Raging Bull (1980)

  I kept forgetting this movie was made in 1980.  It's set from 1941 through 1964 and it is a beautiful representation of the period.  Everything in it is perfect.  I had never seen it before and I was blown away.  Now I know why so many people put it on their top 10 lists. 

Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro) is an up-and-coming boxer looking for the Middleweight Championship title.  His brother Joe (Joe Pesci) helps him train, mostly by being a punching bag.  But then, the world is Jake LaMotta's punching bag.  This guy is an asshole.  He doesn't want to be beholden to the Mob in order to get a shot at the title, which is admirable, but he's such a jerk it makes you want to root for organized crime.  He's horrible to his wife (Cathy Moriarty), obsessively jealous, and he doesn't mind hitting a broad a time or two.  This is not a good man.

This is, however, an amazing film.  I don't even like boxing or biopics for the most part but this is the gold standard.  Scorsese's camera work is gorgeous, especially the pieces filmed through the heat haze in the ring.  That made my little heart go pitter-pat.  De Niro takes a completely unlovable character and turns him into a tragic anti-hero, taking him through the highest highs down to the lowest depths.  It is unflinching in its violence yet still manages to be lyrical in its beauty. 

The Cold Light of Day (2012)

  What a crapfest.

No joke, this is one of the worst movies I have seen in a while.  It's one of those where the cast is great but, for whatever reason, it is completely made of FAIL.

Will (Henry Cavill) is on vacation with his family when they are kidnapped by the Mossad.  Don't you just hate it when that happens?  It turns out that his dad (Bruce Willis) is actually a spy who killed a bunch of agents and stole a mysterious briefcase.  The Israelis want the MacGuffin, I mean briefcase, back and they have taken Will's family hostage in order to get that done.  Will is left to run through the streets of Spain with only the help of beautiful but constantly-screaming Lucia (Veronica Echegui) in order to get his family back.

This movie should have been mercifully killed before making it off the editing room floor.  There's just too much shit wrong with it but not enough camp to make it enjoyable in spite of its flaws.  Sigourney Weaver tries to be the film's Big Bad but, honestly, she was better in Vamps and that is just sad.  Cavill better straighten up and fly right before he turns up in Man of Steel this summer.  I know there's a Superman curse and all but this might be the first time I've seen it be preemptive.

American Psycho (2000)

  The older I get, the funnier this movie is to me.  I remember the first time I saw it, which was several years after it came out.  I knew absolutely nothing about it and I was utterly confused as to what my reaction was supposed to be.  I have laughed at inappropriate things and people yelled at me.  Back then, that mattered.

Now...that shit's hilarious.  I know it's supposed to be a satire of the greed and materialism of the era that is ultimately shown to be a tissue-thin veneer over a yawning pit of despair and loss of identity.  But come on, when he drops a chainsaw on a running hooker...?  Comedy gold.

Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) is a high-powered executive in the 80's.  Everyone is obsessed with everyone else:  how much money they make, what they're wearing, who they're sleeping with, and how much power they have.  Patrick is slightly different from his peers in that he's a psychopath who likes to brutally murder people while rocking out to Huey Lewis and the News.

This movie is awesome.  Rob had never seen it and kept wandering in during the really bloody parts.  I'm not sure he believes that it's supposed to be a dark comedy.  I have been a huge Christian Bale fan since Little Women.  And that's only because I didn't know who he was when I saw Newsies.

Cloverfield (2008)

  I'm so glad the original file on Rob's server for this film was corrupted.  I think I would have thrown up if I had to watch it straight through.  Instead, the only copy I could get to open turned out to be the Rifftrax version.  It was way more palatable.

At a going-away party for their friend Rob (Michael Stahl-David), a group of whiny self-centered twentysomethings witness an attack on New York City from some sort of gigantic creature.  Rob decides to avoid safety and try to find some girl he slept with once (Odette Yustman) which involves a lot of running and shaking of the camera.

This is a dumb movie with shitty dialogue and a terrible gimmick.  Shaky-cam is one of the worst inventions since Crystal Pepsi and just as nauseating.  Super 8 is basically the exact same movie but less annoying and better made.

The Rifftrax crew did their best but not even their combined talents could make this any more than just tolerable.

American Pie 2 (2001)

  I don't know why I do this to myself.  I know I don't like this kind of humor.  I didn't like the first movie and this is almost the exact same thing.  Thank God there's no apple pie this time.  So why did I watch it?  Because it's on the shelf, marked with a piece of green tape, indicating that it belongs to Christy.  She actually has the entire series.  I have seen none of them except the original.  Generally, that's enough to get me to at least try but I'm seriously rethinking if that plan is going to work out for me.

