The Cannonball Run II (1984)

  You see what happens when I get a day off and the weather sucks?  I watch a crapload of movies.

I'm actually more familiar with the sequel than I am with the original.  I must have seen this one 4 times as much as a kid.  The jokes still work, but it's better to have seen the first one.  Also, no Dutch subtitles on this one.

After a disappointing loss in the first Cannonball Run, Sheik Falafel (Ricardo Montalban) threatens his son (Jamie Farr) with being disowned if he doesn't come out as a winner in the second one.  The Sheik offers up a million dollar purse to bring people into the race, including J.J. McClure (Burt Reynolds), Victor (Dom DeLuise), Blake (Dean Martin) and Fenderbaum (Sammy Davis Jr.).  Unfortunately, Blake and Fenderbaum owe money to a mobster's son (Charles Nelson Reilly) who owes a lot more money to a different gangster (Telly Savalas).  Fenderbaum spills the beans about the Sheik being made of money, and the gangsters hatch a plan to kidnap him and the prize money during the race.

As a sequel, it's a lot sillier with more emphasis put on the various character interactions than on the car racing.  It's still a lot of fun to watch.

Old Acquaintance (1943)

  I wasn't sure I'd like this one when I first started watching it.  It hit slightly too close to the bone.  We'll get to that in a minute.

Kit (Bette Davis) and Millie (Miriam Hopkins) have been friends since kindergarten.  Kit grows up, moves away, and ends up writing a critically acclaimed  but financially unsuccessful novel.  She comes back to her hometown to reconnect with her old friend who is now married with a baby on the way.  Desperately jealous of Kit, Millie has also written a book, a trashy romance, which immediately sells, catapulting Millie and her family into the lap of luxury.  Enraptured by success, Millie ignores her husband and daughter, leaving the latter for Kit to raise.  Preston (John Loder) gets sick of it pretty quickly and leaves her, professing his love for Kit.  But you don't take your friend's husband, even if she is kind of a bitch.

Ten years go by and Kit has almost made up her mind to marry her 10-year-younger suitor, Rudd (Gig Young) before he leaves for his commission in the Navy, when he confesses that he is actually in love with Deirdre, Millie's daughter (Delores Moran).  Once again, Kit steps aside.  Meanwhile, Preston, now a Major in the Army, sets up an audience with Millie.  She thinks he's coming back to her and flips out when she finds out that he just wants to talk about his new fiancee and setting up a visitation schedule with his daughter.  Then he throws out that he would have married Kit in a heartbeat if she had consented and Millie really hits the ceiling and does her best to sabotage Deirdre's affections for Kit.

Now, based on what you know about me, you might believe that I was the Millie but au contraire.  I had a friend growing up who would have sold me out in a New York second if she ever got the opportunity.  She was, and still is to some extent, the kind of person that can't see any measure of success she's achieved because she's too busy comparing it to someone else's.  She was great as long as she thought we were on equal footing but let something good happen to me and watch those claws come out.  At some point after I moved away, I realized that's not how friends are supposed to be and limited my contact with her since I'm not as selfless a person as Kit.  And yet I know that if she ever called me and needed my help, I would do it.  Just one of the mysteries of female friendship, I guess.

Accepted (2006)

  Here we are with the first of the A's!  If you thought Z went by really quickly, don't worry.  There's still one more left but I'm saving it to watch with Christy.

This is one of the better ones from her collection.  It's not one that I would own but it was a passable diversion.

Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long) gets rejected from every college he applied for his senior year.  To avoid the embarassment of telling his family he didn't get into college, he and his friend Sherman (Jonah Hill) decide to create the fake South Harmon Institute of Technology.  Things snowball after the fake website generates a very real student body.  Bartleby and his friends decide to try a college experience where the courses are determined by what students actually want to learn as opposed to what other people think they need.  Their idyll is jeopardized by the greedy Dean of a real university (Anthony Heald) who wants to raze the abandoned mental hospital they've colonized and turn it into a memorial park for himself.

This might be the only movie I've seen where Blake Lively isn't a total waste of screen time.  Granted, her role as the love interest is paper-thin so there's not really a lot of room for error but she still seemed believable as the bubbleheaded blonde who gets disillusioned with the "popular" guy.

