Robert Gentel’s Blog

The girl and I went to the mall today and saw Mr. Brooks. It was only marginally interesting in that it is a decidedly different moral perspective on serial killers than usual Hollywood fare. They usually don’t portray a nuanced serial killer and it’s the first film I recall in which the serial killer’s struggle to control his urges are center stage. But enough about that, I have something more interesting: dog shoes.

My girlfriend bought shoes for Harry. They are little blue sneakers that lace up and I was sure he’d kill himself if he had to wear them. But he didn’t mind them much and ran around sounding like a horse. I’ll post a video of him and his new kicks when I get around to it but he’s more comfortable than I imagined he would be.

But as I expected, he’s too boisterous to keep them on, if he’s energetic he’ll run till one falls off and if not he’ll untie them all and knaw on them. My girlfriend says they are for his weekly outings to the park but I think I’d be mortified to walk a dog with shoes on in public, even if I think it’s very funny in private.

Ok, so we went to the movies again and saw Will Smith’s new movie I am Legend. I had heard good things about it but was a little disappointed (not much since I expected to be).

The story was not very compelling and the climax was anticlimactic. The only good thing I can really say about it is that it wasn’t that boring. At least the “dark seekers” were freaky looking. For someone less jaded with Hollywood than I it might actually be a decent film but for me it was just good enough for me to stick around till the end.

My girlfriend has been renting videos recently, I’ve watched a few but none were too interesting. The one I liked the most was the documentary March of the Penguins. The penguins themselves are interesting as hell, so just not getting in the way of the footage is all that it took to make a great documentary.

I suppose it isn’t as easy as I make it out to be, especially given the harsh conditions they would have had to film in but the point I’m trying to make is that the penguins themselves are the stars. Very interesting, dem penguins and now I want a pet penguin even more.

Yesterday, we went to the movies as it’d been a while. We watched Michael Clayton, which was interesting enough that I didn’t feel a screaming need to leave the theater and do something else, which is how I feel about most movies. So I guess that’s a passing grade for both of these films, with the usual caveat that my suspension of disbelief has been broken for years and I’m not a great movie critic given how little I tend to like most movies.

We signed up to a video store membership (first time for me in years, but there’s no Netflix here) and I finally saw Borat. I’m a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen and was familiar with his Borat character from his Ali G show and expected the film to be a series of similar gags. As I’d expected, I’d seen all the funny parts in the various promotions for the film I saw as Borat did the rounds on TV but was pleasantly surprised to see that this film had a stronger plot than his previous Ali G film and that it worked a lot better.

I didn’t find myself laughing too much, since I’d seen it all before but it was fun and I hope the film’s popularity doesn’t ruin the Borat character for future work.

Today I went to the movies again with my girlfriend. I hadn’t been a fan of movies for a while as they seem to have gotten more formulaic, or I’ve become even more impatient but the VIP theater in Terramall is comfortable enough to be fun. You get a leather recliner and food service in your seat so I’ve found myself spending an afternoon in the mall about every week these days.

The movies aren’t getting any better, but the last two I saw were refreshingly mediocre, as opposed to appallingly formulaic. For some reason the 2005 Rowan Atkinson movie Keeping Mum was in the theater here in Costa Rica. It was a weird mix of boringly amusing.

And today we watched The Invasion, which was creepy enough in certain parts to be interesting, but the ending was anti-climatic to me. I was sure there was an insipid plot twist to come when the helicopter takes off, but no it all just wraps up with a quick run-through of the happy ending’s details.

Neither film was any good, but were less irksome to me than Hollywood’s fare has been in recent years and Nicole Kidman didn’t irritate me like she usually does.