The same people from the first movie are back after a year of college.  Jim (Jason Biggs) is still a loser with the ladies and constantly obsesses over his lack of bedroom skills.  Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas) and his girlfriend Heather (Mena Suvari) are planning on having a long-distance relationship while Heather summers in Europe.  Oz (Chris Klein) is obsessed with a) having a summer party to rival his older brother's and b) his ex-girlfriend Vicky (Tara Reid).  Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) is obsessed with Stifler's mom (Jennifer Coolidge).  Stifler (Seann William Scott) is just an asshole.  When Jim finds out that the exchange student he embarrassed himself over, Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth), is planning to visit him at the end of the summer he tracks down the girl who took his virginity (Alyson Hannigan) so she can help him get better in bed. 

This is one of those movies where, if you didn't identify with the characters the first time around, you will have zero interest in what is happening.  I got so bored I started catching up on Failbook.  Christy asked me why I didn't just turn it off but I try and reserve that kind of protest for movies I genuinely loathe.  With this, I was just apathetic.  If you liked the first one, chances are you've seen the rest of them by now. 

Oh, also, I watched season 2 of American Dad, which was funnier than I thought it was going to be and half of season 1 of Claymore, an anime series that was just godawful.  I bought Django Unchained on Blu-ray this week and watched it with Christy on Thursday of last week.  It's still just as awesome as I remembered.

Lady in White (1988)

  I think we all have at least one movie from our childhood that scared the everloving crap out of us.  For me, it was Stephen King's It when I was about five.  For Christy, it was this one.  She saw it when she was about 9 and it gave her nightmares.  The effects are complete shit, now, but the story holds up surprisingly well.  I think if you have to baby-sit a kid around the age of ten-years-old, this would be a good one to traumatize it with.

Frankie (Lukas Haas) gets locked in a school coat room on Halloween and witnesses the ghost of a young girl re-enacting her murder.  Later, the murderer actually shows up in order to try and find a piece of evidence that had been left at the scene and finds Frankie instead, choking him nearly to death.  He is rescued and the school is searched.  The only person inside was the janitor (Henry Harris) who is arrested and charged with being Present While Black.  Frankie doesn't believe the janitor did it and thinks the whole thing ties in with the local legend of the Lady in White, a ghost that supposedly haunts an abandoned cottage on the cliff. 

This was independently made and it shows, but it adds to the effect rather than detracts, giving a realistic feel to the characters.  It's not polished but it's far from first-year-film-student.   

Clear and Present Danger (1994)

  My mom has always been a huge Tom Clancy fan and the last time I went home, she gave me her entire collection of his novels.  I won't have a book on my shelf until I've read it so I've been working my way through them when I get the chance.  Most recently, I finished Without Remorse, which features one of the characters (Mr. Clark) from the book this movie is based on.

It's not a bad movie but it oversimplifies the book by quite a bit.  Still, there are some nice performances and it's always interesting to see Harrison Ford play someone who isn't Han Solo or Indiana Jones.

After a yacht is found by the Coast Guard with its owners murdered and crewed only by two blood-covered men with ties to the drug cartels, the President (Donald Moffat) demands action.  His National Security Advisor, Admiral Cutter (Harris Yulin), and the CIA's Director of Operations, Bob Ritter (Henry Czerny), hatch a plan to send a covert unit of American troops into Colombia to target the cartel heads directly.  They liaise with former SEAL Mr. Clark (Willem Dafoe) to get their assets in place.  This is hugely illegal so Ritter and Cutter refuse to read Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) onto the project, despite him filling in as Deputy Director of Intelligence.  When Ryan catches wind of what's happening while trying to find a former Russian-turned Cuban-turned Colombian spy (Joaquim de Almeida), he has to scramble to prevent all-out war, stop the cartels, and keep Ritter from burning the operation and leaving American soldiers to twist in the wind.

The age shows a great deal as politically-based movies are wont to do but it's a decent film.  I'll watch Willem Dafoe in just about anything though.

An American Haunting (2005)

  This was a pretty shitty ghost movie.  However, as a comedy, it was superb.  It's one of Christy's from before she moved in with me and, before we watched it, she warned me that the "twist" is transparent and that it has no re-watch factor.  Thusly prepared, I settled in to ridicule it mercilessly.

