We spent Christmas Eve at my in-law’s. It was fairly laid back–just us, the in-laws and our niece and her boyfriend. We had a nice dinner and then went to church, which was less than an hour in length (gasp!). After church, we went back to the house and did my favorite Christmas activity–we opened gifts.
blue ruin
I read an article on the best movies of 2014 or some such time period and this one looked interesting. It was available on Netflix streaming and I didn’t have anything going on last night, so I decided to watch it.
This was a revenge film, but not in the classic sense (i.e. not in the Liam Neeson ass-kicking sort of way). Basically, this homeless guy finds out that the person who killed his parents (is he homeless due to what happened to his parents? who knows.) is being released from prison and he decides to kill him (or maybe he planned to do this all along). Also, don’t think what I just wrote is a spoiler because this all happens within the first five or ten minutes of the movie. What else is left, you might ask? Well, I guess you’ll have to watch the movie to find out. Also, I wanted to note that there is a distinct lack of dialogue in this movie as a lot of scenes only have the main character in them and he doesn’t go around talking to himself (and there’s no voiceover to tell us his thoughts), but it was a pretty engrossing film nonetheless.
My rating: 3.5/5
the 2nd day of xmas
We had our annual Christmas visit and exchange of gifts with Judy last night. We met up at our house in the evening. It was a fun time, as always. We’ve gotten to see a lot more of Judy this year and that is just fine with me. We’ll be meeting up for dinner after the new year in order to meet her new-ish boyfriend. We’ll call that a bonus!
we need to talk about kevin
I came upon this movie because I really liked Chevelle’s song, “Take Out the Gunman”. I heard it on the radio and wanted to listen to it again, so I did a search on YouTube and watched what I thought was their official video. I was surprised to see that actress Tilda Swinton starred in it, so I did a little more research on the subject only to find out that it was a fan video that I was watching and it (effectively) used scenes from “We Need to Talk About Kevin”. Intrigued, I added the movie to my Netflix queue. Brian saw it sitting on the tv console table and asked when I was going to watch it. He heard about the movie in a different context and was interested, so we popped it in the DVD player last night. It was quite engrossing. You can probably guess the subject matter from the Chevelle song.
My rating: 4/5
the 1st day of xmas
Brian and I went to a Christmas party last night. Jake stayed home to rest up because he has a cold and has his first formal dance at school is this evening. The party was held at the same place as the Halloween Party we went to in October. A former schoolmate of Brian’s hosts Halloween and Christmas parties each year for friends and family. This is our second year for both parties. They always put out a great spread of food, so it’s not to be missed!