Movies Movies Movies

Saw three movies this weekend – two on Netflix and one in the theater.

We’ll start with the current movie: High School Musical 3. Yes, we took the kids to see it today after church. CootieBoy got a little restless at some point but was content to sit on my lap for the second half of the movie. CootieGirl, on the other hand, was spellbound and almost never took her eyes off the screen. *lol* As for the adults, I know it’s absolutely weird for me to say I have a favorite, but I think High School Musical 2 is the better of the three. I think Denis said he preferred the first movie over the other two. This one definitely had a bigger budget – of all the musical numbers I liked the Ryan/Sharpay Broadway number the best.

2 1/2 sequins out of five.

Last night I watched two Netflix movies. The first was “Mindhunters,” starring Val Kilmer, Christian Slater, Johnny Lee Miller, LL Cool J and the lead chick from “Cold Case,” among others. It was a reasonably well done thriller about a bunch of FBI profiler recruits who go to some deserted island for their last training mission on to realize that someone among them is a serial killer. There were some obvious loose threads from one scene that failed to explain themselves, but for the most part I still liked it well enough.

2 1/2 mannequins out of five.

The other movie is one that every woman and girl on the planet should watch. “Iron Jawed Angels” follows the true-life story of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, two young suffragettes in the 1910s who long to get the politicians to allow women the chance the vote. This is a 2004 HBO film starring Hilary Swank and Frances O’Connor, and others. It follows Paul and Burns as they bring a new direction to the old suffragette style. The old guard (portrayed by Anjelica Huston) was content to wait for men to decide women could vote, whereas the new guard demanded the opportunity NOW. These women actively protested at the White House when Woodrow Wilson came into the PResidency and had to deal with the outbreak of WWI. The women’s protests were deemed not only impolite but were brutally squashed as the women were sent to prison in Occuquan, Virginia for 60 days. The suffering they encountered there while taking on a new fight: better prison conditions for the women is horrific. In the end, in August 1920, the women’s right to vote was finally addressed and passed by a majority vote. And so we should all be grateful or else it’s quite possible we’d still be waiting for men to decide it okay for us to vote now.

4 hunger strikes out of five.