Movies: Brick, Dreamgirls, The Proposition, Hard Luck

Let's see if I can remember all the movies I watched this weekend. Last night my wife and I watched "Brick", a great little movie. Just like watching an old Humphrey Bogart detective movie, the dialog, the scenes, the characters, the plot was just like an old film noir. Except. It was set in a modern high school in California. The only problem we had with it was that much of the dialog was unintelligible, even when we went back and replayed it a couple of times. Subtitles would have helped. In the movies defense, I have the same trouble with my kids. I often have to ask them to repeat themselves, which they often decline to do, or do so grudgingly. I had my hearing checked recently at a doctor's office and they claim my hearing is fine, though I have lost some of the high frequencies due to my age. I was talking to a doctor about this problem a couple of years ago, and he told me it is a known phenomena that as men get older they have a harder time understanding conversations, especially when several people are talking at once. I have yet to find an explanation. My wife and I took our boys with us to see "Dreamgirls" Saturday evening. The story was, I hope, educational for my boys. Beyonce had one line that I thought was really good where she states that Effie (Jennifer Hudson) had a much better voice than she did, and during most of the movie, this was true. At the end of the film though, Beyonce has one song where she really lets it out, leaving no doubt about her vocal abilities. It was nice to see Jennifer Hudson getting to show her off her talents. Friday night we watched "Hard Luck" with Wesley Snipes and Cybill Shepherd, and "The Proposition", a Western from Australia. Didn't get to sleep till three in the morning. Both movies portrayed some severe physical cruelty. That really bothered me. In the end, the good guys triumph, and the bad guys get their comeuppance, but I really did not need to see either one of these. "The Proposition" was a much better movie.