About a Boy

3/5 stars

Cute feel-good comedy with Hugh Grant (yum).

Far From Heaven

4/5 stars

This was the story of a society house wife in 1956 whose life, from the outside, looks picture perfect. Her husband makes a good living, and she has two beautiful children. Of course, life is not what it seems from the outside, and she finds that she has no one to talk to about her marital problems. She befriends a black gardener, who helps her to forget her troubles for an afternoon (not like that!), which puts her on the edge of a scandal.

Star Trek New Frontier Book Six: Fire on High

by Peter David

I accidentally pulled book six off my shelf, instead of book five — I wondered why they were talking about events that I couldn’t remember. Oh well.

Fun, fluffy, read. Not much more to say.

Sweet Home Alabama

4/5 stars

Not too much to say about this one. I’m a sucker for romantic comedies, so this one pulled me right in. I quite like Reese Witherspoon as a romantic lead, so look forward to more of her movies. In this one, she is torn between her new fiance in New York, where she is an up-and-coming fashion designer and the husband she’s been separated from for several years who is a small-town boy.

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

4/5 stars

This was an animated story of a wild stallion in the “Old West” at a time when Americans were just beginning their migration west. Spirit is separated from his herd, and American soldiers attempt to break him. The story follows his adventures with a Native American who befriends him and helps free him from the American’s Fort.

A pretty good movie. I’d certainly watch it again, though I don’t think I need to own it.

Volcano

2/5 stars

Not much to say. The effects aren’t bad, but the science, of course is horrible. That’s okay; it was a decent forget-about-life-for-a-couple-hours kind of movie.

Gateway

by Frederik Pohl

Excellent book. It’s the first in a series of four…sigh…this is the third book in the past month or so that has gotten me started on a series. I hope the subsequent books continue the quality of story and character Pohl exhibits in this one.

Humans discovered Gateway, a station built long ago by a race we now call the Hechee. The station is a gateway to other places, with nearly a thousand Hechee ships left behind. The Hechee, however, left behind little else, so that our knowledge of them is very limited. We know how to make the ships go, but don’t know what fuel they use, how to refuel them, or how to translate the destination settings. People go to Gateway to gamble their lives for potential fortunes. They hop in a ship going to a destination they can’t predict, with an amount of fuel they can’t change for an unknown round-trip duration and into unknown conditions. Most ships don’t return. Most of the ships that do return are without one or more of the crew members who originally embarked. But those who do return with new Hechee artifacts or new scientific results are well rewarded.

The Mummy Returns

2/5 stars

Ugh! I did it again. I’ve already seen this one. I have no idea when, but within about 10 minutes, I had remembered most of the plot. It’s a fun movie, though not one I think I’ll see a third time.

Archeologists Rick O’Connell (Fraser) and his wife Evy (Weisz) accidentally awaken the mummy again. This time their kid (Boath) is involved.

Marnie

3.5/5 stars

Marnie (Hedren) is a pathological thief — she runs from city to city taking jobs which afford her the opportunity to eventually run off with the contents of the company safe. Mark Rutland (Connery), despite having an inkling that she was the woman who cleaned the safe of a business associate, hires her at his publishing house. At her first opportunity, she runs off with the money, but this time is tracked down by Rutland. Instead of turning her over to the police, he marries her!

Andrew and I were a bit confused by Rutland (Connery’s character). We don’t really know what possesses him to marry marnie — he seems to have a bit of an illness himself in taking her on. However, this is the first Hitchcock in a while that we have both liked…perhaps we need to stick with the later rather than earlier Hitchcock.

Down With Love

4/5 stars

What a fun, fun movie. I wasn’t around to enjoy the 60s sex romps, but that didn’t matter!

Barbara Novak (Zellweger) has just written a book to help women everywhere “have sex like men do” — without the need, or encumbrance, of love. Catcher Block (McGregor) is the worst sort of playboy — the exact type of man Novak despises. Yet, they start to fall in love….