Wisconsin 2013 – Movies

Remember the Titans @ Camp Randall
The first item on the agenda after I arrived in Madison was to catch a movie. A movie that would be shown on the video board inside Camp Randall. What a great idea. You’ve got this really nice video board. A huge stadium that is only used a few times a year. It doesn’t even have natural grass, so you can sit on the field with no one concerned about the grass. We had a spot in the middle of the end zone, right in front of the goal posts.

I hadn’t seen Remember the Titans in a long long time. It has never been one of my favorites but people always seemed to love it. After seeing it again a few things stood out: 1) I hadn’t realized that my friends repeated so many lines from the movie that I probably heard the entire script, just on shuffle, on a daily basis and 2) having now been to Alexandria, VA a few times, it makes the movie a bit more shocking, given how it’s affluent DC suburb these days. The rest of the movie was typical football movie, which is fine and something I’m all for in this setting. There would be few better choices.

There had been a vote for which movie to watch, the options were: Despicable Me, Oz The Great and Powerful, Friday Night Lights, Remember The Titans, and The Avengers. I was surprised they weren’t all sports movies and two of them were PG-13. Remember the Titans won and I don’t think it was a close fight.

If they pick Little Giants next year, I might have to fly back.

The Way Way Back
We caught this one at a normal theater. Mostly normal. First, the theater was in a mall. We used to have theaters in malls but they all moved out years ago. This was a new mall theater and really nice. The strangest thing was that when we bought our tickets at the box office, we had to select our seats. Assigned seats!

A lot of people haven’t heard of this movie, so here’s the trailer. Or just trust me, cause the trailer covers a lot.

I loved it, you have to see it. I’m calling it my favorite movie of the summer. Keep in mind it’s the only movie I’ve seen this summer. In case you didn’t watch the trailer. It focuses on a teenage boy spending the summer with his mom at her boyfriend’s beach house, along with the boyfriend and his daughter. Steve Carrell is the boyfriend and he is awful, in a good way. So crazy because he is always nice. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the teenager is awkard and doesn’t get along with Steve Carrell. So he wanders off and makes his own friends, which is where the fun begins. Also in the movie, Allison Janney, is the neighbor and should be nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Also, there needs to be some sort of comedy acting Oscar, so Sam Rockwell could win it.

The movie was written by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, who are both in the movie and you should already know them because the won the Oscar for The Descendents screenplay, and because Jim Rash is the dean on Community. The Descendents was adapted from a book, this one is all theirs. I will see there next three movies, even if the next two are terrible, I’d still give them a third shot.

Mighty Ducks 1 & 2

Random, yes. My friend took me to some of his friends’ apartment warming party with a theme of food from Minnesota & Wisconsin. I thought it would be an outdoor BBQ and escalate quickly. Instead it was indoors and we wound up watching the first two Mighty Ducks movies. They had the box set, but everyone was too tired for the third movie.

Have you seen Mighty Ducks recently? Grab some friends and do it. The first one holds up pretty well. I hadn’t remembered the super cheesy sound effects and that one of the Ducks lines was called the Oreo Line (yes, in a kids movie). I also got to revisit the nickname ‘cake eater’ which when I was little I always felt I didn’t understand so it must be super awful, but no. The first time he heard it, Banks should have just said, ‘you have a problem with cake?’ and it would have been done with. The second one is pretty much the exact same movie. The Ducks become the junior national team, and they only add five outsiders, all from the south!