The Cannonball Run (1981)

What's this?  A Tuesday post?  Have things gone mad around here?!  Kind of.  Thanks to Hurricane Sandy, the federal government is shut down for the day and yours truly gets a day off work to appreciate the fragility of life in the face of Nature's might.  Or just a soggy wet day, depending on whether or not you're at my place or New Jersey.

Since there's no reason for everyone to be miserable, I present to you The Cannonball Run.

  There are some great racing movies out there that make you feel every turn in the road, that make your pulse pound with excitement.  Then there are race films with Dom DeLuise and half the Rat Pack.  This is the latter category.

I remember seeing this and the sequel (coming up soon) all the time on TV when I was a kid.  I'm pretty sure they've fallen out of vogue now and you'll probably have to search diligently to uncover them again but it's worth the effort.  It's surprising how well they still hold up.  Mostly because there's not a lot to them.

The Cannonball Run is a coast-to-coast race with no real prize other than bragging rights.  But that's enough for all the participants, including J.J. McClure (Burt Reynolds) and his partner Victor (Dom DeLuise).  Part of the race involves not getting ticketed for driving at insane speeds across the U.S. which means that everybody tries to come up with ways to stay or at least talk their way out of trouble.  J.J. and Victor come up with the idea of using an ambulance.  Victor finds a "doctor" (Jack Elam) of questionable skills and J.J. secures a "patient" (Farrah Fawcett) who is really into trees. 

The movie abounds with cameos and stars from Roger Moore playing a deluded man named Seymour who thinks he is Roger Moore playing James Bond, to Bianca Jagger playing the sister of a speed-freak sheik (Jamie Farr).  It's wild, wacky fun with non-stop jokes.

My only issue with it is that we were watching a downloaded version from Rob's server that had Dutch subtitles through the whole thing that we couldn't turn off.  It was only irritating because it covered the actual English subtitles used during the scenes with Jackie Chan (oh, hell yes, Jackie Chan is in this) and Michael Hui.  But you shouldn't have that problem with any hard copies you find.

From Russia with Love (1963)

  Behold!  Not even Hurricane Sandy (currently howling down my apartment complex hallway) can keep me from posting film #2 of the Bond-verse.

In this outing, 007 (Sean Connery) is directly targeted by the evil organization SPECTRE in retaliation for his killing Dr. No.  SPECTRE recruits Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) from Russian Intelligence to set a trap for Mr. Bond, using irresistable bait:  beautiful blonde Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi) claims to be defecting from Istanbul with the newest Russian cypher machine.  To ensure that Bond completes his mission, SPECTRE has master assassin Grant (Robert Shaw) following. 

This is the first appearance of Q as well, played by Desmond Llewellyn.  There's more girls in skimpy outfits, car chases, boat chases, and bullets aplenty, as well as some beautiful location shots of Istanbul and Venice.  Story-wise, this one is pretty decent as far as playing Bond like a puppet on a string.  It's easy to fall into this world where there are secret organizations controlling the actions of everyone around them.  The only letdown is the technology again.  I'm sure some of the scenes would be much more impressive if you didn't actually know how stuff worked.  Here's hoping I can get film #3 without too much interference from the weather.

Zack and Miri (2008)

  Well, folks, we are nearing the end of our alphabet!  Three cheers!

I would call this a middling film from Kevin Smith.  It's nowhere near as good as Clerks 2 but it's far better than Chasing Amy.

Zack (Seth Rogan) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) have been friends since middle school.  Finding themselves strapped for cash and facing homelessness, Zack gets an idea to solve their money troubles by shooting a porn.  He enlists his co-worker Delaney (Craig Robinson) to front the cash, they hire "actors" (including real-life porn star Katie Morgan, former porn star Traci Lords, and Jason Mewes) and a camera guy (Jeff Anderson), write a script, and get to work.  Things seem to go well until Zack and Miri bone.  Then things get weird.  Like they always do.

As I said, it's a mediocre effort.  There are jokes aplenty but some, 30% we'll say, drag on past the point of being funny and some of it just feels random and misplaced.  This was my second viewing and Rob's first.  He found it to be hysterically funny, so it's possible that I was just jaded by familiarity.  If you're a Kevin Smith fan, you probably already have this one.  If you're not, it'll probably be hit or miss.

