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FacebookIt’s ‘nog season! Eggnog-flavored ice cream. Eggnog-flavored shakes. Eggnog-flavored cookies. Eggnog-flavored…uh, milk. I love it! After the presents, paid holidays, food, football, time spent with loved ones, football, and Christmas lights, eggnog is my favorite part of the holiday season. Why is ‘nog limited to only four weeks of the year? I could very easily drink eggnog everyday of the week, year-round. So sweet. So thick. Mmmnn…need more eggnog. Why must the world deprive us of this wonderful flavor 11 months of the year? It’s just not fair.
After watching “Crystal Skull” this week and realizing I was too hard on it the first time around, it got me wondering if there have been other misevaluated movies I’ve seen. I couldn’t tell you the last time I walked out of a movie theater thinking “wow.” It might’ve been “Thank You For Smoking” but it’s been so long, who knows?
Up until my early-mid-20s, I liked pretty much everything I saw in theaters (I somehow remember enjoying “Red Planet” for cripes’ sake). I never thought of myself as an artsy guy. I don’t look for symbolism or meaning in movies–I like popcorn flicks…even though I never buy popcorn. The point is, I’ve seen a lot of movies over the past few years and I wasn’t wowed by any of them. Athletes can have slumps. Actors can have slumps. Presidents can have slumps–why can’t I have a slump?
Maybe–just maybe–the last few years I’ve been in a movie slump. More often than not, I’d leave a theater thinking movies was “okay.” Sure, there were some really, really bad ones (“Hancock”), but most often I thought the movie I saw was neither good nor bad. I don’t want to use the term mediocre because that has a negative connotation–I liked the movies I saw for the most part. But I was never wowed, blown away, or saw anything that warranted a second viewing (this is coming from the guy who had no problem watching “Die Hard” every Saturday afternoon during his teen years).
I think I’m going open the vault and revaluate. “Transformers” stuck me as ho-hum; everyone else seems to disagree. “The Dark Knight” was enjoyable…and very forgetable. I’m not sure how far back I should go, but I think I need to pull up a couch and plop myself in front of a DVD player.
Maybe that’s the problem. I did like “Die Hard 4”–but I saw it at home. I laughed so hard at “Anchorman” I thought I was going to die–but I saw that with a group of friends on an HDTV. Maybe my problem isn’t so much the movies but the fabled ‘movie-going experience.’ I was always a fan of the movie-going experience. I always made it out to be something special. Maybe I’ve put too much pressure on the concept of going out to the movies. Maybe I’ve come to hate paying ten bucks to sit in a crowd theater with 200 strangers that always make the room too hot to be comfortable in. Maybe–just maybe–I’m better suited to watch movies at home. First time I saw “Crystal Skull” I was staring at a 60-foot screen. Somehow the jokes were funnier, the action more intense, and the sound was crisper when I watched it on my nine-inch computer screen while wearing $2 headphones. I wish I could like movies again–I really do. Maybe if I change my approach, I could.