End of Year Top Ten for 2014

I think this might have been the year I watched the fewest new movies.  Well, I mean most of the 238 I watched were new to me, but only fourteen were actually released this year.  That's kind of awful.  I know in the next month that I'll watch a crapload of 2014 films because the Oscar nominations will come out but that doesn't really help me now.

With the exception of The Hunger Games:  Mockingjay, which I haven't seen yet, I pretty much saw everything I wanted.  There were some decent animated films, some obvious Lucy-bait blockbusters, and a couple of surprises.  I'm not one to intentionally watch a lot of heavy dramas so I didn't see Fury or Rosewater.  I don't like stupid frat boy comedies like 22 Jump Street or Let's Be Cops so I'm not going to put myself through that.  I did, however, break one of my cardinal rules and watch a horror movie in the theater.  I usually wait to watch at home because I hate dealing with annoying people who can't stand the scares so they talk or yell at the screen like they're auditioning for Rifftrax.  Oculus did not make the top ten, because I thought the ending was lame but it's not a bad horror film.  I did see Into the Woods on Christmas Day and it also did not make the cut, just because there were other films that I liked more.  A review is forthcoming for that one.

So, here we are, in descending order:

#10)  The Hobbit:  the Battle of the Five Armies - This is at the bottom of the top ten because it really shouldn't have been made but I enjoyed it anyway.  There was really no reason a book that small had to be broken up into three films, but I love most of the people in it so I'm giving it a pass.

#9) John Wick - This should not have been as good as it was.  I haven't liked a Keanu Reeves movie since 1999 and that was despite him, not because of.  I seriously fucking enjoyed this film and even now, months later, I think back to certain scenes and want to watch it again.  That's almost as mind-blowing as suddenly learning kung fu.

#8) Maleficent -  Sure, this movie had some problems and it didn't really resonate with people, but I thought it was a decent re-imagining and Angelina Jolie killed it as my favorite Disney villain.

#7) Big Hero 6 - I thought this concept was really cool and it made me want my very own Baymax.  I also like how Disney was not afraid to really ramp up the complexity of the themes presented.

#6) Lucy - Another surprise.  I went in expecting a very middling effort but got a much cooler experience.

#5) The X-Men:  Days of Future Past - This is lower on the list than I was initially expecting, but in retrospect there were several places where the pacing got a little bogged down for me.  Can't beat that "Time in a Bottle" piece, though.

#4) The Boxtrolls - This was my second favorite animated film of the year.  I just loved everything about it.

#3) Captain America:  The Winter Soldier - These top three were so close, they might as well be tied.  Not only was this a fantastic movie, I feel like it was an important one.  Like people are going to be talking about it for years.  Also, fictionally, it changed the face of the entire Marvel universe.  This film caused ripples that will be felt throughout Phase II and Phase III.  This movie was so good, it may have single-handedly saved Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

#2) The Lego Movie - Awesome.  This movie lured me in with a cute premise, an adorable cast, and some insanity and then sucker punched me in the feels with a third-act twist that elevated it past popcorn flick into Instant Classic.  Also, that song is catchy as hell.

#1) Guardians of the Galaxy - I agonized over the placement of this and The Lego Movie.  Honestly, what cinched it was that I had the whole Guardians soundtrack and only the Lego single.  This was fun, exciting, and it expanded the Marvel universe into the farthest reaches of the galaxy.  James Gunn took a minor set of characters and turned them into people we cared about.  He made a character who only spoke three words of dialogue and turned him into the emotional center of the film.  That is amazing.

There is some great shit coming out in 2015, you guys, and I am really looking forward to another year filled with movies.  I hope you are too.  Happy New Year!

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

  This film is considered a sci-fi classic and is held up as a shining example of Steven Spielberg's talent as a director.  I can't argue with any of that but, having only just seen it a week ago, I will tell you this:  it's not my favorite.

Part of that may be because I was forced to watch it rather than chose to watch it of my own accord.  I wasn't opposed per se, it was in my Netflix queue, but I didn't necessarily feel in the mood to watch it at that moment.

Electrical lineman Roy (Richard Dreyfuss) and a handful of other people find their lives irrevocably changed after witnessing UFOs in the sky.  They become compelled to recreate tones they heard or images they saw in any medium they can find, stressing their relationships to the breaking point.  Meanwhile, the governments of the world scramble to put together an international team to understand this otherworldly contact, led by French UN scientist Claude Lacombe (Francois Truffaut).

I struggled to pay attention during the first half of the film, a fact which my mom yelled at me about even though she usually can't sit through a two-hour movie without having to get up twenty times.  But I digress.  Normally, I can do the slow burn.  Jaws takes forever to get cracking but it's worth the payoff.  Close Encounters just did not grab me in the same way.  I couldn't identify with the characters, especially Roy's wife, played by Teri Garr.  I really couldn't understand what her problem was and her hysterical screeching irritated the shit out of me.  Most of the visual effects stand up but the aliens themselves look horribly dated.

I'm not going to hate on anybody for enjoying this movie.  I understand why it's a classic and I recognize the skill it takes to craft a movie like that, especially in the late 70's.  I just didn't enjoy it.  I'm not a huge E.T. fan, either, but that movie meant more to me because it came out the year I was born.  I have no connection to Close Encounters and I doubt I'd ever watch it again.

Magnum Force (1973)

I'll be traveling back to Maryland tomorrow so I won't be able to post anything.  I haven't even gotten to the movies I watched while I was visiting my family so stay tuned.    For Christmas, Christy got me a four-pack of Dirty Harry movies so I could finally see the whole series.  I was so excited I broke my own alphabetized system so I could go ahead and watch them. 

Harry Calahan (Clint Eastwood) is on loan to an undercover squad with a brand new partner (Felton Perry) instead of on his usual homicide beat because he keeps pissing off his lieutenant (Hal Holbrook).  However, when a vigilante starts targeting high-level San Francisco criminals, Harry fights to get reassigned.  As fast and loose as he plays with the law, Harry does not appreciate people flouting it completely.

