Theater Whore: The Judge

The Judge 5/10

Oh, The Judge could've been so damned good. I'm talking about everyone talking about it, award talk, and seeing it a few times in the theater. But there was something missing from this. I have a few ideas of what they could have done to make this better. This stars Robert Downey Jr. as Hank Palmer. He is a good lawyer but having hard times with his personal life. He and his wife are in the process of divorcing and he finds out that his mother just died. By the way, the only reason any family gets together is because a parent dies.

Hank heads to his old town that he hasn't been to in twenty years to attend the funeral. He sees his brothers Glen played by Vincent D'Onofrio and Dale played by Jeremy Strong. He also reluctantly talks to his father Judge Joseph Palmer played by Robert Duvall. You can tell immediately that they do not get along and haven't spoken in all the twenty years Hank was gone.

Theater Whore: Jack Reacher

Last night East and I went to check out Jack Reacher. East wasn’t all that excited after seeing the trailer and I wanted to see it but wasn’t dying to until I heard a review saying how there’s more to it than the trailer showed. I had fallen into the trailer trap plenty of times and ended up missing out on really good films because of the bad trailer. So after some convincing we headed to The Cineramadome which is connected to The Arclight and checked it out.

I hadn’t been in this portion of the theater I think since Spiderman 2. It had been years. I miss this theater. We sat up high in row Q and started the movie. It begins with a guy getting ready to shoot folks in Pittsburgh  People in the theater were feeling way uncomfortable but not me because I know the difference between a trained sniper and some asshole that likes to shoot schools. So this guy picks off five people and drives off. A guy is caught and arrested and as he is being interviewed writes down “Get Jack Reacher.”