Weekend movie update

So we watched two movies this weekend - Higher Learning, and Red Dragon. We'll start with Higher Learning as we did watch it first. It was recommended to us by Netflix because we watched The House of Sand and Fog. Well, I probably should have taken that as a clue that we wouldn't like it but I didn't. It wasn't a bad movie, it was done by the same people that did Boyz in the Hood (never saw it). The movie is about Freshmen in college - being their first year away from home. Maybe it's because I didn't move away, but I don't remember college being that way. You sortof feel bad for one of the kids as he just doesn't seem to fit in. The group that he does fit in with are the skinheads, so he becomes an extreme racist and kills a bunch of people at the "Peace Fest" at the end of the movie. I think the views between the different groups were the absolute extreme, but they did get the point across. The only think I think portrayed accurately was the campus security people. I don't think I've ever met one that I liked, or wasn't biased to the extreme towards their own race. Anyway, my recommendation is to watch something else. We didn't take that much away from it, and it wasn't all that entertaining.

Now, on to Red Dragon. I'm glad we watched something good this weekend. This is the prequel to the Silence of the Lambs, and opens where Hannibal gets caught. If you like those movies, this is great. My wife likes this kind of movie so we bought it six months ago and finally broke it out of the plastic Saturday night. The movie was the same type of psychological thriller you'd expect from the other two, but not as gruesome as Hannibal. Edward Norton is awesome, and Anthony Hopkins is almost too believable as Dr. Lector. Joseph Fiennes is the bad guy in this one, and I think he's pretty good. He has some tattoo work (that was fake) that took a long time to do, so that was impressive. When I say tattoo work, I mean he was covered from head to toe with ink. Anyway, the movie was good and I would highly recommend it if you like the psychological thriller type movies.

That's all for now.