Down With The Sickness

Punta Arenas, Chile

The plan for Punta Arenas was to go whale watching. But it was high season and all the whale-watching agencies were booked up. So instead I got super sick and lay in bed watching movies for three days.

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A young adult movie starring Harry Potter and Kylo Ren as cool beer-drinking indy rockers

Only caught the last 1/4 of this one, but I liked it. A rom-com for cool kids who smoke cigarettes. Solid acting. The script was a tad heavy on coffee shop irony and one-liners.

Some Nick Cage movie that was almost definitely called The Sorcerer's Apprentice

A socially awkward physics geek teen is for some reason Nick Cage the sorcerer's chosen one. Complete with eye-candy brainless love interests for both. You can skip this one.

Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal

You can watch this movie in a foreign language and you won't miss much. The scenes where child actors laugh at things that aren't really funny are difficult to stomach. Good music though.

XXX starring Vin Diesel

After visiting 11 countries in Central and South America I can confidently say that on Latin American cable there is a Vin Diesel movie playing 24 hours a day. XXX being of course the most brilliant among them. Welcome to the Xander zone!

The Point Break remake

This is possibly the worst movie I've ever seen - definitely worth a watch. As in XXX, the premise of this movie is that an "extreme sports polyathlete" is contracted by the United States government to save the world with their athletic prowess and daring. The big problem with this movie though is that there's no Vin Diesel. :(

Some Russell Crowe / Ben Affleck movie about the privatization of the military and political corruption

This one didn't really draw me in. Both of the star actors of this film along with Mel Gibson I lump into a category of famous people who I think are probably shitty humans but who make a lot of movies I like. So I guess I should have liked it.

Trumbo

Trumbo was actually really good. A film about blacklisting in Hollywood. It's the first movie I've seen Bryan Cranston in that I liked. Although come to think of it the only other one I've seen was Godzilla. Which was, you know, awful.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

This is a fast-paced action flick by Guy Ritchie about an American spy and a Russian spy who have to work together during the cold war. I lost interest immediately. It's no Snatch.

Summer's Shadow

I watched about 20 minutes of this and from what I can tell it's about a 12-year-old girl who is trying to set up a lemonade stand in her neighborhood, but there's an old lady who lives down the block that doesn't want her to have a lemonade stand. I was somewhat baffled by it. According to IMDB it's eventually about a stray dog.

Some Other Dog Movie

In this one there's a teenage boy, his rebel girl love interest, and his best friend. His family gets an aggressive dog from a dog rescue, which they tame. Then there's like meth dealers and guns and the dog escapes from the pound and the cartel is chasing people off bridges. Seemed like a script inspired by a madlib some studio exec gave their kid. Two thumbs up!

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So that was Punta Arenas.