Dr. No (1962)

  Thus begins my foray into the Bond-verse.  A while back now, I added all the classic Bond films (everything pre-Brosnan) to my Netflix queue.  Now, they're finally up at bat just in time for the 23rd movie, Skyfall, to come out.  I don't know if I'll be able to get all of them watched before November 15th but I will try.

In this very first adventure, James Bond (Sean Connery), clandestine agent for Her Majesty's government, is sent to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of Strangways (Tim Moxon), another agent.  Bond arrives in Kingston and is almost immediately beset by assassins.  After an introduction to CIA agent Felix Leitner (Jack Lord), Bond learns that Strangways' disappearance has something to do with the planned Mercury rocket launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida.  He sets out to investigate Crab Key, a mysterious island owned by Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman).

Ok, good points first.  Despite the fact that this movie is 50 years old, the story and pace have held up quite well.  It's dated technologically, of course, but Bond comes off as resourceful and quick-witted. It's easy to see why they gave Sean Connery a franchise.  The character is good but Connery makes him great. 

Negatives:  There are no actual Jamaicans in a movie set primarily in Jamaica.  Also, the two high-profile Asian characters (Dr. No and Miss Taro) weren't in any way Asian. 

That's pretty much it though.  It's high-energy, fun, and a bang-up start to a franchise that's still running.

TV anyone?

So I totally whiffed on a post for last Monday.  I was supposed to watch The Raven but it turned out that we didn't actually have The Raven.  Since I owed you guys a post, I thought I'd do a TV update since I haven't done one of those since I got cable back.

Backstory:  I got really poor and had to turn off my cable.  Then I knew I was going to be moving and just decided not to turn it back on until we got into the new place.

I know I'm late to the party on this but Breaking Bad is friggin' awesome.    I just watched the first season on Netflix and, although far too short, it was totally worth all the praise that was heaped on it.  If you've been living under a rock (or have no cable), it's about a former Las Alamos chemist turned high school teacher named Walter White (Bryan Cranston) who learns that he has lung cancer.  Rather than leave his pregnant wife and disabled son penniless, he starts cooking crystal meth with a former student named Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul).  It's like Weeds but with more killing.

Over on Rob's server, I'm slowly making my way through season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  You want to talk about a time capsule.    Hello, late 90's.  Ugh.  I never watched this show when it was airing.  Mostly because I was a snob, even then.  I really loved the movie and sneered at the thought of a TV spin-off.  I know there are legions of dedicated fans who will probably blast me for my next comment but I still think I made the right decision.  Watching it at 30 does not pack the same punch that 16 would have.  I just want to slap all of these people and tell them to shut the hell up.  Especially that Xander (Nicholas Brendan) kid.  I want to beat him to death with a tire iron.  Almost despite myself, I find Oz (Seth Green) and to a lesser degree Willow (Alyson Hanigan) to be quite watchable.  This is why I own three seasons of Robot Chicken and none of Buffy.

As far as the Fall 2012 new TV line-up, Go On was a surprising hit and our new favorite sitcom.  Arrow seems like it could shape into a winner, where the rebooted 80's show Beauty and the Beast crashed and burned.  Partners was cute but it just didn't survive the DVR cut.  On the drama front, Elementary is miles and away the forerunner.  What do you think of the new offerings?  Leave me comments!

Magic Mike (2012)

  Ok, so you know how I was just saying that I didn't understand why Bunraku didn't get any love from the critics?  This is like that, but opposite.  Currently, Magic Mike is sitting at 79% on rottentomatoes.com.   Bunraku got 20%.  That is ridiculous and makes me wonder if we're not in some bizarro-world.  

I get why commercial audiences liked Magic Mike.  It's stupid, sleazy, and predictable and it has hot people who get half naked for most of the running time.  It is the greasy-spoon diner burger of movies.

Channing Tatum stars as Mike, a male stripper trying to earn enough cred to get his custom furniture business off the ground.  Only instead of improving his credit rating by taking out micro-loans or making car payments, he insists on a cash-only business model because he's stupid.  He takes junior idiot Adam (Alex Pettyfer) under his wing and introduces him to the party lifestyle, much to Alex's sister, Brooke's (Cody Horn) chagrin.  She wants her baby brother to grow up but instead he gets involved in running party drugs for Tobias (Gabriel Iglesias). 

There's nudity in the first ten minutes of the movie from Tatum and Olivia Munn.  I was a little surprised that Munn would go topless, considering that she's not really part of the film, just a side character.  Riley Keough is also given a bizarrely small role as a drugged out slutty chick with a piglet.  Not even making that up. 