In the early 19th century, a wealthy Tennessee family is torn apart by what appears to be a witch's curse.  The daughter (Rachel Hurd Wood) is tormented in the night by shadowy figures, dragged around her room, and slapped by invisible hands.  Her father (Donald Sutherland, who must owe a lot of people money to agree to be in this) is afflicted with a wasting illness. 

Supposedly, this was based on the true story of the only documented case where a man was killed by a spirit.  Judging by the quality of this film, that "document" would most likely be toilet paper.  It's bad, folks.

The rest of the movie isn't any better, either.  The camera zooms around like it was attached to a Labrador with ADHD and randomly switches from color to black and white.  If this had been made in the 70's, that would have been okay but there's no excuse for this sort of shoddy craftsmanship from 2005.  Fortunately, it seems everyone involved has moved on to better things.

The Iron Giant (1999)

  Man, for a kid's movie, this is pretty dark.  I missed this one growing up, mostly because I was a junior in high school when it came out.  I was more into The Matrix, not some cartoon that wasn't even made by Disney.  The only reason I added it to my Netflix queue was because it got consistantly ranked on all the "Best Children's Movies" and "Most Traumatic Childhood Movies" lists. 

A little boy named Hogarth (Eli Marienthal) finds a giant robot from space that has crash landed just outside his town.  He befriends the giant but then must keep him safe from the prying eyes of government stooge Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald).  But what is the giant's true purpose?

I think this might be the first animated movie I've ever seen that dealt with the concept of atomic warfare.  It does it well, though.  It feels organic to the story, not heavy-handed or preachy.  Brad Bird, the director/writer, went on to make The Incredibles, and Ratatouille for Pixar so you know you're dealing with some quality work. 

Iron Man (2008)

  So I went ahead and bought the big-ass special edition Avengers box set.  You know, the one that looks like an aluminum suitcase with the Tesseract in it?  I'm weak.  It's freaking gorgeous, though.

We cracked it open Saturday night and, after much debate, decided on watching them in order of release.  I realized afterwards that I started this blog in December 2009 so I never reviewed the original Iron Man.  It's a little weird now, since I'm pretty sure everyone has seen it but that's never stopped me before.

Billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) is demonstrating a new weapons system in Afghanistan when he is kidnapped by terrorists from the Ten Rings.  They want Tony to build them his newest toy, the Jericho missile system and threaten to kill him if he doesn't.  However, the one thing you don't do is put a weapons designer in the same room as a buttload of weapons.  Another prisoner, Yinsen (Shaun Toub), had previously installed an electromagnet in Tony's chest to keep shrapnel from entering his heart.  Tony improves upon the device and creates a miniaturized arc reactor, which he then uses to power a mechanical exoskeleton and escape from the terrorists.  Upon returning to civilization, Tony announces that his company will no longer create weapons, angering his business partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges).  Unconcerned, Tony begins the process of refining his exo-suit, eventually settling on the distinctive red and gold design.  And thus, it began.

The special features aren't really anything to write home about on this disc.  It does have six episodes of the Iron Man animated series, which I will have to revisit at some point and some deleted scenes that were interesting but that's about it.  Hopefully, the rest of the box set will make up for it.

Citizen Kane (1941)

  Is this one of the greatest movies in the world?  I don't feel qualified enough to say, personally.  I can appreciate it as a great movie but I don't know enough about the technical aspects to say it's one of the greatest.  I can say that Orson Welles is absolutely magnetic and for that alone this would be worth watching.  Fortunately, it also has a compelling story and a stellar cast. 

Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), newspaper magnate and one of the privately richest men in America, has died with the enigmatic last word "Rosebud".  A journalist (William Alland) is sent to interview Mr. Kane's friends and family in order to find out what it meant.  What he finds is a complex figure, both public and intensely private, a man driven to succeed on his own terms, despite having a vast wealth.  Heir to an immense fortune in gold, Kane is sent to boarding school at a young age by his mother (Agnes Moorehead), and given into the care of bank manager Mr. Thatcher (George Coulouris).  After being kicked out of nearly every Ivy League college, Kane adopts a failing newspaper and uses it to lambast the rich and powerful.  Never shy of an opinion, Kane's newspaper becomes an extension of the man himself.  After the Depression and a number of personal tragedies, Kane secludes himself in his unfinished palace, Xanadu, stuffed with all the treasures money can buy.

