That's a Stupid Name

There's a whole set of male actors that I love. Why male? I don't know. That might require a whole level of personal introspection that I'm not prepared to make at this moment. But these actors, I'd watch just about anything if they were in it. I think I mentioned Brad Pitt before. Would I have sex with these actors? I don't know. Maybe. If they asked nicely. I don't think that makes me gay. A partial list might include Morgan Freeman. Ben Kingsley. Bruce Willis. Josh Hartnett. I know, I know. I don't know why on the last one either. It must be the hair, carefully coiffed to look like he just tousled it carelessly before walking out the door.

Maybe you can see where this is going. My Netflix list, as I've mentioned, is unnecessarily long. It takes so long for a movie to rise to the top that when it arrives, I no longer remember anything about the movie, like why I picked it or what it's about. This week, Lucky Number Slevin showed up in our mailbox.

Mrs. Rodius, from the beginning, was unaccountably offended by the title. "That's a stupid name," she said. I think she felt that the name of the character of Slevin was contrived such that it would rhyme with "seven" and thus provide a clever twist on the familiar phrase, "Lucky number seven." She may have had a point. It's not until the 17th Google hit that Slevin becomes an actual name unrelated to the movie. But, whatever. I'd watch it.

Now, our Netflix queue is occasionally a point of contention. Mrs. Rodius has neither the time nor the patience to spend adding movies that she's interested in, so she has little other choice, besides finding something else to do, than to sit through the schlock that I pick. Sometimes even I am dismayed by the choices I made when they, after a long, long cooling off period, arrive in our mailbox.

"Why did you pick this?" she asks. I can only admit I haven't a clue.

Mrs. Rodius made it clear whenever she saw a commercial for Lucky Number Slevin, throughout the theatrical run and again after the DVD release, that she was not interested. She was irredeemably disgusted by the title.

Beware: here there be spoilers.

But I remember seeing the trailers and thinking it was right up my alley. Morgan Freeman. Bruce Willis. Some sort of semi-comic gangster movie? Maybe? I don't know. Whatever. I'd watch it. Maybe not one of those rare, willing-to-pay-an-ungodly-amount-of-money-to-see-it-in-the-theater-I-mean-four-bucks-for-a-soda-you-gotta-be-kidding-me kind of movies, but yeah, I'd watch that.

So this week, we did. Finally. The verdict? Eh. It was all right. I wanted to like it; I really did. But I was distracted by the many instances of horrible wallpaper. And the intentionally concealed plot elements through the first half of the movie made me feel like I was drunk and too embarrassed to admit that I had no idea what was going on.

In the end, all is explained except the wallpaper, and I didn't feel quite so drunk. We find out, too, that the hero with the perfectly tousled hair didn't really let his love die, innocent and insignificant collateral damage in his lifelong Count of Monte Cristo-style vengeance plot. So it can end as the semi-comic gangster/love story it seemed to be before it suddenly went all medieval on our asses. (By the way, that's a reference to Pulp Fiction, Mom.)

So will I learn from this experience and become more selective in my use of the Netflix queue? No, I will not. I will continue to add movies just because I like the people that are in them. Like Christian Bale. And Russell Crowe. Maybe you can see where this is going. Stop by again in six months for a disappointed review of 3:10 to Yuma.