I don't know what the hell is up with Steven Soderbergh recently.  I hated last year's Haywire and this is just another wrong turn as far as I'm concerned.  Its writing is moderately charming when it's trying to be funny but I zoned out completely as soon as characters started pretending to be serious.  The choreography is decent but there's not enough of it to justify a movie this long.  It's a big, sweaty, slightly pretty mess.

Bunraku (2010)

  This was better than I had heard it was.  I will tell you now, if you don't like hyper-stylized pop-up book styling, you probably will not like this movie.  Plot-wise, it's very archetypal with characters put in just to play stereotypes like the Star-Crossed Lovers, the Virgin, the Cowboy, and the Hero.  Do not come for the plot.  Come for the color and the design.

In a post-apocalyptic world where guns are outlawed, there is a town run by Nicola, the Woodcutter (Ron Perlman).  He and his gang of nine Killers offer anyone control by challenge, but with ruthless Killer #2 (Kevin McKidd) on his side, Nicola's reign is long.  Then, a mysterious Drifter (Josh Hartnett), a cowboy without a gun, and Yoshi (Gackt), a samurai without a sword, both swing into town. Each man is looking for something.  Yoshi wants to recover a gold medallion stolen from his family.  The Drifter wants revenge.  The Bartender (Woody Harrelson) wants them to work together and bring freedom to the town. 

As far as characters go, I'm actually fond of seeing Josh Hartnett as a badass.  It worked well for him in Lucky Number Slevin and in Sin City.  I like him more with a bit of extra humor but I can't fault him here.  Kevin McKidd is very effective as creepy cold-blooded Killer #2.  Demi Moore is utterly wasted as Nicola's unwilling consort.  I really don't know why she took this gig as there wasn't a whole lot for her to do and her scenes are among the movie's weakest.

Visually, the film is extremely inventive with great styling.  The backgrounds look like folded paper and all the scenery is reminiscent of a pop-up book.  Bunraku itself is an ancient Japanese tradition of storytelling through puppets.  I was kind of looking forward to seeing some puppet work but the only thing wooden in here is Demi's acting.  ZING! 

Sorry, I couldn't resist that one.

Young Frankenstein (1974)

  Christy confessed to me a week or so ago that she had never seen Young Frankenstein.  She loved Spaceballs and Robin Hood:  Men in Tights but she had never seen this one or Blazing Saddles.  I fixed that latter one, as you'll see in the link, and yesterday, I made sure she got caught up on this one as well.  

It really is a classic.  Gene Wilder stars at Dr. Fredrick Frankenstein (pronounced "Fronk-en-steen"), a man living in the shadow of his grandfather's experiments in reanimating dead tissues.  However, after going to his ancestral castle and stumbling across the elder Frankenstein's private journals, he realizes that it is possible after all.  With the help of his assistants, Igor (Marty Feldman) and Inga (Teri Garr), Frederick brings The Creature (Peter Boyle) to life.  Things get complicated quickly with the arrival of Frederick's fiancee (Madeline Kahn) and a host of angry villagers led by Inspector Kamp (Kenneth Mars).

It is a fantastic movie that is insanely quotable.  If you haven't seen it, I encourage you to run, don't walk, to the store and get it.  You won't regret it.

You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2007)

  As you can probably imagine, this is one of Christy's movies. 

I have never really been a fan of Adam Sandler and this movie did absolutely nothing to change my opinion.  It is vulgar, crude, one-dimensional, and completely devoid of humor.  I was disgusted and bored with it in almost equal measure.

Zohan (Adam Sandler) is an elite Israeli counterterrorism agent who secretly dreams of being a hairdresser.  He fakes his death at the hands of Phantom (John Tuturro), a notorious Palestinian terrorist, and moves to America.  After being laughed out of the Paul Mitchell salon, he gets a job with Dalia (Emmanuelle Chirqui) on the Palestinian side of a jointly occupied neighborhood.  Unfortunately, a greedy developer (Michael Buffer) wants the rights to their properties.  After raising rents and sending people around to threaten residents, he finally resorts to hiring white supremacists (led by Dave Matthews) to start a race war.  Around this time, Salim (Rob Schneider), recognizes Zohan from a past slight and informs Phantom that his nemesis is alive. 