Thousands of film students and critics have pored over every frame of this film, parsing out the meaning behind every item on screen.  There's certainly enough room to do that, but you can also just enjoy it as a complete entity, a sympathetic drama of a man desperate to be loved yet unable to allow people close to him.

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009)

  This is like Percy Jackson for the goth crowd:  A-list adults, up-and-coming teens, a fairly cheesy script, and a lot of effects.  Believe it or not, that's still a compliment.  I don't see this one getting a sequel but I didn't expect The Lightning Thief to get one either and apparently that's happening.

Darren (Chris Massoglia) is a goody-two-shoes kid whose only weird habit is that he likes spiders.  His best friend Steve (Josh Hutcherson) is more of a troublemaker.  When the boys catch a One Night Only flyer for a travelling sideshow called Cirque du Freak, Steve convinces Darren to sneak out.  There they see a collection of oddities, including a man named Crepsley (John C. Reilly) and his pet spider Octa.  Darren is instantly captivated by Octa but Steve is convinced that Crepsley is actually a vampire.  After the show is broken up by angry townspeople, Darren sneaks into the dressing room and steals Octa.  He runs from the theater after overhearing a couple of conversations he shouldn't, including when his buddy Steve busts in and demands to be made a vampire, only to get shot down for having bad tasting blood.  Things go from bad to worse when Steve tries to smash Octa with a broom and gets bit, landing in the hospital.  Crepsley barters with Darren over the antidote into becoming his half-vampire assistant.  When Steve finds out, he is furious that Darren hijacked his dream and immediately joins up with the other faction in an ongoing vampire war.  Crepsley and Darren seek shelter amongst the neutral Cirque and Darren learns valuable lessons about not judging people for how they look.

This is based on a 12-book Young Adult series that is apparently much beloved.  I missed the boat on that as I was already out of high school when it was published.  It's not a terrible movie and I liked the idea that it presented.  It looked like it had a lot of potential that was unfortunately weighed down by introducing too many characters that have no real part and having really cartoony CGI effects.  If you're 12 that probably doesn't matter so much to you, but as an adult, I found it grating.  The opening titles were my favorite part of the whole movie and I really wish the rest of the effects lived up to that standard.

America's Sweethearts (2001)

  Oh, John Cusak, why do you hurt me so?

This piece of mediocrity fizzles on every level.  As a comedy, it's not funny enough.  As a romance, it's not sexy enough.  And as a satire of Hollywood, it's not clever enough.  It is as flat and shiny as a candy wrapper.  I watched it two days ago and I had already forgotten their names.

Gwen (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Eddie (John Cusack) were the perfect Hollywood married couple, having fallen in love with each other on the sets of their various horrible rom-coms.  During the making of their last movie, however, Gwen hooks up with Spanish actor Hector (Hank Azaria) which devastates Eddie so much that he has to join a commune.  But the Hollywood Machine rolls on and publicist Lee Phillips (Billy Crystal) is faced with rising pressure from the studio head (Stanley Tucci) because Eddie and Gwen's director (Christopher Walken) has taken the print hostage and refuses to screen it until the press junket.  In order to distract the press from realizing there's no film until the last day, Lee tries to convince them that Eddie and Gwen have reconciled despite the fact that she's trying to serve him with divorce papers and he's falling for her sister/assistant Kiki (Julia Roberts).

I love John Cusack but I think he was woefully miscast here.  They needed more of a pretty-boy or somebody better suited to this type of "comedy".  Catherine Zeta-Jones' character is so annoying and grating, I wanted to punch the TV.  She is clearly meant to be so, but there's no depth to the character.  Or to any of them, really.  Gwen is spoiled and shallow.  Eddie is conflicted.  Kiki is a paragon of virtue with no spine.  These aren't characters except in the flimsiest of children's books.  If you are only interested in a fluff piece, by all means check this out.  Everybody else can go re-watch High Fidelity.  

Licence to Kill (1989)

  Finally!  The last entry in my Bond films.  (In case you're just joining, I decided to watch all the old Bonds that I had never seen which translates to everything pre-Brosnan.)

People gave Timothy Dalton a lot of crap but I don't think he was the problem here.  He was actually a pretty decent Bond and I'd say that, in his two films, he easily matched the charisma of Roger Moore's six.

In this installment, Bond (Timothy Dalton) is in Florida for the wedding of his old pal Felix Leiter (David Hedison).  But when a drug dealer (Robert Davi) kills the bride and feeds Felix to a shark, Bond goes off the rails.  Denied official coverage from M (Robert Brown), Bond has to rely on Felix's notes to track down an informant named Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell) in order to exact his revenge.

