So, it’s been a while since I posted a “movie review”. The reason for the dearth of recent writeups is not that we haven’t been watching movies, but that she hasn’t really been paying attention to them lately, for various reasons, including that none of them is “Breaking Bad“. Anyway, here’s a sample of some of the selections that have arrived and departed unremarked. (Longtime readers will recall that the ratings system I use is, “How many minutes did it take for this movie to put my wife to sleep?” By that standard, none of these did very well.)
| Title | Wife’s Reaction | MTS* |
| Premium Rush Note: She actually did like this movie. |
“This is getting off to a slow start.”
Later: “How long has this been on? 15 minutes? Seems like longer.” Later Still: “I’m glad something is finally happening.” Even Later Still: “I can’t believe he’d be able to do all those jumps with a broken rib. That’s stupid. They should have his girlfriend doing this part.” Finally: “What just happened to that guy?” |
~20 |
| Neverwhere | “This is like someone filmed a high school drama class.” | ~10 |
| Thor: The Dark World | (wife paid absolutely no attention to this film whatsoever) | N/A |
| How I Live Now | “Do they really think nobody is going to find them if they live in the barn?”
Also: “This movie needs more zombies.” (Oh, wait, that was me.) |
~30 |
* Minutes To Sleep
So anyway, “Frozen River” is about a woman (not Walter White) who gets involved in an illegal activity (smuggling people across the frozen St. Lawrence from Canada into New York State, not manufacturing or selling methamphetamine) in order to stave off financial catastrophe (due to her husband’s absconding with the money they had saved to pay for a double-wide trailer, not due to lung cancer) and provide for her family. But the reason “Frozen River” attracted my wife’s attention is not because of any similarities it may or may not have had to “Breaking Bad”. Instead, it was this:
Wife: “Massena???”
Yes indeed! “Frozen River” is partly set in Massena, just up the road from Potsdam, where my wife and I both went to college. This led to all kinds of observations having not much to do with the plot of the movie itself, for example:
Wife: “Look at those snow banks. I remember those.”
Wife: “Don’t they ever plow those roads?”
Wife: “I wouldn’t drive on that path in that car, are you kidding me?”
Wife: “I remember the sound of snow crunching under my tires!”
Me: “Isn’t that the bridge to Cornwall?”
Wife: “I don’t know. I only went to Cornwall once.”
Me: “You didn’t miss much. It smelled funny. But I’m pretty sure that’s the bridge.”
Character in movie (referring to driving across the frozen St. Lawrence River into Canada to pick up illegal immigrants): “The only other way is the Cornwall bridge and they won’t let you take that.” (points at other character’s gun)
Me: “I knew it!!!”
Despite the trip down memory lane, my wife still fell asleep less than 20 minutes into “Frozen River”. The spectacle of a woman driving through the snowy wonderland of the North Country with Pakistanis in the trunk of her Dodge just isn’t as compelling as peddling Blue Sky meth in the desert, it seems …
Viscosity 
You can take the boy out of New York, but you can’t take New York out of the boy…
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I loooove your rating system. I had the giggles though, I don’t think I’ve EVER watched a movie is its totality either….
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