She-Wolf of London (1946)

  I can barely remember anything about this movie and I only saw it yesterday.  Well, two days ago by the time I get it posted.  I have been kind of stressed out lately.  Rob and I are moving in together next weekend, which is a big deal, and my Christy Experiment is moving in with us temporarily (at first, mwahahahaha) starting from Saturday.  So I watched this, the third movie from my Wolf Man Legacy edition, while I was frantically cleaning my apartment in preparation for her arrival.

I felt like I was missing a piece of the puzzle because characters kept talking about the "Allenby Curse" while I was still stuck on Talbot being the last name of those afflicted by the werewolf syndrome but I moved past that.  Phyllis Allenby (June Lockhart) is an heiress engaged to a nice young man named Barry (Don Porter).  She lives with her Aunt (Sara Haden) and cousin Carol (Jan Wiley) in a big sprawling house next to a park.  Unfortunately, murders have been happening in the park and Phyllis is completely freaked.  Mostly because she wakes up mornings with her slippers muddied and her hands blood-stained with no recollection of whether she was out or not.  She thinks it's the dreaded Allenby Curse striking her down.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that they didn't use shitty effects to make June Lockhart into some sort of carpet-covered nighttime menace right off the bat.

**SPOILER ALERT**  I'm going to start putting them in white ink from now on so you have to highlight them to see.  Just because I love you guys.  But if you hate it, let me know in the comments.

That's because there are no actual (and I use that term loosely) werewolves in the movie.  The whole thing is a plot to drive Phyllis crazy so her "aunt" can boost her daughter's social standing and keep her from marrying some broke-ass artist.  Frankly, if I was a moviegoer in '46 and I saw this, I'd have felt misled.  They promised me She-Wolves in the title, dammit, and then didn't deliver.  I call bullshit.

**END SPOILERS**


This is a pretty standard thriller with no real twists except for the spoilery one.  It's okay as filler for when you're folding laundry though.

The Triplets of Belleville (2003)

  You know how sometimes you pick a movie that's a little avant-garde and you really have to be in the right kind of mood to appreciate it?  I'm pretty sure that's what happened to me with this movie.  Normally, I am all over zany foreign films like Unconscious or Timecrimes or Intacto even if I don't necessarily agree with all the decisions being made by the film-makers. 

I couldn't connect to this one on any level.  First off, there's nearly zero dialogue so no subtitles but there are newspaper headlines about halfway through that no one bothered to translate which frustrated me.  The plot is pretty simple:  an old lady buys her grandson a bike and a puppy then helps him train for the Tour de France.  However, he gets kidnapped during the race by French mafia and the grandma has to track him down to Belleville, which I'm 99% sure was in NYC, where she meets a has-been girl group of triplets.  They used to be famous but now seem to subsist entirely on frogs caught in the swamp outside their home.

Between the repetition of their one hit song, train noises, and the dog barking, I was about ready to watch it on mute.  I probably would have enjoyed the animation more if I wasn't so annoyed by what I was hearing.  Some of the character designs were very interesting and I wish I could have appreciated them more.  Honestly, I feel pretty let down by my reaction to this movie.  I expected to like it and it just did not capture my interest at all.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

  This is the second movie of the Wolf Man Legacy collection but is really only good if you need something to laugh at. 

The film opens with grave robbers breaking in to the Talbot crypt.  They pry the lid off of Lawrence Talbot's (Lon Chaney) coffin and surprise!  Not even silver can keep a good werewolf down.  Larry wakes up in a hospital in Cardiff being tending to by a young Dr. Mannering (Patric Knowles, who also had a part in The Wolf Man as the love interest's fiance).  All Larry wants is to end his miserable existence but Dr. Mannering wants to have him committed.  Larry breaks free and seeks out the old gypsy woman (Maria Ouspenskaya) whose son gave him this curse.  She tells him there's nothing she can do but she knows a guy who might help.  They travel to somewhere in Europe where people still have British accents but wear costumes from the German portion of the It's a Small World ride at Disney World.  Because that's what Eurpeans look and sound like.  Anyway, they innocently ask around for the current location of Dr. Frankenstein (Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-Film)  but find the locals still a little bitter over that whole monster incident.  Convinced that the secrets to death lie in Frankenstein's journal after stumbling across the frozen monster (Bela Lugosi...as the Monster, not as Dracula.  I know, it was weird for me too), Larry engages in a little subterfuge in order to meet the Doctor's smoking hot daughter Elsa (Ilona Massey).  But then Dr. Mannering shows up, still intent on putting Larry in the loony bin.