As sequels go, this one isn't terrible.  It's straightforward, action-heavy, and not burdened overmuch by exposition.  If you liked Dirty Harry and you wanted to see more of the character, you won't be disappointed.  He shows a little more brains here as well as an abundance of brawn.  This also has the distinction of featuring a very young Tim Matheson and Robert Urich as rookie cops newly assigned to Homicide.  They're not given an awful lot to do but they look adorable doing it.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

  Merry Christmas!  And here's a little something filled with ho-ho-homicide cheer from the master of horror, Vincent Price.

Scotland Yard is baffled when doctor after doctor turns up dead under ever more bizarre circumstances.  Inspector Trout (Peter Jeffrey) goes so far to consult a rabbi (Hugh Griffith) when one of the bodies is found with an arcane symbol on a necklace nearby.  The rabbi tells him the symbols represent the ten plagues of Egypt so the deaths are certainly connected.  Trout begins to search for what the four dead doctors have in common and finds that they and five others consulted on a surgery for a woman named Victoria Phibes (Caroline Munro), who died on the operating table.  The head surgeon, Dr. Vesalius (Joseph Cotten), remembers that the woman's husband died in a carriage accident on his way to retrieve his wife's body.  Dr. Anton Phibes (Vincent Price) was a concert organist, renowned scientist, and biblical scholar before his untimely demise.  It's all a little too neat and clean for Trout, however, and he begins to wonder if Phibes isn't behind the murders after all.

This had no right to be as entertaining as it was.  I could not stop watching it and I will most assuredly be buying it as soon as I can afford to do so.  Also, it's hilarious.  There's just so much to enjoy.  The deaths are elaborate and gory; I love the religious angle.  His little helper, Vulnavia (Virginia North), is beautiful but creepy because she never speaks.  There's a clockwork orchestra that plays jazz standards.  How the hell is this not being shown constantly on movie networks?  It should be a classic and instead it's relegated to MGM's B-movie label.  I guess it's one of those where you need to be in-the-know to hear about it, like a secret club for all the cool weird kids.  I expect my membership badge to come in the mail any day now.  Preferably delivered by trained ravens.

Dracula (1931)

Hey, everyone!  Sorry I missed posting yesterday.  I don't always have wi-fi access down here.  Here's your post for today and I'll try and get extra ones in this week.  This is the original, against which all others are compared.  It is a true icon and horror classic.

A young lawyer named Renfield (Dwight Frye) travels to Transylvania to settle a real estate contract with a reclusive nobleman.  What he doesn't know is that Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) is actually an immortal vampire, living off the blood of the unwary.  Dracula has purchased a ruined abbey in London and uses Renfield as his enthralled servant to get him there.  Once presented to high society, the Count begins looking for a likely bride, and finds one in Mina Harker (Helen Chandler).  Mina already has a fiance, however, and he is none too thrilled when her entire personality begins to change.  He consults Abraham Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) to help him defeat the vampire and save his girlfriend.

Bats on strings aside, it is amazing how well this movie has held up through time.  It's been 80 years and it is still one of the greatest displays of atmosphere and mood to ever grace celluloid.  If you've never seen it, you are doing yourself the greatest of injustices.

Double Jeopardy (1999)

I'm traveling to Alabama for Christmas this year so I'm going to go ahead and post this on Friday, as I most likely will not be able to post on Saturday.  I'll do what I can but, just in case, here's one that I forgot to post last week.    This really is a terrible movie.  I didn't see it when it came out, it must have been a few years later, but I remember thinking that it was fair to middling.  Clearly, I had awful taste back then. 

Libby (Ashley Judd) and her husband Nick (Bruce Greenwood) had the perfect life, until he disappears at sea and she is blamed for his murder.  Libby serves her time quietly but starts to grow convinced that her husband is alive and well.  As soon as she is released on parole, she begins tracking down any and every lead she can, much to the ire of her gruff parole officer, Travis (Tommy Lee Jones).  He chases halfway across the country after her, intent on keeping her from killing her husband for real this time.

Ok, so the concept of using the legal standard of double jeopardy (you can't be tried for the same crime twice) for a thriller is pretty nifty.  Too bad it's so poorly executed.  Libby, the socialite-turned-convict, spends the first three-quarters of the film sucking at being a criminal, which makes her third act transformation into Thomas Crowne all the more unbelievable.  Need an example?  She goes from getting busted for petty breaking-and-entering by rural cops to smoothly conning her way into designer clothes for a black-tie event while avoiding a city-wide manhunt.

Considering the number of laws she breaks on her little quest for vengeance, she should be less concerned with double jeopardy and more worried about three-strikes laws.

If this movie were funnier or even campier, I could probably give it a pass, but there is absolutely no reason to watch it as it stands.  It's a mediocre plot filled with mediocre performances more suited to a Lifetime movie of the week than a theatrical release.

Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986)

  I got this as part of a double feature with the fantastic Ruthless People, but I did not enjoy it nearly as much.  Bette Midler adds the only touch of comedy but even the Divine Miss M couldn't save the whole movie.  Maybe it's one of those tonal things that made sense back when it came out.  For whatever reason, I didn't connect to it at all.

Jerry (Nick Nolte) is a homeless guy who has lost his dog, so he decides to drown himself in the pool of a Beverly Hills mansion.  The mansion's owner, hanger magnate Dave Whiteman (Richard Dreyfuss), saves Jerry and decides to give the guy a break by letting him stay in the cabana. Jerry systematically changes the life of every person in the Whiteman household, from the live-in maid (Elizabeth Pena) to Jerry's anorexic daughter (Tracy Nelson) who spends the majority of the movie away at college.

The script felt underbaked, the characters weren't very realistic, and the whole thing came off as just another shiny, plastic tribute to the excess of the 80's.  Even what could have been a really touching moment, when Dave's son essentially comes out to him, fell completely flat, like the film-makers were too scared to really take a stand.  It's an emotionally neutered, bland film that squanders the talents of its three leads.

How to Steal a Million (1966)

  This movie is adorable.  I always get a little suspicious when Netflix recommends something to me with five stars.  I feel like it's a little hyperbolic of them to predict that I'll "love" whatever it is.  But their algorithm was absolutely spot on.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching this movie.

