Hoot, the movie

A heart warming flick about three decent kids, who manage to do some good.  Came out a long time ago, 2006, low budget ($16 million) didn't make the nut.  Too bad.
Logan Lerman has the starring role.  In 2006 he was only 13 years old.  He plays the role well, at least as well as Daniel Radcliffe played Harry Potter at age 12.  A couple of other child actors who I never heard of before play the other members his gang.
   Enjoyable.  More so than the average new flick today. Netflix has it.

Sea of Monsters, Percy Jackson, Olympians

A fun flick.  It never came to Littleton, so I watched it when it came to Netflix.  It's a movie adaption of a well selling young adult fantasy series of books by Rick Riordan.  If you like the books, you want to see this movie.  If you haven't read the book, you may find the plot/action difficult to follow.  Alexandra Daddario has a good role as Annabeth Chase,  Percy's girlfriend.  She goes questing with Percy, stands shoulder to shoulder with him in battle,  and has as many good lines as Percy does.  The film makes it clear early on that she and Percy have a thing going, and although both roles are melodramatic, they play them convincingly.  Logan Lerman as Percy Jackson doesn't look as cute as he did in the preceding movie (Lightning Thief), his hair is cut shorter, and he looks tougher and  more dangerous. 
   As a fantasy movie, there is a lot of CGI.  Some of it was less than satisfying.  The Civil War confederate ironclad, CSS Birmingham lacks the distinctive silhouette of  the Merrimac, or even CSS Tennessee, and is equipped with such modern conveniences as electric searchlights,  radar,  and 40 mm Bofors auto cannon.  The crew, Confederate ghosts/zombies, don't look very Confederate, or even very southern. They skip the scene in the book were Tyson, the cyclops, goes below to keep the steam engines running as CSS Birmingham attempts to pull out of the Charybdis whirlpool.   The Golden Fleece, object of the quest, looked more like a fancy table cloth than a fleece. 
   This is probably the last of the Percy Jackson movies.  It cost $90 million to make, was released in August, and so far has only earned $68 million, according to IMDB.  Too bad, I enjoyed it.  Nice old fashioned good guys and bad guys, good guys win movie. 

   
  

Perks of being a Wallflower

I don't know just why I netflixed this one.  Must have been the cast, Emma Watson, and Logan Lerman. Logan has had some decent roles, The Lightening Thief, Three Musketeers, and this one.  And everyone wants to see Emma Watson as anything besides Hermione.  (Is there life after Harry Potter?) 
   Emma steals all the scenes.  She is pretty, slender, well dressed, the life of the parties. And there is a lot of partying.  She is vivacious, and Logan falls in love with her at first sight.  But by the end of the movie, despite having spent a lot of time together, Emma complains that after all that time, Logan never asked her out. 
  The flick is about surviving high school.  Logan, entering as a freshman, has his doubts.  For a shy freshman he does OK, manages to get into a clique with pretty girls (Emma) and the class clown.  He finds a sympathetic teacher, he gets invited to all the parties.  Kids have done worse. 
   Especially as Logan's character (Charlie) is a zero.  He never does anything, at least not on camera.  He has no skills, he isn't into sports, either as a player or a fan. He has no hobbies, he doesn't ride, or camp, or hike, or boat, or drive, or hack computers, or play computer games, or fly model airplanes, or anything.  Hell, he doesn't even watch TV.  And he dislikes high school, keeps counting the days until he can graduate and get out.  This despite having a decent social life. 
   The irritating thing about this flick, is that neither Logan or Emma ever DO anything.  Stuff happens to them, but they never take any action to swim up stream.  Or down stream, or anything.  They just show up, and somebody else does something to them, and they just take it.  No guts.  Or the director doesn't want to show anything.  What should have been the climax, where Logan stands up in the cafeteria and defends the class clown with his fists, the camera just blacks out, we don't see anything.  By most people's standards, standing up to the football team to keep them from beating up a friend is heroic.  But, we don't see this happening, they tell us about it afterward.  And, although it gets Logan and Emma back together after a quarrel, that's about all it does. 
    There are some anachronisms.  The high school students all dress too well. Someone's favorite song turns up on a 45 RPM record as a gift.  Hell I haven't seen a working 45 RPM record player for 30 years.  Emma gives Logan a manual typewriter as a gift (Logan wants to become a writer).  I ditched my manual typewriter shortly after I got my dual floppy disk MS-DOS IBM PC back in the '80s. 
   Then to round out the movie, Logan suffers a nervous breakdown right after graduation and spends a month in a funny farm.  Although the director had been hinting thruout the movie that there is something wrong with Logan, the hints are ambiguous, and we are looking to see Logan get well as things work out for him in school.  But, soon as school is over, and Emma is off to summer school at Penn State, Logan falls apart and gets hospitalized.  And then after doing some time, he recovers.  We don't see Logan doing anything to make himself well, it just happens.  Like everything else, it just happens.
   The critics liked this flick even though I didn't.  That's movie critics for you.   
   Anyhow, a low speed movie.  Hunger Games is gonna be better.  

   

Three Musketeers, a Steampunk Spoof

Another remake.  They do most of the famous scenes from way back when, D'Artagnan saying farewell to his father, D'Artagnan getting whipped by Rochfort at the inn, going to England to recover the diamond studs.  But the sword fights all degenerate into 20th century kung foo.  Both the musketeers and the Cardinal's guard have airships, the baddies like milady DeWinter turn into goodies.  The cast is pretty much unknown except for pretty boy Logan Lerman who plays D'Artagnan, and Orlando Bloom who plays an undistinguished Buckingham.  They manage to crash an airship onto Notre Dame cathedral.  The steeple punctures the gasbag so they cannot lift off.  Which leads to a sword fight along the roof of  the cathedral. 
   Trouble is, the spoof is so heavy that I could not take anything seriously.  It just goes on, sword fight to kung foo to air ship collision, to sword fight, and on and on.  Nothing seems very real, nobody is ever in jeopardy. 
   It can't hold a candle to the 1970's version with Michael York and Raquel Welsh.