Clearly, this falls under the "Shameless Grab for Cash" category of sequels.  Still, Rob and I enjoyed making fun of it.

The Wolf Man (1941)

  True to my word, I had Rob watch this one with me on Friday while I was waiting for my car to be serviced.  It doesn't really stand up well any more, considering that the movie's idea of effects seemed to be gluing carpet to Lon Chaney's face, but my grandfather remembers when it first hit theaters and it scared the everloving bejeesus out of him so it clearly did well for its time.

Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney) comes back to his ancestral home in England after living in America.  His older brother (Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Film), the heir, has died and Larry's father (Claude Rains) now needs Larry to take over his hereditary duties.  Larry uses a telescope to spy on a hot blonde named Gwen (Evelyn Ankers) before strongarming her into going out with him.  She and her friend Jenny (Fay Helm) want to go and have their fortunes told by the local gypsies.  Jenny goes first but Bela the gypsy (Bela Lugosi) is a werewolf who promptly murders her.  Running to her aid, Larry attacks the wolf with his silver-topped walking stick and gets bitten.  The sheriff (Ralph Bellamy) and the doctor agree that Jenny was killed by some sort of animal but the only body they find is of Bela, bludgeoned to death.  Larry now faces a murder rap because nobody seems to believe that he beat a wolf to death and his bite has mysteriously healed overnight.  Of course, Larry then becomes a werewolf himself and starts murdering townsfolk.  Being a member of British aristocracy, he is less concerned about munching on the commoners until he sees the mark of his next victim (a star that appears on their palm) on lovely Gwen.

Times have changed since the 40's.  Holy crap.  I was born in the early 80's so I really don't have a lot of knowledge of day-to-day life back then that doesn't come from movies but if these are to be believed, people were just plain dumb.  The first major thing for me (and Rob) was how utterly creepy and stalkerish the character of Larry Talbot is, even before he turns into a man-beast.  He spies on Gwen, then goes to her job and asks her about a pair of earrings that are on her dresser upstairs.  He spins some line about being psychic about pretty girls and then tries to get her to go out with him.  She repeatedly says no and yet he still waits outside her shop for her to lock up for the evening then sneaks up behind her and announces he's ready for their date.  She giggles and gives in because it's cute that he's persistent.  Nowadays, she'd have maced him and called the cops.  But apparently date rape had yet to be invented in 1941. 

Later, Larry's dad argues with the cops over their interpretation of what happened the night Jenny was killed by saying "Clearly, Jenny was attacked by an animal.  Bela and Larry both went to help her and in the dark and confusion, Larry killed Bela."  His tone is completely dismissive of the fact that whether he was aware or not, his son killed a man.  He doesn't even argue that Larry didn't kill Bela.  He could not give less of a fuck about Bela being dead, just that it wasn't premeditated.  That's cold. 

Despite these hiccups, I still really like this movie as an example of how the werewolf franchise got off the ground.  It's got a solid performance from Claude Rains and features an incredibly young Ralph Bellamy.  If that name sounds familiar to you, that's probably because you saw it on a several credit lists in the 80's and 90's.  He was one of the two old, rich, douchey brothers from Trading Places and the old, rich, kindly guy trying to keep his company from being bought by Richard Gere in Pretty Woman.  If you've ever wondered what he looked like without all the wrinkles, grab a copy of The Wolf Man.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)

  Well, I thought we were on to a trend.  We were going to watch Vampire in Brooklyn but then Rob had a terrible day at work and was down in the dumps so he wanted to watch something happy instead.

I've never been too big of a fan of the Ice Age series.  By that, I mean that it would never occur to me to put one of these movies on, even though I enjoyed watching the first two.  Do you have movies like that?  Where you watch because somebody else is watching or you're too lazy/tired to change the channel and even though you laugh at all the appropriate parts, when it's over you immediately forget that you saw it?  And if somebody asks you about it later, you have to struggle to remember and end up saying "It was okay," in a vague sort of way.  That's how I felt about the last two movies.

So it's a good thing that you could basically just pick this movie up and watch it without having seen the first two since this one is way better than it deserves to be.

