Pointless Violence and Other Observations

I'm about half a dozen movies behind, so I'll start with the one we watched most recently and move from there...

Munich

This movie is done so well that it deadens the viewer's soul. Set all over the world in the wake of the Munich Olympics and the kidnapping of Israeli athletes, Munich follows five decidedly unprofessional assassins as they track down the perpetrators of the terrorist act, shooting some and bombing others. As the PLO operatives fall, period news footage documents the retaliatory acts of violence, and by the end of the movie, the protagonist, a young father who can no longer return to Israel (I'll leave why for now), is broken and paranoid and exiled. Two hours and forty minutes of this left me with nothing to say in the end; James Wood and the rest of the cast do good jobs, but the overriding pessimism overwhelms the film.

7/3 Edit: Geoffrey Rush, not James Woods, plays the role I had in mind.

Memento

Yes, I know everyone else on the planet has already seen this one. I dig movies with a sense of structure and craftsmanship, and to see such things in an action movie made my evening. It's nice to see what the Matrix actors do when they're not hanging out with Ted Theodore Logan and Cowboy Curtis.

Hitch

Another Mary pick. For a chick flick, it wasn't bad--unlike most, this movie never fell to the temptation of taking itself seriously. Will Smith, departing from his usual roles, played a smooth-talking, well-dressed black man who gets the girl in the end. Wait... or was that Hugh Grant who always played the same role?

Micah and Ryan inventing the sport of infant house-sprinting

Micah plays with Grandma and Grandpa Gilmour in Indiana

Some pictures of a lovely little zoo in the middle of the West Virginia mountains

I think I took this at Grandma Burd's house, but for a look like that, who cares?

Micah and Mom play on the Sit and Spin at Grandma Burd's house