Movies I Watched Over the Weekend

     You'll notice I called this section today "Movies I Watched Over the Weekend", and not "COOL Movies I Watched Over the Weekend".  Because I only got around to watching two films this weekend (I know, I finally have a life...crazy), and one of those movies sucked.  Wow a 50% margin is really bad.

1. Dahmer

     Bad news first - this movie is boring and slow and poorly written.  Which is too bad, because a very young Jeremy Renner appears in it (as the monster Jeffery Dahmer himself) and as much as I like Renner and I'm sure this role helped catapult his career, this film, all nearly 2 hours of it, constitutes a complete waste of your time.  I wish I could tell you about the plot but the problem is there really isn't one.  The psyche of Dahmer is not delved into or explained; we don't even really see him cannibalize anyone, which was kind of his trade mark.  There are some death scenes, but they are drawn out and fractured between too many flashbacks and memories that are as disoriented as an epileptic seizure.  Dahmer's personal story involving his father, family, and friends, goes nowhere.  Movies about serial killers - not slasher films, but films that supposedly want to take a good, hard look at who a certain serial killer was and how they behaved and 'related' to their fellow man - all have a certain rhythm.  Dahmer is like the kid in drum line that hits the cymbal on all the off beats.

2. American: The Bill Hicks Story

      What a great documentary about a great comedian.  To start with, this documentary was put together very uniquely; it used a lot of animation and real picture merging to match the people talking in the different interviews they did with the family and friends of Bill Hicks.  Directors Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas didn't just make a film - they told the story about a real man who lived and sadly died at the age of 32 from cancer, but not before shaking up the world a bit.  Anyone who knows anything about comedy knows the name Bill Hicks.  Beginning a fruitful career at age 15 in Houston, Texas, Hicks grew to become one of the best and most talented/controversial stand-up comedians this country has ever seen.  He was bitter, smoked, drank, did mushrooms, and yelled at religious people and the government.  He resented the war on drugs and anyone in the advertising business.  He was a hero to some and a loud-mouth to others.  But he used comedy to make people listen to what he had to say.  This documentary shows the people who knew him and his story best, grew up with him, and who still miss him today.

Both of these features are available on Netflix.com instant play.

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