Manny the Mammoth (Ray Romano) is a complete wreck because his mate Ellie (Queen Latifah) is expecting their first calf any day now.  His single friend Diego the Saber Tooth (Denis Leary) feels out of place now that their lives have settled down and decides to strike out on his own.  Sid the Sloth (John Leguizamo) goes the complete opposite direction and is so obsessed with Manny's family that Manny has to tell him to chill the fuck out.  This saddens Sid (ha!) and he wanders off to find his own family.  Being kind of retarded, Sid decides to take three eggs that he finds in an ice cavern and raise them as his own.  They hatch into baby T-rexes and proceed to ruin the carefully created playground Manny had worked on for his kids.  Then the mother T-rex shows up and takes her three babies back, accidentally grabbing Sid as well.  Now Manny, Diego, Ellie, and her two possum brothers (Josh Peck and Sean William Scott) have to track the dinosaur through a Lost World-type jungle buried beneath the ice.  Luckily for them and for us viewers, they run into Buck (Simon Pegg), a one-eyed weasel (not a euphemism) that may be completely insane but is nevertheless a great guide.  Unfortunately, while they are tracking Sid, they are being tracked by a vicious predator named....Rudy.

Between Buck the batshit weasel and the amorous adventures of Scrat the proto-squirrel, this movie was hilarious.  Comparatively, the main characters didn't really have so much to add.  Denis Leary in particular was vastly underused since there's not a lot for his saber-tooth to do until almost the very end of the movie. 

I do have one thing, I wouldn't even call it a criticism, more like a question.  Like I said at the beginning, you don't have to see the previous two movies.  However, if you had seen them, consider this:  Ellie spends practically the entire movie telling Manny to lighten up since he's being super-protective about her pregnancy.  But, in the first movie, doesn't he start out bitter and depressed because humans murdered/hunted his previous mate and calf?  Isn't it also mentioned that he's afraid of being the last of his kind until he meets Ellie, who was raised by possums, in the second movie?  I know it's just a kid's movie, but it seems a little fucked up to me that his mate is being utterly fucking callous regarding what is probably a deep-seated fear of abandonment and PTSD.  Is there like a Wooly Rhino Therapist that Manny can talk to?  Because otherwise, that dude is going to be a total wreck forever.

Also, and this just occurred to me, the fourth movie Continental Drift came out this weekend.  I haven't seen it but the trailers indicate that basically Manny, Diego, and Sid get separaed from Ellie and the calf by shifting icebergs and have to go on a quest to find them again.  Is it me or that not his worst fucking nightmare?  The first third of that movie should be the tiger and the sloth taking shifts watching Manny so he doesn't kill himself.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

  I have caught bits and pieces of this one before on cable, but I've never actually sat down and watched the whole thing until Rob picked it the other night.  If you're keeping count and it seems like he's ahead, that's because I picked The Comedy Central Roast of Charlie Sheen.  Don't you judge me.  He'd never seen it and I needed some brain candy.  I work hard for you people.  You will let me relax!  

Ahem.  I have to admit, I was not terribly impressed.  Even though the Borg kind of are my people and Alice Krige is amazingly creepy, I felt like the Earth storyline really just detracted from the whole thing.  It was like two episodes of the TV show that they remixed to make into a movie.  Don't get me wrong, it's well-done; I would just be pissed if I had paid to see it in theaters. 

The starship Enterprise is told to stay out when the rest of the fleet attacks the Borg because Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) used to be one and they don't want him going all Manchurian Candidate in the middle of battle.  But after hearing the rest of the fleet get their asses kicked, he decides the hell with orders! and jumps into the fray.  The ship follows one jettisoned pod headed toward Earth and get caught behind it when it opens a time vortex (SCIENCE!) into the distant past of 2063.  Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) realizes that the Borg are trying to disrupt humanity's first contact with an alien race and nip this whole Federation thing in the bud.  Riker, Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), and Geordi (Levar Burton) beam down to try and save the future.  Meanwhile, Picard, Data (Brent Spiner), and a random chick from Earth (Alfre Woodard) stay on the ship to try and stop the Borg Queen (Alice Krige). 

I could tell you more but it starts to fall apart after that.  If you liked the Borg arc on the TV show then you'd probably like this film.  Otherwise, there are better ones in the series that you could skip to.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

  Rob is on a Star Trek kick right now, apparently.  We're doing this thing where I pick a movie, then he picks a movie.  He threatens to make me watch 21 Jump Street, I threaten to make him watch The Exorcist and then we pick movies the other one won't hate.