There are cameos from Mariah Carey, Kevin James, Kevin Nealon, George Takei, Chris Rock, John McEnroe, and Bruce Villanch.  All of those people should have known better.

Adam Sandler got in legitimate shape for this movie, which is the nicest thing I can say about it.

Every single character was played to the worst possible stereotype, complete with overdone fake tans, terrible accents, and rampant facial hair.  Sandler gyrated his crotch so often I'm amazed he didn't sprain something.  The intention was probably to highlight how similar both cultures are despite their ingrained cultural animosity but the reality is that no one comes off looking like anything but a caricature. 

The Bourne Ultimaturm (2007)

  And lo, we come full circle.  So, these are the events that are supposed to be happening concurrently with Bourne Legacy.  It kind of makes sense if you can make it through even more pervasive shakycam.

A reporter (the criminally underused Paddy Considine) is overheard using a classified government cover term, "Blackbrier", by the CIA's audio version of the Machine from Person of Interest.  A ruthless branch cheif (David Strathairn) decides to have the reporter followed to discover his source.  Unfortunately for the CIA, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is also interested in knowing that name.  Having literally just evaded capture in Moscow (the movie picks up directly after its predecessor), Bourne hops a flight for London and tracks the reporter down.  A cat-and-mouse game with the CIA agents following him ensues, and is easily the best part of the film.  After the reporter is killed by an assassin (Edgar Ramirez, also underused), Bourne tracks down the source by himself to Madrid.  There he runs into Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) from the first two films.  Despite Bourne having threatened her life pretty much continually for the past three years, Nicky decides to throw her career away and help him follow the source to Tangier, Morrocco.  There, they run into another assassin (Joey Ansah) and play another game of chase.  Their fight scene should have been the highlight of the movie but it's so spastically filmed, it's nigh unwatchable.  Having accomplished nothing, Bourne decides to take on the CIA in New York City in an effort to find the people who spent millions of dollars turning him into an elite survival machine, the ungrateful bastard. 

Clearly, I felt this was the weakest installment in the franchise (until I saw the fourth one).  If you are a fan of selective memory, try and pretend there was only the original and sequel.  You'll be much happier.

Mandrill (2009)

  Holy crap, I can't believe I almost forgot to write this post!  This movie has been sitting in my Saved queue for damn near two years now.  I have no idea when it will get a DVD/Blu-ray release.  It is available on streaming and I suggest you take that opportunity because this film is hilarious.

After seeing his parents murdered as a child, Antonio Espinoza grows up to be the hitman Mandrill (Marko Zaror), a suave, smooth-talking ladies' man with an eye for danger, who has pretty much based his entire persona on Chilean film icon John Colt, a thinly-veiled James Bond.  After kicking ass for years, Mandrill finally gets the break he needs to find the man who killed his parents.  The trail leads to a casino (naturally) in Peru and to the feet of Dominique del Solar (Celine Reymond), a dangerously beautiful brunette.  Faced with the daughter of his mortal enemy, Mandrill does what he must:  fall instantly head over heels in love with her.  From there, things get crazy.

I like films that are play up their cheesier elements consciously.  It's easier said than done, because too much and you're campy, too little and you're just ripping off your source.  This one spliced in 70's style "clips" from old John Colt movies, complete with horrible dubbed voices and the borderline-porn soundtrack.  It's hysterical. 

I love a number of films involving hitmen as main characters but I can honestly say I've never sat down and wondered what they were like as children or teenagers.  Who were their role models?  Who did they admire?  James Bond?  Sure.  Why the fuck not James Bond?  He's awesome. 

You know who else is awesome?  Marko Zaror.  Apparently, he's going to be in Machete Kills next year.  That should be outstanding.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

  The French poster looks like Wolverine screamed until he gave himself a boner.

Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and his brother Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber) are immortal killing machines.  They fight in war after war until finally being recruited by Colonel Stryker (Danny Huston).  Wolverine leaves Stryker's little guerilla group after it becomes clear that morals are a thing of the past.  However, Stryker is determined to make Wolverine into Weapon X, an adamantium-clad supersoldier.  When that goes horribly wrong, he tries again with Weapon 11 and Wolverine has to come back and save everyone.