Nicole Bonnet (Audrey Hepburn) is the daughter of a French count and noted art collector.  Only she knows that her father's (Hugh Griffith) famed collections are forgeries, done by the man himself.  She urges him to be more circumspect, but he blithely decides to loan a (forged) Cellini statue to a Parisian museum.  The same night as the statue's grand unveiling, Nicole stops a thief (Peter O'Toole) from taking one of her father's Van Gogh's.  This "society burgler" is just the man she needs when she discovers that the museum is bringing in an expert to verify the statue's authenticity in order to issue an insurance policy on it, so she hires him to steal it from the museum.  Of course, he's not exactly who he is pretending to be because where's the fun in that?

It's a William Wyler comedy, for those of you who know what that means, and it's available on streaming right now.  Better hurry before Netflix changes its mind again.

Doomsday (2008)

  I think this movie is totally underrated.  It's a fun popcorn flick with a lot of badass elements and I really think it's a shame that more people don't talk about it.

In the near-ish future, a virus breaks out in Scotland that devastates the population.  The government essentially quarantines the whole country, building a wall to keep the infected in until the virus runs its course.  A generation later and the virus returns, this time in London.  Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) is given the mission of taking a team past the wall to find a cure believed to be created by a doctor named Kane (Malcolm McDowell).  Sinclair and her team discover that, far from being a desolate wasteland, Scotland is now essentially two separate kingdoms.  One is a Mad Max-style cannibalistic rave led by Sol (Craig Conway) and the other is a faux-Camelot led by Kane.  Sinclair and team must navigate through these two groups in order to find a cure before England devolves into  the same chaos.

According to the movies, Britain is just one sneeze away from tearing itself apart at any given time.  Look at V for Vendetta and 28 Days Later.  That whole "stiff upper lip" "Keep Calm and Carry On" thing is just a cover for the mad panic lying under the surface.  For some reason, I think that's hilarious.

Anyway, like I said, this movie is far better than I think people believe.  I don't know if it just didn't get good marketing or what, but it didn't perform well at the box office and I think everybody just decided to forget about it.  Here's the thing, though:  Neil Marshall directed it, the same guy who blew everyone away with The Descent and the criminally under appreciated Dog Soldiers.  For that alone, you should give it a chance.

Golden Globes Nominations 2015

This totally snuck up on me this year.  I guess because the Oscar Nominations don't come out until mid-January, I was thinking the Golden Globes were closer to the end of December but here they are!  I freely admit that I haven't seen anything nominated this year (like every year) but I will do my best to see as many as I can, especially if they also get the nod from the Academy.

Best Motion Picture, Drama

Boyhood
Foxcatcher
The Imitation Game
Selma
The Theory of Everything

Best Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical

Birdman
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Into the Woods
Pride
St. Vincent

Best Director, Motion Picture

Wes Anderson, "The Grand Budapest Hotel"
Ava Duvernay, "Selma"
David Fincher, "Gone Girl"
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, "Birdman"
Richard Linklater, "Boyhood"

Best TV Series, Drama

The Affair
Downton Abbey
Game of Thrones
The Good Wife
House of Cards

Best TV Series, Comedy

Girls
Jane the Virgin
Orange is the New Black
Silicon Valley
Transparent

Best TV Movie or Mini-Series

Fargo
The Missing
The Normal Heart
Olive Kitteredge
True Detective

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama

Steve Carell, "Foxcatcher"
Benedict Cumberbatch, "The Imitation Game"
Jake Gyllenhaal, "Nightcrawler"
David Oyelowo, "Selma"
Eddie Redmayne, "The Theory of Everything"

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama

Jennifer Aniston, "Cake"
Felicity Jones, "The Theory of Everything"
Julianne Moore, "Still Alice"
Rosamund Pike, "Gone Girl"
Reese Witherspoon, "Wild"

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical

Amy Adams, "Big Eyes"
Emily Blunt, "Into the Woods"
Julianne Moore, "Maps to the Stars"
Quevenzhane Wallis, "Annie"
Helen Mirren, "Hundred-Foot Journey"

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical

Ralph Fiennes, "The Grand Budapest Hotel"
Michael Keaton, "Birdman"
Bill Murray, "St. Vincent"
Joaquin Phoenix, "Inherent Vice"
Christoph Waltz, "Big Eyes"

Best Actress in a TV Series, Drama

Claire Danes, Homeland
Viola Davis, How to Get Away with Murder
Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife
Ruth Wilson, The Affair
Robin Wright, House of Cards

Best Actor in a TV Series, Drama

Clive Owen, The Knick
Liev Schreiber, Ray Donovan
Kevin Spacey, House of Cards
James Spader, The Blacklist
Dominic West, The Affair

Best Actress in a TV Series, Comedy

Lena Dunham, Girls
Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
Gina Rodriguez, Jane the Virgin
Taylor Schilling, Orange is the New Black

Best Actor in a TV Series, Comedy

Louie C.K., Louie
Don Cheadle, House of Lies
Ricky Gervais, Derek
William H. Macy, Shameless
Jeffrey Tambor, Transparent

Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture

Patricia Arquette, "Boyhood"
Jessica Chastain, "A Most Violent Year"
Keira Knightley, "The Imitation Game"
Emma Stone, "Birdman"
Meryl Streep, "Into the Woods"

Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture

Robert Duvall, "The Judge"
Ethan Hawke, "Boyhood"
Edward Norton, "Birdman"
Mark Ruffalo, "Foxcatcher"
J.K. Simmons, "Whiplash"

Best Screenplay

Wes Anderson, "The Grand Budapest Hotel"
Gillian Flynn, "Gone Girl"
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, "Birdman"
Richard Linklater, "Boyhood"
Graham Moore, "The Imitation Game"

Best Actress in a TV Movie or Mini-Series

Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Honorable Woman
Jessica Lange, American Horror Story
Frances McDormand, Olive Kitteridge
Frances O'Connor, The Missing
Allison Tolmon, Fargo

Best Supporting Actor in a TV Series

Matt Bomer, The Normal Heart
Alan Cumming, The Good Wife
Colin Hanks, Fargo
Bill Murray, Olive Kitteridge
Jon Voight, Ray Donovan

Best Supporting Actress in a TV Series

Uzo Aduba, Orange is the New Black
Kathy Bates, American Horror Story
Joanne Froggatt, Downton Abbey
Allison Janney, Mom
Michelle Monaghan, True Detective