Blah blah blah, it's a Bond film from the 80's.  You pretty much know what you're getting.  The only reason to watch this movie is this
 IT'S BABY BENICIO DEL TORO!

I was not prepared for that and literally screamed at my TV when I saw it.  He was so young and skinny!  He even had a horrible gold tooth!  It. Was. Awesome.

Phantom of the Opera (1925)

  This is not the musical.  There is no sweet, tortured anti-hero just looking for love.  This is Lon Chaney rocking some mask-worthy features and terrifying poor Mary Philbin.

The Paris Opera House, like any building full of artists, has its share of colorful history.  One local legend has it that a mysterious Phantom patronizes Box 5 and that to see his face is death.  The two most recent owners think it's all such rubbish, until they get a black-edged note from the Phantom himself, telling them that if they know what's good for them they'll put Christine Daae (Mary Philbin) in the lead part, instead of Mademoiselle Carlotta (Virginia Pearson).  They don't and the chandelier comes crashing down.  Meanwhile, Vicomte Raoul de Chagny (Norman Kerry) is disappointed to learn that Christine no longer wants to see him.  She only has ears for the mysterious voice that comes from her dressing room mirror.  She is disappointed and horrified when she finally gets to meet her dulcet-toned stranger and discovers he's actually a cellar-dwelling asylum escapee. 

I can relate.  I've been on a few bad internet dates myself. 

In exchange for returning to the land of the living, she promises the Phantom that she will never see Raoul again...which she immediately breaks by running off with him at a masked ball.  She confesses everything to Raoul and they make plans to escape to England.  But the Phantom has eyes and ears everywhere.  How will they get away?

I have to admit, it was a little weird to watch this movie without the Lloyd Webber score.  It truly has become synonymous with the name.  Still, it's good to see the film go back to the dark roots, since I was gravely disappointed with the ending change in the musical.  I think keeping the climactic final scene would have only strengthened the musical's appeal.  But you can watch it and judge for yourself.

Mother (2009)

  This has been in my Netflix queue forever but I ended up renting it from Amazon and downloading it to my Kindle while on my trip because I couldn't rely on any of the WiFi networks available.  It feels like cheating somehow.

The movie itself is okay.  It's very slow-paced and methodical with very little humor to lighten the mood.  Do-joon (Bin Won) is a young man who lives with his mother (Hye-ja Kim), an herbalist and off-the-books acupuncturist.  He is a little slow and Mom is slightly overprotective.  She especially doesn't like him hanging around with his friend Jin Tae (Ku Jin) because she thinks he's a bad influence.  Then, a local girl named Moon Ah-jeong (Hee-ra Mun) gets murdered and the police find a golf ball with Do-joon's name on it next to the body.  Now Mother must find the real killer in order to free her son from prison.

This isn't as gory or fucked up as some of the other Korean films I've watched but it's not exactly sunshine and kittens, either.  There are a couple of late-stage reveals that are at least depressing, if not disturbing.  Overall, I'd say it's a solid film.  The director, Joon-ho Bong, has an English-language movie coming out this year called Snowpiercer that looks pretty interesting, based on the storyboard art. 

Amazing Grace (2006)

  Here's that British prequel to Lincoln you never asked for...

True story:  I started watching this before I left on my trip to Las Vegas but only got about halfway.  I didn't finish it until last night. 

William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd) really wanted to be a minister but had to settle for being a Member of Parliament instead. He decides to use his influence to rid the British Empire of the scourge of slavery.  Unfortunately, the British have more on their minds than freedom for all mankind and equality and shit.  They've got uppity colonists, rumblings from France, and many, many bills to pay.  So it takes Wilburforce like 20 years.

This movie feels like a made-for-the-Hallmark-Channel piece of fluff.  It's really only notable for having Benedict Cumberbatch as the Prime Minister.  With Star Trek Into Darkness opening in a few months, I'm interested in seeing him in as many different roles as I can.

On a completely unrelated note, this will be the second consecutive weekemd I am away from home.  Currently, I am in sunny Long Beach, CA where I will be the Maid of Honor don't laugh in my friend's wedding.  I say this in the vain hope you people will cut me some slack when I once again flake out on posting.

This was supposed to have gone up on Saturday but I was trying to do it from my phone instead of a computer because I was travelling and apparently I messed up.  My bad.