Do I even need to discuss how shitty this movie was?  I don't think I do.  It pretty much single-handedly sank Marvel's plans of doing an Origins series on lesser-known characters.  Like the Deadpool movie which is still dead in the water. 

But let's discuss why it's so shitty, shall we?

There's the bad CGI, which they have no excuse for.  It was 2009 and they were rolling in cash from the previous movies.  And it's pervasive bad CGI but not uniformly bad CGI.  There are good moments sprinkled therein, which is just heartbreaking.  If they were all bad you could make a case for them.

There's Will.i.am, Taylor Kitsch, and Lynn Collins.  That's three different flavors of box office poison.  I have nothing against Will.i.am as a musician but he's not exactly Pacino as an actor.  He seems to do well with animated fare.  Maybe he should just stick to that and kind of work his way up.  As for the other two, Collins and Kitsch were both in John Carter and then Kitsch went on to suck in Battleship.  I think that pretty much says it all.

I wasn't a huge fan of the baby Wolverine storyline, either.  Besides the fact that Victor Creed (Sabretooth) was never related to Wolverine, I found the idea of tracing him back to the 1850's to be ridiculous.  To quote Patton Oswalt:  "I don't care where the stuff I love comes from.  I just love the stuff I love."  There was no need for a detailed backstory.  The man is a mystery, let him stay that way. 

Oh, can we talk about Sabretooth's retarded running style?  This.  This right here.  Every time they showed him doing this it burned away some of my good will.

The inclusion of Emma Frost and Scott Summers is really only a fuck-up from a continuity standpont.  I think they were just trying to pack in as many recognizible characters as they could.  It didn't help.

The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

  Here we are for round two, Bourne edition!

He's back!  And he still doesn't remember why!

Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is living with his girlfriend Marie (Franka Potente) in India, sure that he has put the events of two years ago out of his mind forever.  Little does he know, Russian Karl Urban is framing him for an assassination in Berlin.  The CIA task force, led by Pamela Landy (Joan Allen), starts investigating but they get more than they bargain for when a pissed off Bourne starts demanding to know why they won't just leave him the hell alone.

This was the first sequel directed by Paul Greengrass, aka Mr. Shakycam.  I fucking hate shakycam.  I think it's a lazy device used to simulate action and cover up bad fight choreography.  There's a lot more blurring in the shots, too, to show Bourne's hazy memories but all the vapor-trailed neon started to make me nauseated after a bit. 

Thematically, this film is much more bitter than it's predecessor.  The darks are darker and there's an absence of hope, although the story itself shows a bit more intelligence.  That's not all that high a bar to clear, however. 

La Jetee (1962)/Sans Soleil (1983)

  It's a twofer from the Criterion Collection!

Let's start with La Jetee, the far superior film.  Told completely in still images, this is the (30 minute!) story of a man (Davos Hanich) who is sent to the past by a cruel Experimenter (Jacques Ledoux) in the aftermath of World War 3.  He meets a woman (Helene Chatelain) and loves her even though he is constantly getting shuffled back to his time. 

This is the film Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys is based on, which becomes readily apparent as you watch.  It's completely in black and white but the Criterion people have done the voiceover narration in English so you don't have to suffer through subtitles.  Rob was watching it over his shoulder while he did his homework and said it sounded like the world's creepiest documentary so it has that going for it.  I really enjoyed it.  Plus, there's a bunch of special features, including part of an interview about David Bowie's 1993 video "Jump They Say" which was inspired by the film.

If Bowie and Gilliam approve it, you probably don't need any more recommendations.

Moving on to Sans Soleil.  Holy shit, this was so boring I had to go take a nap afterwards.  Seriously, I'd put it in the same category as Tree of Life.  That category is decent travelogues marred by bullshit philosophical mouthings.  Moving from 80's Japan to Iceland to Africa, the whole thing is loosely tied together by narration of a woman reading letters from a cameraman.  Snoozefest.  You'd be better off just watching La Jetee alone.  I'm pretty sure you can find the whole thing on YouTube.

X-Men (2000)

  Apparently I'm revisiting movies from a decade ago this weekend.  I remember when this one first came out and how excited I was to see it.  Nervous, too, because like any good fangirl I was worried they'd fuck up the casting or the plot and ruin characters I'd loved since childhood.