Best Actor in a TV Movie or Mini-Series

Martin Freeman, Fargo
Woody Harrelson, True Detective
Matthew McConaughey, True Detective
Mark Ruffalo, The Normal Heart
Billy Bob Thornton, Fargo

Best Foreign Film

Force Majeure (Sweden)
Gett:  The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (France)
Ida (Poland)
Leviathan (Russia)
Tangerines (Estonia)

Best Animated Film

Big Hero Six
The Book of Life
The Boxtrolls
How to Train Your Dragon 2
The Lego Movie

Best Original Song

"Big Eyes" Lana Del Ray, "Big Eyes"
"Glory" John Legend and Common, "Selma"
"Mercy Is" Patti Smith and Lenny K, "Noah"
"Opportunity" "Annie"
"Yellow Flicker Beat" Lorde, "The Hunger Games:  Mockingjay, Pt. 1"

Best Original Score

The Imitation Game
The Theory of Everything
Gone Girl
Birdman
Interstellar

Looking over the list, I don't really see any surprises.  Except maybe for Jennifer Aniston being nominated for anything and the inclusion of Tim Burton's Big Eyes, which I haven't heard a lot of people talking about.  Even the TV categories (which you guys know I will never be current on) don't hold a lot of upsets.  Mainly because I'm so far behind I've never even seen these shows.

So there you have it.  I know it's a day late, but it's finals week.  You're lucky I'm lucid.  As usual, links go to movies I've already reviewed while bold type are movies I haven't seen.  Also as usual, the latter drastically outweighs the former.  I really am going to have to get off my ass and get to the theater in these last couple of weeks.

The Illusionist (2010)

  This isn't the one you're probably thinking of.  This is a French animated film nominated for an Oscar back in 2011.  The other one has Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti.

This is an odd, sad little movie.  It's better than The Triplets of Belleville but that's about all I can say in its defense.

Tatischeff is a Parisian magician who finds himself pushed into ever more obscure venues as stage acts give way to rock and roll bands.  While performing in a pub in Scotland, Tatischeff meets a young woman named Alice, who still believes magic is real.  Despite his mounting debts, Tatischeff does everything he can to prolong her sense of wonder.

This was a very difficult movie for me for me to connect with emotionally, probably because there is almost no dialogue.  Instead, I was forced to judge the characters on action alone and, frankly, Alice comes off as kind of a brat.  She's not bitchy or rude, but her sense of entitlement that someone else was going to magically get her whatever she wanted, got on my last nerve.  Also, the sad decline of the other performers was just too depressing.  I cared more about what was going to happen to them than I did to the two main characters.

I was wrong before.  There was one other thing that I liked about this movie and that was the landscapes.  The background animation of the Scottish lochs and some of the countryside scenes were so beautiful I wanted to screenshot them and use them as artwork.  If only for that, I can see why it was nominated.

Sinister (2012)

I recently re-watched this one with a friend I used to work with.  I finally got around to replacing the TV that Rob took when he moved out and I wanted to test it out, so I invited my friend for movie night.  She had never seen Sinister and, since I have apparently burned out every other friend I have with regard to horror movies, I jumped at the chance to show it to her.  She enjoyed the film but told me that if she had been watching it by herself, she would have turned it off at the first jump scare and then started texting everyone she knew so she wouldn't feel alone. I feel that proves the success of this movie.  I know I was struck once again by the effectiveness of the sound effects.  I don't have a surround sound set-up any more, but I still felt like this was one of the best atmospheric movies I have seen in a long time.
Originally posted:  6/10/13    I subjected Rob and Christy to this one last night.  I don't know if they'll ever let me pick a horror movie again.  I've gotten pretty jaded, considering that every advertisement for the latest horror flick uses the words "intensely scary!" or "scariest movie ever" or "you will pee yourself in fear!"  And then I see them and I come away dry-pantsed.

This movie, though, is the real deal.  I kept getting more excited the more I watched.  It hit all the right categories.

Good mythology:  10 out of 10
Good creature/special effects:  9 out of 10
Creepy-ass imagery:  8 out of 10
Creepy-ass soundtrack:  9 out of 10

I only took a couple of points off because all the really disturbing shit was already in all the trailers which detracts a bit for me.  I'm tempted to add them back, however, just based on the possibility of a cool Halloween costume.

True crime writer Ellison (Ethan Hawke) has spent the last ten years chasing the elusive scent of success.  His latest venture is to move his wife and two children into the house previously inhabited by a family that was ritualistically murdered.  You know, for research.  Ellison soon finds he's out of his depth when he starts watching a set of home movies he finds in the otherwise empty attic instead of turning them over to the police.  Ellison violates the first rule of horror films:  By putting his desire for fame ahead of his family's well-being, he sows the seeds of his own destruction.

You gotta love a clearly defined morality.

Anyway, he figures out that each roll of film is a gruesome murder of a family, with the added punch of one child just going missing.  He reaches out to a local professor (Vincent D'onofrio) to get some help with a symbol found at all of the crime scenes and discovers the legend of the Eater of Children.  Then shit really goes down.

Domino (2005)

  I live to be as cool as Domino Harvey.  If even half the shit in this movie is true, that was one of the most badass chicks to ever walk the face of the Earth.

Domino (Keira Knightley) is the daughter of a Hollywood movie star and a former model.  She could have turned into a A-list socialite, but instead gave up a career as a model for Ford and became a bounty hunter under Ed Moseby (Mickey Rourke).  Domino, Ed, and their third partner, Choco (Edgar Ramirez), run bonds out of Los Angeles for a man named Claremont Williams (Delroy Lindo), until a simple assignment turns into a clusterfuck of missing millions, a one-armed man, and the Mob.

This movie makes me happy on so many levels.  It's got sex, humor, so much violence, crazy shenanigans, celebrity hostages, mysticism, mescaline, and Jerry Springer.  Shake all that up, set it on fire and you have Domino.  If that's not enough, it was directed by Tony Scott from a screenplay by Richard Kelly, the guy who wrote Donnie Darko.  It's amazing.

My Life in Ruins (2009)

  Christy had recommended this to me a long time ago, back when she was allowed to pick movies once a month but it was already in my Netflix queue then so I watched I Hate Valentine's Day instead.  I chose poorly.  This is a much better, or at least much less annoying, film.

