Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a cute movie, nothing special but worth seeing on DVD or if you have kids in middle school, then I recommend you take them to a theatre to see this.

Story follows a boy in his first year of middle school (6th grade?) and is told very much from his point of view. He is very self-focused but is basically a nice kid who is small for his age and whose older brother beats up on him regularly. He will learn some valuable lessons during the school year. The adults are portrayed as stereotypes to some extent, mostly as I expect a 11 or 12 year old would see them.

The latest from Mel Gibson, starring as detective Thomas Craven from Boston.  When he meets up with his daughter and she is gunned down, at first he thinks it is an attempt on his life.  Later as the plot unfolds there is a very interesting government black operations character, played expertly by Ray Winstone.
Vice, corruption, conspiracy, nothing is as it should be all the way to the end conclusion. 

The Book Of Eli

I saw two films in Reno today. One was the Iraq war story The Green Zone and the other is a British conspiracy story The Ghost Writer. I'd give Green Zone a B+ and the Ghost Writer an A-.

Saw the Palme d'Or Cannes winner The White Ribbon today. Film is in German with subtitles, is almost 2 1/2 hours long and is black and white. It is extremely well done, acting is excellent though it is slow. I think the story could've been told in 90 minutes. Eg, several minutes watching a door while parent beats his son on the other side of the door.

Do not miss The Last Station. Helen Mirren stars as Tolstoi's wife, Christopher Plummer is Tolstoi and Paul Giamatti is his chief acolyte.

Tolstoi's wife wages a battle with the acolyte over Tolstoi's soul and his legacy. The acolyte, Tolstoi and his daughter are writing a secret will that will put all of Tolstoi's works into the public domain. His wife wants the copyrights kept in the family to insure the childrens' inheritance. The pair love each other very much but have diametrically opposed social philosophies.

Crazy Heart is excellent and Jeff Bridges ought to get best actor for his superb job as Bad Blake, a down and out country western singer. Bad Blake is an alcoholic, chain smoker (lights new one with old one), with four ex-wives, reduced to singing in bowling alleys and dead end bars. He is a train wreck.

I rented a wonderful little film made in Canada called Strangers in Good Company. It follows a group of 8 elderly women whose bus breaks down in the Canadian wilderness who seek shelter in an old deserted farmhouse on a lake. All they have are their wits, their memories and eventually, after multiple failed attempts, some fish and frog legs they've caught. For several days the women share their memories, their life stories and their intimate thoughts.

I saw the film A Single Man today and liked it more than I thought I would. It is actually excellent. Set in L.A. during the Cuban missile crisis (1962) it deals with a gay man named George Falconer (Colin Firth) whose long time (16 year) lover has died in a traffic accident in Colorado while visiting his family. Also one of their dogs was killed in the car accident and the other is missing. The family of the lover refuses to allow him to attend the funeral services and don't even want to tell him about the death. A cousin sneaks in a phone call to inform George.