I haven't seen it in a few years now, since the last time I got to the X's in my collection (around 2006, for those keeping score).  Of course, that was way before First Class came and kicked the entire series in the ass.  Seeing it now, I've realized that I'm really not a fan of Anna Paquin as Rogue.  I know they were trying to make her seem younger and they didn't want to go into the whole Carol Danvers storyline but she just comes off as whiny and annoying.  Plus, I kept expecting Stephen Moyer to show up and go "Sookieeeeee" like he does in TrueBlood.  Nearly everyone else was spot-on, though.

A young girl named Marie (Anna Paquin) runs away from home after discovering her mutant powers suck the life out of people.  She hitches across Canada under the name Rogue and runs into Logan (Hugh Jackman), a brawler with a few nifty special abilities of his own.  Let's just say he never has to look far for a can-opener.  Unfortunately, the pair are targeted by Sabertooth (Tyler Mane) who is working for Magneto (Ian McKellen).  Magneto believes that humans and mutants cannot peacefully co-exist and is working on evening the playing field.  Fortunately, Logan and Rogue are rescued and taken to Professor Xavier's School for the Gifted.  Despite his initial reluctance to join a team, Logan lends his claws to the Professor's cause after Rogue is kidnapped.

It's so hard to go back and enjoy this movie knowing how much better the prequel is.  Still, it's not a terrible waste of time.  For people who had never read the comics or only had a passing interest in the old animated TV show, it was a good introduction to the universe.

The Bourne Identity (2002)

  Man, watching this again made me remember why they decided to do so many crappy sequels. 

Now, it's not a great movie.  It is an incredibly fun movie, though. 

An amnesiac (Matt Damon) gets pulled out of the Mediterranean off the coast of France by a Portugese fishing boat.  He doesn't know his name or how he came to be floating along with two bullet holes in his back and a laser that shows the address and account number to a Swiss bank in his hip.  But he's determined to find out.  Along the way, he discovers a particularly useful skill set that includes languages, basic seamanship, and the ability to punch someone's teeth out through their colon.  After discovering the safe deposit box at the bank is full of passports, money, and a gun, he decides to go with the name Jason Bourne and meets Marie (Franka Potente), a frustrated woman trying to get a visa to America, and offers her a trade:  $20,000 for a ride to Paris, where one of his passports says he lives.  What he doesn't know is that he is actually an elite class of assassin from a CIA-sponsered program called Treadstone.  His boss Conklin (Chris Cooper) wants him erased after he spectacularly fucked up his last assignment.  To this end, he sends all the Treadstone agents after Bourne.  Much ass-kicking ensues.

Seeing the original again also reminded me why they decided to go with a "Science!" explanation in Bourne Legacy.  It's literally a throwaway line spoken by a dying character about pills and headaches.  I don't remember if they're mentioned ever again but I guess I'll find out when I watch the other two.

Pitch Perfect (2012)

  Christy and I went to see this yesterday.  Rob would have gone but I gave him a free pass. 

It's Glee: the movie!  What's not to love?

Seriously, it's about acapella groups in college.  The Barden Bellas are a bikini-body-ready girl group that only sings songs made famous by women.  Unfortunately, they get crushed at the national competition by one of the rival groups from their college, the all-male Treble-makers.  Still, a new year sees senior Aubrey (Anna Camp) hopeful of their chances.  With her friend Chloe (Brittany Snow) at her side, she auditions an all-new group of Bellas, including gangsta girl Cynthia Rose (Ester Dean), sexpot Stacie (Alexis Knapp), and Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson).  But Chloe has her dreams pinned to rebel DJ Beca (Anna Kendrick) who doesn't even want to attend college.  She wants to move to L.A. and start paying her dues in the music industry.  After a deal with her dad, Beca agrees to join the Bellas and soon finds herself on the outs with Aubrey who has no intention of changing their outdated set-list.  Meanwhile, the Treble-makers have gained hottie Jesse (Skylar Astin) who might have a thing for Beca as well as John Hughes movies. 

Honestly, this movie pretty much follows in the same path as Bring It On, Fired Up, and Stick It.  But let's face it, you're not here for an original story.  The mash-ups are good, the performances are Hollywood impeccable, and the dialogue is hilarious.  You should see this movie just for Rebel Wilson (who more than makes up for her off-putting character in Bridesmaids) and break-out star Hana Mae Lee, as the quietly hysterical Lilly.  Christy and I had a great time watching this and I'll definitely be getting it when it comes out.