Georgia (Nia Vardalos) moved to Greece to be a history professor but works as a tour guide instead.  The groups she takes around are more interested in shopping and ice cream than they are in history and culture, a fact that Georgia hates.  Her boss (Bernice Stegers) assigns her the worst equipment, hotels, and tourists in an effort to make her quit, even going so far as to agree to let a fellow tour guide, Nico (Alistair McGowan), have her stake if he can turn her group of tourists against her.  But with the help of a ribald widower (Richard Dreyfuss) and a hirsute bus driver (Alexis Georgoulis), Georgia rediscovers her joie de vivre.

There are no surprises here, but it's not trying to reinvent the genre, just tell a decent enough story with a few laughs.  Vardalos's particular brand of humor works in this setting and it seems age-appropriate.  I would give it a C+ on a grading scale.

There was one thing that stuck out at me after seeing this film and Dodgeball.  You wouldn't think those two movies would have anything to do with each other, but both feature actresses pretending to be disgusted by their real life husbands.  Christine Taylor and Ben Stiller have been married since 2000, and Vardalos has been married to Ian Gomez (Andy from Cougar Town) since 1993.  Gomez has a small part in this as a hotel manager who attempts to extort sex from Georgia in exchange for a stamp.  It's a little thing, but I thought it was a funny coincidence that I would happen to watch them back to back since I can't think of another movie off-hand that features that kind of relationship.

Dodgeball (2004)

  I have never been a big Ben Stiller fan.  I have softened towards him in recent years, mostly thanks to Tropic Thunder, but a lot of his earlier work I find derivative and annoying.  With that in mind, I thought I would re-watch one and see if it was still awful or if I was being unfair towards it.

Peter (Vince Vaughn) owns a small local gym.  Unfortunately, his soft-heartedness and lack of ambition prevents him from collecting dues owed by his members and his gym is being foreclosed on by the bank.  They have sent a lawyer, Kate (Christine Taylor), to work with Peter on getting his gym in order before it is bought by Globo-Gym, a huge fitness corporation run by White Goodman (Ben Stiller).  Goodman is determined to run Peter out of business and to nail Kate, so when he finds that Peter has entered a team to the National Dodgeball Championship in Las Vegas in the hopes of winning $50,000 to pay off the bank, Goodman enters a team as well.  After a tense showdown between the two groups in the local bar, legendary dodgeball coach Patches O'Houlihan (Rip Torn) offers to coach the Average Joe's to victory.

This was not nearly as bad as I remember it being.  It has its off-putting moments but overall it's a decent comedy.  Ben Stiller is almost physically unrecognizable which helped me distance my dislike for him from this movie.  It also has good supporting help from Justin Long, Alan Tudyk and Stephen Root.  There are also a number of great cameos, particularly near the end of the movie.

This film has a huge fanbase already, so if you've never seen it, you'll probably like it.  I still wouldn't own it, but I'm not going to rush to find the remote if I come across it on cable.

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002)

  I watched this on Thanksgiving because it seemed appropriate.  This used to be my go-to movie when I was breaking in a new boyfriend and needed to see how much girly shit they would put up with.  True story:  one of them cried.

Sidda Walker (Sandra Bullock) wrote a play based on her childhood memories, memories her mother, Viviane (Ellen Burstyn), disagrees with vehemently.  Fearing that the two may never reconcile, Viviane's friends Teensy (Fionnula Flanagan), Necie (Shirley Knight) and Caro (Maggie Smith) travel to New York City and essentially kidnap Sidda, returning her to her Louisiana roots in order to show her the true story behind her mother's actions.

The relationship between mothers and daughters is a strange thing.  I don't know how it is for boys since I'm not one, but girls go through a time where mothers are the enemy and, if they're lucky, eventually grow to be equals.  Some people even end up being friends.  I think it comes from a level of understanding that is reached as you age.  When you're a kid, no one tells you things because they don't think you'll understand and you can't be trusted to keep your mouth shut.  When you become an adult and the floodgates open, it makes you wonder if you ever knew these people at all.  My brother didn't find out until he was fifteen that we were only half-siblings and that I had a whole other family he never knew about.  I didn't find out about a family member's prescription drug addiction until her funeral.

I totally get what this movie is saying about not judging the people you love based on half a story.  I'm not going to say that it's the best movie on family dynamics in the world, because it's not.  It's a pretty standard chick flick in that it's more about feelings than logic, but if you're into that sort of thing, knock yourself out.

The Natural (1984)

  I may have mentioned before that I am not a sports person.  This is true.  I have grown to enjoy attending certain sports, however, as there is something about the live event which is vastly more entertaining than watching it on television.  Sports movies tend to fall into one of two categories:  epic or complete crap.  The Natural might be the absolute apex of the epic category.

Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) has an incredible talent for baseball.  He is on the verge of getting signed by a Major League team when he is shot by a crazy woman (Barbara Hershey).  Her motivations are never explained and it doesn't really matter.  The point is that she wrecked his entire life.  But, sixteen years later, at the age of 35, Roy gets another shot and is signed to the New York Knights.  The team manager, Pops (Wilford Brimley), thinks Hobbs is a complete waste of his time.  What he doesn't know is that Hobbs could be the one thing that gets him out from under the oppressive thumb of The Judge (Robert Prosky).

This is so much more than a baseball movie.  You could change the window dressing and this story would work anywhere.  It's about honor, fighting for your dream, and believing that you have a purpose.  Also about the dangers of following a strange woman up to her hotel room.  I don't think that gets emphasized enough.

My mom told me to make sure I wasn't sleepy when I started watching it because it's very slow.  I can see where she was coming from, but I want to make it clear that I never once got bored with the pace.  It is something to watch when you can pay attention, certainly, because there's way more talking than playing but don't be put off by the lazy nature.  It moves like honey and is bathed in the same color light.  Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel (yes, he's their dad) did a gorgeous job capturing the hazy sunshine quality of late spring/early summer and the film really evokes the feeling of baseball season.

Dirty Pretty Things (2002)

Happy Thanksgiving!    Ok, so the poster is a little misleading.  The deal, as near as I can tell, is that Audrey Tautou was everyone's darling after Amelie so they put her front and center, but she's not really the main character in this film.

