Caring About Characters.

First -- Happy Birthday, Jason. Hard to believe you've hit the Big Four Oh. 

Next, I'm a guest blogger at Just Romantic Suspense today, and there's a giveaway. Pop on over and leave a comment. 

Once a week, Hubster and I watch a Netflix movie. Since we've never been big moviegoers, we have a lot of "new to us" movies to pick from. And we just put whatever strikes our fancy in the queue, because trying to find something we know we'll both like would make choosing a movie a challenge. Our only "rule" is that we each promise to give the movie 15 minutes. So, if I pick a romantic comedy, or he picks a slapstick, we're not obligated to sit through the other person's movie. Often, rather than leave the room, we'll have laptops out and divide our attention between the movie and solitaire.

Recently, we've watched a series of train movies. We saw the remake of The Taking of Pelham 123, which we liked, so I ordered Unstoppable. When I tweeted the latter as our Netflix Nite selection, someone suggested Runaway Train a 1985 movie, so that went into the queue.

Unstoppable was pretty much the same story as Runaway Train. Both had the same basic conflict. A train was out of control and if it wasn't stopped, bad stuff would happen. The people responsible were of two sorts—those who had reasonable solutions, and those who were more concerned with saving face for the company.

Unstoppable was a compelling movie. Hubster left his laptop on the coffee table. Runaway Train should have been a compelling movie, but solitaire got more attention than the screen. Why? Runaway Train got decent reviews when it came out, but I wouldn't have given one, and it had nothing to do with the performances of the actors.