I grew up in a Trekkie household, although it was a weird one.  My dad is a tractor salesman and not the person you'd expect to be interested in space drama but he loooooooved The Next Generation and the old original series reruns.  I have probably seen every episode of the original show and 90% of TNG.  And yes, I have seen all the original movies.

The one with the whales is still my favorite, mostly because this one freaked me the hell out as a kid.  The ear bugs, man.  I had nightmares for weeks that I was going to wake up and find that thing crawling across my pillow toward my tiny unsuspecting ear.

You're welcome.

Picking up after the end of the first movie, the Enterprise is basically retired and the crew are scattered.  Chekov (Walter Koenig) is now part of another ship, the Reliant, assigned to help a scientific group out in the middle of nowhere.  They are supposed to be looking for a barren, lifeless world but this is proving harder than initially expected.  They find one with minimal readings and beam down to see if the lifeforms can be moved (or squashed).  Instead, they find the remnants of a crew Captain Kirk (William Shatner) had marooned there years ago, led by the magnificently chested Khan (Ricardo Montalban).  Khan is hot for revenge and has a plan to lure Kirk out and destroy him.  Meanwhile, now-Admiral Kirk is busy training new Starfleet captains through the grueling Kobiyashi Maru but finds it unfulfilling.  On a routine training mission, he receives a garbled communication from the leader of the science team (Bibi Besch) and seizes the opportunity to once again kick some space ass. 

Not to give up any spoilers for this 30-year-old movie, but I seriously thought it ended after Khan leaves Kirk and his people abandoned on that planet.  I didn't remember anything happening after the extremely famous "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!" scene.  So when we re-watched it, I was delighted to find that it wasn't the depressing existentialist drama that I thought it was when I was ten. 

Although I'm pretty sure it says something about me that I blanked out everything after the bad guy's apparent victory like that was just how it was supposed to be. 

This is one of those rare series where the even numbered movies are actually better than the odd numbered.  Usually, the first movie will be awesome, the second will be lackluster at best and then the third brings it back up to awesome.  Anything after that is just a shameless grab for cash.  I can't think of another series where movies 2, 4, and 6 are really awesome and 1, 3, and 5 suck. 

It gets the horror tag for that ear thing, though.

The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

  This is one of my favorite movies.  I don't even care how dated the clothes and effects are. 

Three lonely women:  Alex (Cher), Sookie (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Jane (Susan Sarandon) get more than they bargain for when a stranger shows up in the sleepy little town of Eastwick.  Daryl (Jack Nicholson) seems to be everything they've been wishing for.  He's rich, not so much handsome as compelling, and he seems genuinely interested in all three of them.  Despite raising the ire of local councilwoman Felicia (Veronica Cartwright), the three women are fiendishly happy.  Until things start to go terribly wrong.

They've done a musical, several rip-offs, and even a couple of television shows which goes to prove how awesome this movie is.  It is not without its flaws, however.  1)  Susan Sarandon.  I understand they needed a redhead and she is a natural ginger but I've never found her attractive, personally, and 2) they ugly up Michelle Pfeiffer to a ridiculous degree.  I mean, look at that poster.  Cher and Susan get designer evening wear but Michelle gets stuck with MC Hammer's rejects?  Come on.  There's no excuse for that, 80s! 

Despite those two hiccups, I love this movie.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go have some cherries.

Howard the Duck (1986)

  This was the Christy pick for July.  It's one of the few movies she's recommended that makes me feel we could one day come to an accord. 

Howard (Chip Ziel (voice)/Ed Gale (body)) is a med school dropout coming to the realization that his life is not going as well as he'd planned, when he is suddenly yanked from his comfortable apartment and beamed through space to crash land on an alien planet.  It is filled with hairless apes who gawk and gape at him as if he were the weird one, instead of just a mild-mannered duck in a bizarre situation.  He lucks into meeting Beverly (Lea Thompson), a punk singer with a heart of gold who tries to help him get back to his home planet.  She contacts Phil (Tim Robbins), a lab assistant at a local museum but he can't get past the scientific "miracle" of a talking duck.  It isn't until Howard and Beverly meet Dr. Walter Jenning (Jeffrey Jones) that they start to have some hope.  Dr. Jenning is a physicist (I know but just go with it) who was testing a machine to help him measure dark matter in space but which accidentally beamed Howard from his home.  Now, all they have to do is reverse the beam and send him back.  But, of course, things are never that easy and a creature of pure evil gets beamed down as well, taking up residence in Dr. Jenning before kidnapping Beverly to serve as a host to more of his kind.  It's up to Howard to evade the police, track down Evil Jenning, and rescue his interplanetary inter-species love.  Sometimes, a duck's gotta do what a duck's gotta do.

