The Triple Feature: Bengie's Drive-In Experience #1

Bengie’s Drive-In Theatre found in Baltimore.  A relic of the past that manages to be better than your run of the mill movie theatre experience.  For $9 you can see three films (all released in the past month).  This makes for an cheap and efficient means of movie-watching.  Three films premiered this past Saturday.  They were FrankenWeenie, Trouble with the Curve, and End of Watch.
 

FrankenWeenie

This movie was watched before the weather at Bengie’s got cold.
 
Remember The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline, and James and The Giant Peach?  Excellent Tim Burton animated films.  What’s that? Henry Selik directed all those?  Damnit!
 
FrankenWeenie is a movie made in typical Tim Burton style but with a lesser Disney influence than Alice in Wonderland.  Granted the Disney sting is still there, but the swelling is less noticeable.  Wonderfully animated made in black and white, the movie contains numerous hat tips to classic horror movies (few of which I have actually seen). 
 
The movie follows the standard Disney family film arc of tragedy, recovery, shenanigans, unnecessary action, emotional cop out.   The tragedy was the dog dies, dog is brought back to life, undead dog is attempted to be hidden, action scenes of other pets being brought back to life (which made no sense), and the dog seemingly have had to die again.  However, this is a Disney movie so the dog was brought back to life.  The film would have been much better if the dog remained dead (re-dead?) but Disney doesn’t want kids to get upset and grow up to be cynical.  Cynical adults don’t watch Disney movies.  Also the movie never addresses the issue of reanimating rotting flesh but, again, telling kids that the characters are hugging Chinatown leftovers would only upset them.
 
Rating:  8 out of 15 stars
(1 Star is “RedBox Rental”, 6 stars is “Excellent”, 15 Stars is “Horrible”, 9 stars is “Italian Sub no Tomato”)
 
Side Notes:  Friends I was with left after this feature leaving me to stretch in my highly comfortable bench seats for the following two features.
 
 

Trouble with the Curve

 
What the hell Clint!  The last couple movies you directed were great but…. Oh, you didn’t direct this. …. Must be a pattern.  Trouble with the Curve is the worst movie starring Clint Eastwood since BloodWork.  Neither movie is bad, it’s just that Clint has set the bar too high for himself.  Okay this movie is kind of bad in the generic way.  Clint plays the same grumpy old man he played in Gran Torino only without the racism which makes this movie far less entertaining.  Every character introduced follows a very predictable path.  Sitting at Bengie’s made me miss my departed friends for they provided warmth.  A warmth that might have prevented me from dosing off during short stretches of the movie.  Then again, cuddling was probably out of the question.  If I missed any dialogue, it was okay because the movie didn’t require one’s attention to know how it would end.
 
Rating:

 

End Of Watch

 
I had no problems staying awake during the course of this film.  This is primarily due to the fact that the movie was intense, funny, and had wonderful dialogue.  End of Watch was sort of shot Blair Witch style only with steadier cameras and cameramen not fascinated by trees or rocks.  A great buddy cop film without all those forced one-liners.  Watch this movie. 
 
 

Rating:   It was Pretty Good.