This turned out to be a completely different movie than I was expecting.  I hadn't heard much about it, I don't remember it coming out in theaters, but I like Tautou and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is actually the star, so I bought it.  I think I expected it to be something in the vein of The Last Seduction but it's more Extreme Measures, if you catch my drift.

Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is an illegal immigrant living in London.  He works as an unlicensed cab driver by day and a hotel desk clerk at night.  When he absolutely has to sleep, he rents a couch from one of the hotel maids, Senay (Audrey Tautou), an illegal Turkish immigrant, or goes to the hospital morgue to play chess with one of the porters (Benedict Wong).  It's not a great life, but he gets by.  That is, until he finds a human heart stopping one of the hotel toilets.  His boss, Juan (Sergi Lopez), is completely unconcerned but the incident makes him curious about Okwe's past.

It works as a thriller mainly because Ejiofor is so good.  I wouldn't say that it's a great movie necessarily, but it might be one that gets better on repeated viewings.  It is definitely not one to put in while you're trying to digest your Thanksgiving food baby, though, partly for the content and partly because it's fairly slow-paced.  If you're going to watch this, do it on a day where you're awake and perky, not planning your Black Friday excursions.

Syriana (2005)

  This movie was super-depressing.  It's all about power and greed and the corrupting influence of money.  These are important topics, to be sure, but they don't make for light watching.

The plot can basically be broken down like so:  the lives of a CIA field agent (George Clooney), a business advisor (Matt Damon), an emir's son (Alexander Siddig), a DC power broker (Christopher Plummer), a Texas oil man (Chris Cooper), and a lawyer (Jeffrey Wright) all intersect around a deal over oil.

As many of you regular readers know, it has been a struggle lately to get enough movies watched during the week to keep to my usual schedule.  This is because, like many people, I work full-time and also go to school.  So I'm reduced to watching movies and TV in 15-minute increments.  That is not the way to watch this film.  I'm not saying it can't be done, but it really shouldn't.  Especially if this is a subject you are at all interested in.  If you're a reasonably cynical or well-informed person, there's nothing here that you didn't already know/suspect but the execution is solid and there are enough famous faces sprinkled in that you'll want to pay attention.  Odds are good I'll never re-watch this film simply because I did find it depressing, but that shouldn't stop you if you want to see it.

Memories of Murder (2003)

  I'm really starting to appreciate the seamless melding of genres in Korean films.  This one starts out with the Keystone Kops, then morphs into Zodiac.  It's funny until it's not and you're on the edge of your seat and then left with an ending filled with poignancy.  I don't know how they do it.

In 1986, South Korea's rural areas did not have cutting edge police techniques.  So when a serial killer starts picking off women during rainy nights, the local force is completely ill-equipped to deal with it.  A detective from Seoul (Kim Sang-kyung) is brought in but soon finds himself at odds with the local lead detective (Song Kang-ho), who resents the city-boy's obvious contempt.  But as the bodies keep piling up, the two men must overcome their differences in order to track down the killer.

I had previously seen Mother by Bong Joon-ho and found it interesting but not particularly gripping.  Memories of Murder was much more in my wheelhouse because you know I love me some serial killer movies.

I have been sitting here staring at this screen, trying to figure out how exactly this movie is different from the 1001 other police procedurals and I cannot come up with a single reason.  But it is.  It made an indelible impression in my mind and there are scenes that I know will revisit me in the quiet moments between thoughts.  Maybe it was the cinematography.  Some of the master shots were just breathtakingly beautiful.  Much like the main character, I believe I will be haunted by this film for years to come.

Dirty Harry (1971)

  The older I get, the more I appreciate this movie.  This is now at least the third time I've seen it and it only gets better with each viewing.  I can't say that about a lot of movies I've seen.

Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) is a San Francisco cop.  He's not pretty, he's not nice, but if you need something done, he's your man.  And right now, he's exactly what San Francisco needs, because there's a lunatic with a sniper rifle out there calling himself Scorpio (Andrew Robinson) who is on a killing spree.  Harry and his new partner, Chico (Reni Santoni), must draw out the nut job while avoiding being his next target.

Long before there was hotshot badass cop Riggs from Lethal Weapon, there was Dirty Harry.  This movie gets bonus points for also being probably the most awesome advertisement for .44 Magnum handguns ever.  Seriously, I don't even like guns and I can quote that entire speech right now.

Stand by Me (1986)

  This is another of those 80's classics that I'd never watched.  I know a lot of people have very fond memories of it but it just did not resonate for me.

Four boys set off on a 30-mile journey on foot to see a dead body in the woods in the late 1950's.  Along they way, they deal with weighty issues children really shouldn't have to bear.  Gordie (Wil Wheaton) has survivor's guilt after the death of his brother (John Cusack) stemming from the realization that his parents definitely loved their older son more.  Chris (River Phoenix) has been labeled a bad seed just because of the family he was born into, no matter what his actions are.  Teddy (Corey Feldman) idolizes his father, even after the man almost burned his ear off, and struggles to reconcile his fantasy with reality, and Vern (Jerry O'Connell) can't find the jar of pennies he buried under the porch because his mom threw away his treasure map.  Okay, so maybe they aren't all weighty issues.

Like I said, this movie is held in extremely high regard by people, and if I had seen it when I was closer to the target age, I might have been one of them but as a 32-year-old woman who has seen her share of dead bodies, it just didn't hold much emotional appeal.  However, it was completely worth it to see John Cusack and the other boys as young as they were when they filmed it.  Wil Wheaton still looks almost exactly the same but holy shit did Jerry O'Connell grow up.

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

I have now watched this movie twice and I still like it.  I bought it, obviously, because it's a Die Hard movie and I have all the other ones.  The blu-ray came with an option for theatrical or extended cut, so I watched the extended.  Having only seen it upon its debut, I wasn't really sure if I would recognize the extended parts.  I'm pretty sure it was just more violence and maybe some more interaction between father and son.  I do know that they cut the phone call with daughter Lucy from the beginning.  It doesn't really change the movie in any way, so if you already formed an opinion you're probably going to keep it.  I stand by my decision that this is a fun popcorn flick and I support the R rating.  It's just not John McClane if he can't say "yipee-ki-yay, motherfucker".  Original review:  9/16/13     Everyone talked about how awful this movie was, but I liked it. Even now, it has a 14% on Rotten Tomatoes.  I liked it more than Live Free or Die Hard and that one was far more of an accurate assessment of what could happen in a SCADA attack.  Which may explain why it didn't do so well.

