WHAT I'M WATCHING - JANUARY

Here is Pittsburgh it is cold and snowy, so in my household there has been a lot of television watching this month. This new feature will highlight some of the movies, series, and specials I have been watching on television for the month.

1. GOOD NEWS (1947) - When my son was born, I started to groom him to be a classic movie lover like myself. My son is all sports - all the time, and he has little time or interest for movies at all. My daughter is five years old now, and loves anything with music. So the one snowy Saturday I put on one of my favorite classic movie musicals Good News, and we both watched it. The musical has really two non singers as the leads - June Allyson and Peter Lawford, but the songs and numbers make it. My son looked up annoyingly from his tablet when my daughter and I started dancing to the number "Pass The Peace Pipe", which is one of my favorite numbers. The whole movie is full of gems from the 1920s including the show stopping finale "Lucky In Love". It was great to see such a young Mel Torme in the film as well. Peter Lawford was a good looking actor who would ruin his looks in a matter of 15 years after this movie from booze and pills. Nevertheless Good News was a great film to watch on a lazy afternoon.

2. THE SANDLOT (1993) - This is one of the few films my son does like to watch. Since it is on HBO On Demand now, we can watch it at anytime. The movie came out when I was 18, and I really don't remember the film. I didn't see it until a couple years ago. It is a great movie that shows life in the 1960s when baseball was king. A lot has changed though. It makes me sad seeing kids just running around their neighborhood and not worrrying about locking their doors, because that is certainly not the case anymore. In the past three months, I must have watched this film 20 times. If nothing else is on television, The Sandlot is the movie I put on! I love the story about a lonely boy called Smalls (I was Smalls!) that comes out of his shell when he meets the other boys in the neighborhood. He discovers his love of baseball to the backdrop of 1960s America. I wish I would have had a sandlot in my life when I was young. This is one of the few films that both of my kids agree to watch together!

3. GET OUT (2017) - This movie is not for everyone. It's another film that I missed when it was in theaters. My wife saw it first and recommended it to me. I was reluctant to watch it, but I did one night when everyone was asleep. It's considered a horror movie, but it is so much more!  It stars Daniel Kaluuya as Chris, a black man who visits the family of his white girlfriend (Allison Williams); at their home, the servants are black and act strangely. Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, Lakeith Stanfield, and Catherine Keener costar. I can't wait to see Daniel Kaluuya in more roles. The movie is not grusome and overly violent, but the tense suspense was great. The movie starts out as what I thought was a movie about racial profiling and it ends up being a movie about medical experiments! The movie isn't for the faint of heart, but I loved it!

This is what I'm watching this month...