August 1, 2012

Random Movie Night Round I

We have lots of friends who have Sunday dinner with their families, but since our families live out of town, we don’t have traditions like that and Sunday evening was never anything to look forward to, knowing we had to go back to work in the morning. At some point several bottles of wine into an evening, Kelley and I decided we should start Dinner and Random Movie Sunday Nights. There may be an official name, but I’m not sure what we settled on (probably thanks to the “several bottles in” detail of the night). When the four of us are available, we’re going to take turns picking/hosting/making dinner and a random movie on Sundays. We immediately started making lists in our phones for the movies that we wanted to watch. They don’t necessarily have to be “random”, but they should be movies that 1/2 of the people haven’t seen, or haven’t seen in years. The first round was a definite success and it worked out even better because the season of Breaking Bad started mid-July and we started timing our movies so we could watch Breaking Bad without commercials right after the movie.

Week 1 (Chuck): Ribs + Slap Shot (Paul Newman, 1977)
Slap Shot is about a bad minor league hockey team who gains a fan following by playing violently. I know I took a picture of our scores, but I can’t find it anywhere. I think the average score was between 5 – 6, but can’t remember exactly. I don’t think it still quite qualifies as “One of the Top Ten Sports Movies Ever”, but oh well. It was pretty funny at parts and they said some hilarious things, like snatch. I would rather watch these Hanson Brothers than the MmmBop ones… Score: somewhere between 5-6

Week 2 (Val): Bibimbop + Teen Wolf (MJ Fox, 1985)
I seriously love this movie. I watched it almost everyday after school in 6 grade. Thank goodness afterschool sports started in 7th grade and I no longer had time like this!

I won’t tell you the end, but that is a pivotal scene from the movie!

We initially discussed throwing out the high number because we assumed the person who picked the movie would give it an undeserving high score. After a few weeks, it became clear that I’m the only one who did that. So I’m going to pretend that the ’10’ above is actually a 8, which is what I would have given it if I was being more honest, so the average is 6. I know that even 8 may seem high for Teen Wolf, but if you know me, that’s really how I feel about that movie and I was so excited to be watching it. Lo said I sat there with a stupid smile on my face for the whole movie. It was so hard for me to not say the words along with the movie since I still knew most of them. Lo always says one of the reasons that our relationship succeeded in the early days is because he burned me the Teen Wolf soundtrack. I was very impressed and I definitely have some of the songs on my phone and ipod. Score: 6

Week 3 (Kelley): Crab Cakes + Rush (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jason Patric, 1991)
Rush is about two narcotic detectives who are going after an elusive dealer and end up becoming addicts when they get in too deep. I really liked this. The guys thought it was a little slow, but sometimes I like slow movies if they develop the characters and story enough. Score: 7
Week 4 (Lo): Spicy Bombay Sliders and Grilled Romaine Salad + Jeff, Who Lives at Home (Jason Segel and Ed Helms, 2012)
Jeff, Who Lives at Home is about two brothers in their 30’s with little in common – one who still lives at home and one whose marriage is failing – and random events that drew them together. This was really good and I can’t believe it was only limited release this year – it should have been more popular. Score: 7.75 – WINNER!