John McClane (Bruce Willis) goes to Russia after his son, Jack (Jai Courtney) is arrested.  What he doesn't know, since the two have been estranged, is that Jack is undercover on a CIA op to get Yuri Komorov (Sebastian Koch), a political prisoner, freed from custody.  Yuri has access to a file of information about the current Russian Minister of Defense, Chagarin (Sergei Kolesnikov).  Unfortunately, John McClane's mere presence is enough to throw off the most carefully laid plans.  After his op is blown, Jack and John must find a way to stop the bad guys and repair their damaged relationship.

This one made absolutely no sense whatsoever.  There were some serious narrative shortcuts going on here.  I recognize that, and yet, I still thought it was a fun movie.  If you go into it with low expectations, you'll probably have a pretty good time too.  I thought it was nice that they managed to get Mary Elizabeth Winstead back for some continuity and it's always good to see Bruce Willis blow stuff up.  I'm still on the fence about Jai Courtney.  They keep trying to make him happen but I don't know if he has what it takes.

Nixon (1995)

  I was really impressed with Oliver Stone's JFK so I thought I'd give his other presidential treatment a chance.  Turns out, I don't know nearly enough about the Nixon administration to be able to enjoy this movie.

I know some stuff.  Mostly from other movies like All the President's Men.  This only briefly touches on Watergate, however, covering from the late 60's through his resignation.  Since all of this happened before I was born, I did not have a firm grasp on who everyone was supposed to be so most of the characters meant nothing.

Richard Nixon (Anthony Hopkins) rose from a poor Quaker family in California to Vice President of the U.S. under Dwight Eisenhower.  He lost the bid for President to John F. Kennedy and then the California gubernatorial election, after which he promised his wife, Pat (Joan Allen), that he was done with politics.  They were not done with him, however.  After JFK's assassination, Nixon is persuaded to run again by some Texas businessmen, led by Jack Jones (Larry Hagman), who are dissatisfied by the current state of affairs.  He had previously campaigned under a tirade of fear and Communist paranoia spurred by his contemporary, Joseph McCarthy, and employed those same tactics to leverage his way into the White House, despite an almost pathological unlikeability.  Nixon became dangerously paranoid himself, and had every conversation in the Oval Office recorded, a fact which would later bite him in the ass.

It took me three days to watch this movie and I felt like it should have come with a companion history book.  That being said, Oliver Stone is a hell of a film-maker.  The acting is interspersed with actual news footage from the time, which is usually a tired gimmick, but here really does make it feel like it's part of the historical tapestry.  You can't really tell from the poster but Anthony Hopkins nailed the Nixon look.  He doesn't sound like him and the nose is wrong, but the mannerisms and sweaty skeeviness are dead on.  As good as he is, though, Paul Sorvino is absolutely amazing as Kissinger.  I totally didn't recognize him.  Every one else (and there are a ton of famous people in this) looks exactly the way that they always do, which made it even harder on me.  I didn't know who they were supposed to be, so it was hard not to think of them as just themselves.  Like, I don't know who Alexander Haig is, so now I think Powers Boothe was Nixon's right-hand-man.  Ditto for James Woods and David Hyde Pierce.  That probably makes me an idiot, but I'm ok with that.

Big Hero 6 (2014)

  Holy crap, you guys.  I have no idea what happened yesterday, but I could have sworn I published my post on Die Hard with a Vengeance.  That is my bad and I apologize.  Then I almost forgot to publish this one today!  What is going on?

But I remembered and we're just going to go from there like it never even happened.  Ok!

Hiro (Ryan Potter) is a whiz with robots, graduating high school at 13, but he really has no ambition other than to kick ass at underground bot fights.  His brother, Tadashi (Daniel Henney), convinces him to try out for an elite robotics program at the nearby college by showing him the personal health care robot he has built named Baymax (Scott Adsit).  Hiro impresses robotics genius Robert Callaghan (James Cromwell) and industrialist Alistair Krei (Alan Tudyk) with his invention of mind-controlled microbots, but then the entire hall goes up in flames.  Tadashi runs back inside to save Callaghan but neither man comes back out.  Hiro is overwhelmed with depression until he discovers that the fire was set to cover the theft of his invention.  He decides to turn squishy, non-threatening Baymax into a superhero to stop this masked man from taking over the city.

This was a much darker animated film than I was anticipating.  I was thinking it was just going to be a cute Marvel tie-in with a lovably squeezable robot and precocious child solving crime.  Instead, it's much more about grieving, the importance of friends, and the desire for revenge.  The theater was full of small children that probably did not understand a tenth of the themes being presented.  I'm not sure that it mattered to them, but it annoys me that parents don't do research.  Not all animation is aimed at the 3-5 age group.

It is not all dark clouds and adult themes, though.  Most of this movie is just as fun as you would expect it to be and I loved the setting of San Fransokyo.  It seemed like a real city with a ton of available storylines just waiting to be explored.  The plot didn't hold any surprises, but I didn't feel that diminished the impact or the enjoyment I felt.

There is a post-credit sequence (it's a Marvel movie) and it is absolutely adorable.  The movie also comes with an appetizer in the form of an animated short called Feast about a little dog named Winston and his big appetite.  I didn't think it was as good as last year's Paperman, but it's still really cute.

Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)

  Gun to my head, I could not tell you which I loved more:  Die Hard or Die Hard with a Vengeance.  The original is a classic, but because it is set during Christmas, I find it hard to watch any other time of the year.  It just feels wrong.  Vengeance is not tied to a holiday, however, you can't have the third one without the first or the entire plot falls apart.  Let's just say they are both awesome.

John McClane (Bruce Willis) is targeted by a terrorist bomber named Simon (Jeremy Irons) and must perform a series of increasingly difficult challenges in order to prevent more explosions.  One of his first brings him into contact with a Harlem shopkeeper named Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson) and the two become unlikely partners as they race to figure out Simon's true objective.