Two words for you people:  Cult Classic.  There's really no in-between on this one.  You're either okay with a 3 ft-tall, cigar-smoking duck having a relationship with a human woman or you're not.  I had a minor bout of panic when I thought they were going to show the two characters having sex but, fortunately, I was spared.  Everything else is just 80's shenanigans.  Very much like Buckaroo Banzai but with a duck instead of RoboCop.

The Hunt for Red October (1990)

  This is one of Rob's top 5 favorite movies and he made me promise that I wouldn't savage it online. 

Not that it really needs much savaging.  John McTiernan directed some of the most kick-ass films ever, including Die Hard, Predator, and Die Hard with a Vengeance, my personal favorite of the trilogy.  Here, he is less action-oriented than suspenseful with a story of the U.S. and USSR in the throes of the Cold War.  (Look it up, kids!)

In 1984, USSR submarine commander Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) sets out on the inaugural running of a new class of sub.  He then almost immediately deviates from his assigned orders and heads for the coast of America.  The top U.S. advisors are freaking out at what they see as the start of World War III and only a lone CIA analyst named Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) thinks differently.  He has spent a portion of his career studying Ramius and believes the man is trying to defect.  The National Security Advisor (Richard Jordan) gives Ryan three days to somehow find Ramius' sub, Red October, and make contact before the USSR finds him first.

Rob has literally seen this movie so many times that, when the subtitles wouldn't work, he could translate the Russian dialogue.  And no, he doesn't normally speak Russian.  I don't think I'll ever like it that much but it is a very good movie.  I saw it once before when I was a kid but it's much better as an adult.  If you've never seen it, feel free to pick it up.

Total Recall (1990)

  I know, it's practically a crime for me to have never seen this film, especially since the remake is coming out in about a month.  I remember flipping channels when I was a kid and seeing the part where he cracks his facemask on Mars and his eyeballs bug out and it completely creeped me out so I changed the channel.  The image stayed with me, though, as my young brain filed away moments like this for a later date when I would be able to understand them.  Now I know that scene is literally right after the opening credits and is nothing more than a nightmare of the protagonist.

Doug Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is an average dude with a blue-collar job and a smoking hot wife (Sharon Stone).  He keeps having recurring dreams, however, about mountain climbing on Mars with a brunette.  His wife thinks it's a reaction to watching constant news of the Martian colonies struggling with rebellion and advises him to turn the TV off for a while.  But when Doug hears an ad for Rekall, a company specializing in implantable memories, he can't resist taking off for a little faux vacation.  He signs up for the deluxe "secret spy on Mars" package and next thing he knows is that he's been dumped in a cab with no memory of where he was.  Then a co-worker inexplicably tries to murder him, telling him that his life has just been a cover-up implanted over his real memories which had been erased.  Which are that he's a secret spy from Mars.

No wonder he sounds like he's gargling rocks.  The man's had so much brain work done it's amazing he can walk without drooling all over himself. 

Doug escapes by yelling and swinging wildly at the stunt people until they all fall over and runs home.  He tells his wife the whole story and she immediately also tries to murder him because, wouldn't you know it, she's an evil secret agent too and she's really married to some other guy (Michael Ironsides).  Doug manages to escape and pick up a briefcase containing a video message from ...himself, or the self he used to be named Hauser.  Hauser was a secret agent who turned on his boss, Cohaagen, the governor of Mars (Ronny Cox), and got caught.  But before his brain got wiped, he made this video tutorial for himself about how to stop Cohaagen's evil plans. 

Doug/Hauser goes to Mars and meets up with the rebellion in the form of Melina (Rachel Ticotin), a prostitute who looks remarkably similar to the woman he keeps dreaming about.  They get shot at a lot but such is the business of trying to stop an evil corporate overlord, right?  Except that there's no guarantee that this is anything other than the stay-cation Doug paid for. 

When I heard they were remaking this movie, I thought "oh, great, Conan wasn't enough?  We gotta have another Total Recall too?" but after seeing it, I think it's ripe for a reboot.  This version did the best it could with practical effects (by the legendary Rob Bottin) and some early blue screen but we can take it so much further now.  From what I've read, it looks like the new one is dropping the Mars angle completely, and also going back to the original source ("We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick) for inspiration. 

