This is the one where we watch a lot of movies.

Posted April 26th, 2009 by Mike Lawson

Daniel and I had a lazy Saturday yesterday.  We locked ourselves in the house and had a movie marathon.

We had 5 Netflix movies here, and we put them in random order.  The first movie we watched was Over The Hedge. This movie is from the makers of Shrek.  It was cute, but I ended up falling asleep about half way through the movie.

The sad thing about this movie is that there are a bunch of animals that are trapped in a little green patch when a new housing track builds around them while they are hibernating. And their #1 enemy is the H.O.A. president (played by the lovely Allison Janney).  Ironically, the boyfriend just joined the HOA here and he’s a total HOA nazi.  At one point, the HOA president in the movie says:

Gladys: [On phone] The homeowners charter, which you signed, says the grass is supposed to be two inches, and according to my measuring stick, yours is two-point-five.

Kind of close to home.  He’s not that bad…but Daniel is close.

The second movie we watched was HBO’s Grey Gardens.  Great movie about a movie.  If you don’t know, HBO made this movie about the cult-classic Maysles brothers documentary. Big Edie and her daughter Little Edie were the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and they lived together in a mansion called Grey Gardens.

In 1971 their living conditions were exposed in a National Enquirer story and a New York Magazine story.

I first heard about the documentary in the Rufus Wainwright song Grey Gardens.  And since I first saw the documentary, I was so curious about the lives of these women.  And this HBO movie (staring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange) definitely scratched an itch. I’m pretty certain you’ll enjoy this movie more if you’re familiar with the documentary.  I fell asleep about half way through the movie and woke up before the end.

Edith ‘Little Edie’ Bouvier Beale: This is the best thing to wear for today, you understand. Because I don’t like women in skirts and the best thing is to wear pantyhose or some pants under a short skirt, I think. Then you have the pants under the skirt and then you can pull the stockings up over the pants underneath the skirt. And you can always take off the skirt and use it as a cape. So I think this is the best costume for today.

Movie number 3 was Frozen River.  Erin suggested this movie, and Dan Netflixed it (can I use netflix as a verb??).  Set on some Canadian border town near an Indian Rezs., it’s the story of two working class women and how they start earning cash by smuggling people across the border.

I fell asleep right as the movie started, but woke up in time to get the gist of the story.  It was sad and suspenseful.   The lead actress Melissa Leo was nominated for an Oscar for this role.

After this movie, Daniel went and picked up our unhealthy dinner at KFC, and I did dishes and fed and pooped the puppy.  Once dinner was ready, we popped in movie number 4.

The fourth movie in our movie marathon was Doubt.  I can’t tell you too much about this movie because soon after I finished eating I fell asleep.

I guess I had a long week.  Or I can’t help falling asleep in movies.  Or that Nyquil was working.

Whatever.

So by the time Doubt was finished, I was ready to go to bed.  But I wanted to eat strawberries, so I pretended that I was going to stay up for another movie and told Dan to put on movie number five.

The fifth movie, which I was surprised Daniel had never seen was The Adventures of Babysitting.  Shocking, right?  Well I only lasted about fifteen minutes.  Then I went to bed.

All in all, it was a pretty enjoyable movie marathon night…from what I remember of it anyway.