements in CGI technology, nothing can beat the real thing.
The story is set some years after Return of the Jedi, and focuses on a disenchanted Stormtrooper named Finn, a junk scavenger named Rey and an adorable but not annoying droid named BB-8 which they turned into the greatest toy ever. The new baddie, Kylo Ren and his pals have a giant laser they want to use to destroy everything. The story is a little too much like the plot of A New Hope but if that’s the worst thing about this movie, then that’s saying a lot. Now that it’s on DVD you will have the luxury of watching it from the comfort of your own bed, and if you fall asleep in your popcorn no one will know but you.
Movies in Bed: You, Me, and the Apocalypse
Post by Mark T. Locker.
We don’t keep a television in the bedroom, but I love to fall asleep on the couch. Sometimes the voices and music of TV shows is easier to fall asleep to than just about anything. But sometimes you find a show that instead keeps you wide awake and engaged, even if you were half-asleep moments earlier.
You, Me, and the Apocalypse is one of those shows. It’s got so many moving parts and so many interesting characters that you can’t stop watching for fear of missing something.
One day in the near future, scientists discover a comet eight miles wide is headed on a crash course for Earth. By all accounts, extinction will hit the planet in a matter of weeks. We learn in the intro that a number of characters will be in an underground bunker watching the end of the world on a television. What we are watching is how they got there. I couldn’t possibly try and explain all the characters and simultaneous plots without getting very tedious, but the main points are these:
Jamie is a bank manager in Slough, England who discovers that not only is the world ending but that he has a secret twin, he is adopted, and his vanished wife may not be vanished. He and his friend head off to uncover the truth.
Ariel is Jamie’s secret twin, a hacker and all-around bad guy. He’s only out to save his own skin.
Rhonda is a librarian taking the fall for her hacker son’s activities. She is broken out of prison amid the chaos and finds herself on the lam with a white supremacist named Leanne.
Father Jude is a chain-smoking priest (played by Rob Lowe) who has been hired by the Vatican to fulfill the newly-reopened role as Devil’s Advocate, who seeks to confirm miracles. He is joined by the very pious Sister Celine.
There are lots more characters and they are all starting to intertwine. What’s great is that none of it has gotten confusing. It’s just getting more fascinating as you try to figure out what’s going to connect and how it will all lead to the bunker. Great new show that is worth staying awake to watch.
Movies in Bed: Drive Me Crazy
Post by Mark T. Locker.
It seems my best friend and I have developed a new tradition: whenever we find ourselves alone with a couple hours to kill we find a new high school movie to watch. Most of the time these are absolutely terrible movies. To be honest, I’m not sure we have watched any good movies together, save for the ones I’ve dragged him to (but to be fair, the bad ones are usually better). We have seen all the Resident Evil movies together, each exponentially worse and more confusing than the last. Yet they keep making them and we keep looking forward to them. Last summer I saw Sixteen Candles for the first time and She’s the Man for the first and last time, both with him. A couple weeks ago he came to visit and while everyone else was in bed, we found a movie called Drive Me Crazy, buried deep within Netflix.
I was delighted. It stars Melissa Joan Hart who I had grown to love during adolescence as the star of Nickelodeon’s Clarissa Explains it All. I guess she did Sabrina the Teenage Witch too. Either way, this movie shows us in glaring clarity why she could never break into the big screen scene. She’s not bad; she’s just not terribly charismatic. ANYWAYS. The most surprising part about this movie turned out to be the fact that it was written by Rob Thomas, best known for Veronica Mars and iZombie. Both my friend and I are huge fans so suddenly this got a lot more interesting.
The plot is way less interesting than the writer. Classic story: popular girl and “bad boy” make an agreement to couple up, each for their own particular end. Naturally, their selfish reasons for fake dating all fall away when they let their prejudices go and see each other for who they really are. I won’t say this was a good movie. But it was deeply enjoyable. There’s something comforting about high school dramas. It’s why The Breakfast Club and the other Brat Pack movies were so fantastic. I’m not sure these 90s versions have the same je ne sais quoi but that will never stop me from watching every last one of them.