I can see why this version has its fans because it's fun in a completely campy way but I'm now looking forward to seeing what the new one will be like.

Eulogy (2004)

  This was the third and final movie watched on the 4th.  The hostess picked it, as it was something of an all-time favorite for her.  Netflix keeps trying to recommend it to me so I was willing to give it a go.  Plus, it was her house.  

Hard to say no to that kind of logic.

It's a good film, despite featuring a family so dysfunctional and infuriating they would make the Dalai Lama want to throat-punch them.  It says something about the realism when you want to reach through the screen and strangle a character. 

The Collins family has gathered together to mourn the loss of their patriarch (Rip Torn).  Well, his granddaughter Katie (Zooey Deschanel) has.  The rest of the family has gathered together to rehash old arguments and insecurities.

There's the child star turned nobody (Hank Azaria), the brother everyone forgets (Ray Romano) and his twin hellspawn, the control freak sister (Debra Winger) and her browbeaten husband and kids, and the lesbian sister (Kelly Preston) with her hot girlfriend (Famke Jansson).  To top it all off, the widow (Piper Laurie) keeps trying to off herself. 

Poor Katie is tasked with writing a eulogy for a man that no one but her seems to have any fond memories of, not that they could pull their heads out of their collective asses long enough to think of any. 

I wouldn't say this is my new favorite funeral movie but it's definitely worth a rental.

The Goonies (1985)

  Hope everyone still has all their fingers after the 4th!  Personally, it's one of my least favorite holidays which is why I generally spend my 4ths with a fifth.  Ha!

But not this year!  Rob had to pull a 24 hour shift at his job (military) so other people could spend time with their families.  Before you get all warm and gushy inside, he was spending it with his two favorite co-workers and the three of them ate ice cream and watched movies until they were ready to explode.  What a hardship, right?

Meanwhile, I got together with the wives of said co-workers for our own little moviefest.  Despite being near petrified to hang out with them because they were strangers, I grabbed an assortment of movies and went anyway.  Turns out, they are a pair of kickass ladies who love them some horror films.  Win!

But first we had to watch The Goonies, because one of the ladies (I try not to name people in case they don't want to be associated with me) had never seen it.  Which is a damn shame.

This movie practically defined childhood for me.  Again, I was much too young when it initially came out but I have seriously fond memories of watching this on TV.  What I wouldn't have given to be a Goonie at age seven! 

Facing the threat of foreclosure, the band of kids known as the Goonies decides to do something constructive:  find a stash of treasure left behind by local pirate legend One Eyed Willy.  The emotional center of this film is Mikey (Sean Astin), a kid who fervently believes that the legends are all true and that Goonies never say die!  His older brother Brand (Josh Brolin) would rather be working out or trying to make time with local hottie Andy (Kerri Green) but is stuck babysitting.  Poking around in the attic, Mikey and his friends discover a map and set off in search of adventure.  It leads them to an off-season restaurant and straight into the clutches of the Fratelli family of infamous criminals.  Mikey's friends Mouth (Corey Feldman), Data (Ke Huy Quan), and Chunk (Jeff Cohen) each have their special talents which lead to the discovery of an underground passage filled with booby traps.  With the Fratellis on their heels, it's a race to determine if they'll get out with their lives, much less the fabled treasure.

Fortunately, the movie holds up astonishingly well for being almost thirty years old with only the horrible 80s fashions to date it.  The message -- kids making their way through an adventure using only their wits and the power of teamwork -- is still just as awesome, the bad guys just as ruthless, and the ship full of pirate loot just as glorious.  I found the cast of kid actors to be a lot screechier than I remember but I don't think that children in general know how loud they really are.  It's the one time in your life where EVERYTHING is magnified because it's all so new and exciting. 

The girl who had never seen it didn't offer up any criticism on that point so I think that maybe it's just my natural hatred of crotchfruit coloring my perceptions.  She seemed to really enjoy the film which was no surprise because, duh, I already said these chicks were cool.  Neither one of them even balked when I showed them Hard Candy after this because I can't resist showing that movie to the unsuspecting.

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)

Happy 4th of July, Americans!  For the rest of the world, happy Wednesday!    Behold the second film in the Mad Max trilogy!  This is the one that I always think of when someone says "Mad Max" to me.  It's one of those rare sequels that surpasses the original in pretty much every way.

