paramount +1 film festival for rainy days (but not mondays)

 

This has been the usual for us ever since Wednesday.

Pouring down rain in the middle of the afternoon, sometimes accompanied by thunder and lightning.

By 6 PM, it's dark enough outside that I have to turn on a light to be able to see what I'm doing.

The roof is just fine, thanks.

(smile!)

Fortunately for me, Comcast gave me a week of free viewing of the movies on the Paramount + SHO streaming channel.

I found out on Tuesday morning and that's when I watched "Monster Summer", partly because it had Mel Gibson as a retired cop.

As I soon discovered it also had a special treat for me: Patrick Renna, the kid who had been The Great Hambino in "The Sandlot"!!!

He was again playing baseball, this time as the umpire for the little league team in Martha's Vineyard.

Very good mystery movie!

Oh, it had Mason Thames, too, which prompted me to see "How To Train Your Dragon" again at AMC - sweet!

I have a new appreciation of his acting skills.

"The Nice Guys" was viewed on Wednesday.

Ryan Gosling plays the worst PI ever 

(so says his daughter, 'Holly', whose most def more astute), while Russell Crowe is a hitman whose been reduced to settling squabbles between kids.

For hire, of course.

They pair up when it turns out they're both looking for Amelia, the last one still alive who was associated with a porn movie.

"Confess, Fletch" was an homage to Chevy Chase's character,  performed with exactly the right touch by Jon Hamm.

No longer an investigative journalist, he's all about the art now, except this time the paintings are missing.

Loved the scenes of Rome!

All of those had been new to me, but I followed them with two I'd seen years ago.

"Chocolat" from 2000 was chosen because Rev. Billy Hester recently finished a four-week ZOOM study that used it as the base of discussion.

I keep hoping those taped studies will show up on youTube. 

Then there's "The Naked Gun: Files From Police Squad!" from 1988, chosen solely because the remake with Liam Neeson as Lt. Frank Drebin, Leslie Nielsen's bumbling cop.

I have to wonder if the name similarity between 'Neeson' and 'Nielsen' is meant to be an inside joke... I think I'll take it as one!!!

Speaking of inside jokes... three of these movies had tropical fish tanks!!!

Right place, right time, for me!

Those movies were: "The Nice Guys", "Confess, Fletch", and "The Naked Gun".

Very nice!!!

On to the last four movies.

"Gasoline Alley" was made in 2022 and is almost a one-man movie - and neither Bruce Willis nor Luke Wilson are that man.

Devon Sawa is the lead, a tattoo artist accused of killing "The Four Beauties", a quartet of call girls given that moniker by the media.

Bruce Willis mostly is called upon to just be in a few scenes, with a few lines to give his aging detective a bit of life. 

I was sad watching him, as I've loved him ever since "Moonlighting"...

but aphasia has made him seem more than just 3 years older than me.

It's still a good movie with a good story.

After that, I wanted something completely different and "Extra Ordinary" was that.

I knew no one in this quirky Irish film about a driving tutor whose side hustle is helping to exorcise ghosts for folks in the township.

Well, I thought I knew no one until Will Forte showed up as a former rock star in need of a virgin sacrifice to jump start his career again.

This was definitely good for a few laughs!

Today, I watched "A Walk On The Moon" and "The Courier", both set in the 1960's.

I didn't choose them for that reason, but there they were, a gift on a rainy day.

(smile!)

Diane Lane and Liev Schreiber were a Jewish couple in the summer of 1969, vacationing with their family in the Catskills, as they have in years past. 

Their daughter, born when they were both teens, is now 14 and the mother is starting to feel like she's missed out on life.

So when 'the blouse man', a traveling salesman, innocently flirts with her, she takes him seriously and they have an affair that begins on the night of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing and runs right on past the Woodstock music and art fair several weeks later.

Viggo Mortensen is appropriately dreamy in the 1999 film as the counterpoint to the staid working man that her husband had become.

I recommended that one to Sandy!

(smile!)

"The Courier", set in the early 1960's, turned out to be one that I'd seen before.

With a similar vibe to "The Bridge Of Spies", this one has Benedict Cumberbatch as a salesman called to duty by MI-6 to go to Moscow and interact with a colonel there who is trying to prevent a war.

The timeline runs from the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 to the Cuban missile crisis in late 1962, then beyond.

Nice to end this film festival with two history lessons!

(smile!)