slacker.

These last two weeks at home have been pretty relaxing; I'd left my car in San Diego, so I've kind of been trapped in the house while everybody else goes out during the day (mom, dad: work; brother: school).  Up until yesterday, I didn't have much access to a computer, and my house has crappy cell phone reception.  Thus, I've been keeping myself occupied by playing the piano and watching movies and music videos (what else?).

Blockbusters has been having this special summer deal, where you can watch all of the movies you want in a week for $15 (you can only rent out two at a time); so, my family's been going down to the video shop every evening to pick out movies.  I don't usually watch a lot of TV during the school year, so I had never really heard of most of the videos on the "New Release" shelves; thus, the rest of my family has been making the movie choices.  Most of these have been pretty horrible-- I don't know if it's because they've been choosing bad ones, or if most of these "new" movies are awful to begin with. 

By far, the worst movie we've rented so far was Confessions of a Shopaholic.  I haven't read any of the books this movie was based on (and probably never will), but everything about the story and "jokes" were incredibly contrived, the costumes were stupid and 

didn't do the characters any favors, the music was unbearable, and the actors were really. fucking. annoying.  Also, the movie kept on going and going and going and going. It was about an hour and a half too long... this was probably the worst movie I've seen in a very long time.  And I watched Mall Cop last week. Confessions's awfulness is beaten only by the mess called My Bloody Valentine (a few of my friends and I went to see the cheesy "horror" flick in 3D on Valentine's Day at the theater), which was probably one of the worst movies I think I've ever seen in my life.

Rachel Getting Married was overrated, as were He's Just Not That Into You, Pineapple Express,  and Gran Torino. The Thin Red Line was tolerable--the writing, not so great (it got really boring at times, and a lot of it could've been edited better), and I'm not a fan of war movies.  The music/soundtrack was decent, though.

The only movie I've genuinely enjoyed so far this break was Role Models, mostly because of the fantastic dialogue Paul Rudd's and Sean William Scott's characters have with the "teacher" character in the film.  The movie is about these two guys who are trying to avoid jail time by doing community service instead; each of the guys has to mentor a "problem" child through some community program for a hundred and fifty hours.  One of these kids is an avid LARP player (Live Action Role Playing); I feel like the movie approached and represented this mini-subculture pretty tastefully. Kind of like how Steve Carrell's character was played out in The 40-Year Old Virgin. Anyway, this is probably the only "New Release" (and we've watched most of the ones out there) I'd recommend.