An unspecified time after the first movie, our hero Max (Mel Gibson) has become a road warrior, cruising the wasteland of Australia for gasoline and avoiding the psychos with only his faithful dog as a companion.  A gyro captain (Bruce Spence) tells him of a place where he can get as much gas as he wants, if only Max will spare his life.  Initially skeptical, Max goes out and finds that it's true.  A group of enterprising people have managed to get a refinery working.  Unfortunately, they are besieged by the Lord Humongous (Kjell Nilsson) and his band of freaks.  The refinery people want to get out and head to the north but they don't have a vehicle capable of pulling the tanker of gas.  Enter Max:  the man with the plan.  In exchange for as much gas as he can carry, Max agrees to go out and get them a truck. But, of course, it's never that easy.

If you only own one film out of this trilogy, this should be it.  They still had some problems with the sound (you have to turn the volume up for dialogue, then turn it down quickly when the action starts) but it's a FAR better film than the original and absolutely one of the best post-apocalypse movies.

Sita Sings the Blues (2008)

  This was such a cute movie.  I have friends who are very into Bollywood, and the Hindu culture in general, but I've never been able to crack that nut.  I wasn't terribly sure where to start and it seemed very daunting.  But this was just adorable.

Based on the story of the Ramayana, this animated film tells the parallel stories of Sita and Nina.  Sita is the wife of Rama, a hero of ancient Ayodha, who finds herself cast out by her husband after being kidnapped by a rival king.  Nina is a modern woman who finds her husband, Dave, increasingly distant after his job takes him to India.  Animated in a mix of styles, the film blends the two stories together along with blues numbers sung by Sita (recordings by 20's blues singer Annette Hanshaw) and a cultural commentary by three talking heads.  It gets a little chaotic but that just adds to the fun of it.

Nina Paley, the director, writer, and animator, clearly had a lot of love for the subject despite not being raised in the culture.  It sparked controversy in India from Hindu and Muslim groups who believe that the story is misrepresentative of Rama and amounts to racism.  I think there's a fine line between appreciating and embracing other peoples' cultures and trying to appropriate them for yourself.  In my opinion, this movie is far more of the former than the latter, but I'm not Indian, Hindu, or Muslim.  You'd have to see it and judge for yourself.

The movie is in English with the options for subtitles in French, Spanish and LOLcat.  I am so not even kidding.

Boogie Nights (1997)

  I didn't get this movie. Could somebody please explain to me what the point of it was? Was it a comedy? Drama? Parody? I haven't got a clue. 

I'm going with parody since that makes the most sense to me.

Eddie (Mark Wahlberg) is a busboy from Torrance, California who has one talent.  And it's in his pants.  Discovered by porn producer Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), Eddie changes his name to Dirk Diggler and embraces the life he was meant to lead.  At least until a raging coke addiction (thoughtfully provided by his surrogate mother figure/co-star Amber Waves (Julianne Moore)) inflates his head and deflates his...asset, turning him to a life of crime with his best buddies (John C. Reilly, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Thomas Jane).  Meanwhile, the fun swinging 70's have ended and the depressing 80's have begun.  Dirk's co-stars have problems of their own.  Amber Waves is involved in a custody battle on the grounds that her job makes her an unfit parent.  Buck Swope (Don Cheadle) can't get a loan because the banks don't want to be associated with him.  And Rollergirl (Heather Graham) wonders if maybe life has more meaning than wearing roller skates and having sex on film. 

Again, this movie seemed utterly and completely pointless to me except as a who's who of Hollywood.  There are so many named stars it was like an astronomer's convention.  And about as sexy.  Sorry, any astronomers who read my blog but you know it's true.  Julianne Moore is shockingly unattractive without clothes on and Heather Graham isn't nude long enough to make up for that.  William H. Macy and Alfred Molina had great small roles and I would have loved to see more of Don Cheadle's character and less of Mark Wahlberg's but I don't always get what I want, sadly.

I cannot recommend this movie to anyone.  If you want to watch real porn, I recommend the Bewitched parody but Boogie Nights blows.

Hooray!  I have power again!  Just in case you guys didn't hear, the DC Metro area (where I live) had a state of emergency declared because a severe storm knocked out the power for 1.7 million people.  Personally, I didn't have electricity for over 24 hours.  But it's back on and now I can post what would have been Saturday's movie.  Enjoy.