I have seen this movie like a billion times.  This is the first time I have ever turned on the feature commentary, though.  The director, John McTiernan, and the screenwriter, Jonathan Hensleigh, were the two main voices.  I found Hensleigh to be annoying as the track went on, but McTiernan had some real gems of information.  For instance, the only two substantial uses of CGI in the film were the water in the tunnel (which McTiernan hated because water is a bitch to get right) and the sandwich board in Harlem.  Apparently, they realized that morning that it would probably be a bad idea to have your actor actually wear a signboard proclaiming a certain racial slur in a populated neighborhood that may or may not care that you are only doing a movie.  So at the last minute, they switched it to a blank one and digitally added the letters later.

More fun facts:  they actually drove the cab through Central Park, it's apparently really hard to flip a Mercedes (they had to build a cannon), and John McTiernan bought one of the dump trucks.  Why the fuck you would buy a dump truck from your movie set instead of a hundred and one other cool props, I do not know.  But he has one.

Titus (1999)

  And we are back on track!  Normally, I like to give myself around 24 hours to really digest a movie but that just hasn't been in the cards lately, so you'll forgive me if this is a little spotty.

Titus Andronicus (Anthony Hopkins) is Rome's greatest general, most recently victorious over the Goths.  He has taken their queen, Tamora (Jessica Lange), and her sons as hostages.  When he returns, he learns that Caesar has died and left two sons, Saturninus (Alan Cumming) and Bassianus (James Frain) fighting over the people's vote.  Titus' brother, Marcus (Colm Feore) announces that the general has won the people and the empire is his if he wants it.  He refuses and backs the oldest brother, Saturninus, who immediately turns around and demands Titus' daughter Lavinia (Laura Fraser) for his bride.  When Bassianus runs away with her, Saturninus marries Tamora instead.  Now Empress of Rome, she turns all of her power to destroying the Andronicus family.

I have a couple of notes about this movie that aren't really relevant but I feel like saying them anyway.  One:  I put this in my queue two or three years ago and it is just my fucking luck that it shows up now when I'm reading The Merchant of Venice for my English class.  I cannot escape Shakespeare.  Two:  I'm 83% certain Alan Cumming dresses like his character here all the time at home.

This is probably one of the most stylistic adaptations I have ever seen.  Director Julie Taymor plays with ideas and themes without tying them to a particular time or place.  For anyone else it probably would have been a hot mess but somehow Taymor pulls it all together into a highly inventive fever dream of a play.

Oh, I should probably mention for those of you not familiar with the source, this is one of the bloodiest plays Shakespeare ever wrote and deals with rape, murder, and cannibalism.  Just, you know, FYI.

Darkwing Duck

I know the past couple of weeks have been kind of sparse.  It's one of those times where I've got a TV series from Netflix and one from my personal collection happening concurrently.  Well, technically, I'm borrowing Dexter from Christy.

I just finished season one of Darkwing Duck, so we should be back to normal starting tomorrow.  Remember Darkwing Duck?    I used to watch this, TaleSpin, and Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers religiously as a kid.  When I saw that Netflix had it on disc I couldn't resist revisiting.

Superhero Darkwing Duck is St. Canard's premier crime-fighter.  With the help from his ward, Gosalyn, and pilot, Launchpad McQuack, Darkwing battles evil-doers from F.O.W.L.

Honestly, this show is primed for a comeback.  Superheroes are huge right now and Darkwing is a great cartoon.  It needs to be tweaked, of course.  I found it super irritating that the episodes didn't follow any sort of arc and that there were no introductions to supporting characters or villains outside of the pilot.  I'm not sure if that's just how they were aired or put on disc in that order, but I wasn't a fan of that.

The positive thing is that they are a great bunch of characters and villains.  There are so many storylines that could be done with them if someone would take the time to flesh them out.  I heard that Count Duckula might be getting a movie next year, so Disney needs to get on the super-duck train ASAP.

Dracula Untold (2014)

  This is not going to be the majority opinion, I am sure, but I really liked this movie.  I was that weird girl in elementary school who read every legend and account of Vlad the Impaler.  While I think the movie has some execution (ha!) issues, overall it took a tired old concept and revamped it (I am on a roll!) using what inspired Brom Stoker instead of his work.

Vlad Dracula (Luke Evans) was given as a child to the Ottoman Empire by his father and learned to be a ruthless killing machine, earning the name The Impaler.  He then left the Empire to rule the principality of Transylvania, married the lovely Mirena (Sarah Gadon), and had a son (Art Parkinson).  He is trying to be a good ruler to his people and appease the sultan, Mehmet II (Dominic Cooper), but when the sultan demands 1000 boys for his army and Vlad's son as a royal hostage, he realizes appeasement isn't really in the cards.  Desperate, Vlad turns to the monster in the mountain, a creature supposedly cursed by the devil to drink human blood, and strikes a bargain with him (Charles Dance).  Vlad will have three days of borrowing the vampire's power in order to defeat Mehmet, but if he drinks human blood during that time he will be cursed forever.

There were so many things this movie got right that it almost feels unfair to talk about the stuff they got wrong.  The main issue is that it draws too many comparisons to 300 and that is valid.  A lot of the scenes, including the one where he's climbing the mountain with a red cape billowing, could have been interchangeable.  All of the side characters were total shells -- I don't remember anybody other than his best friend (Diarmaid Murtagh) getting a name -- and they don't matter at all.  They focus so much on how good and self-sacrificing Vlad is, it almost strays into piousness.  The man murders a lot of people, so it strikes kind of a false note.

That being said, there was so much vampire lore here.  They got aversion to sunlight, silver, and holy items, enhanced strength, speed, and senses, the ability to call and transform into animals (specifically, bats), and of course the blood drinking.  The Master Vampire had a lot of similarities to Murnau's Nosferatu, while Evans went the more modern vampire-with-washboard-abs route, and the armor reminded me of Gary Oldman's in Coppola's Dracula.  But not in a "we're totally copying this" way, more of the "hey, we saw that too, wasn't it neat?"  It just felt like the makers had a lot of love for vampires and Stoker's version in particular, especially the way they tied up the ending.  It is open-ended but didn't feel like the obligatory push for a sequel.  Instead, it set up the cyclical nature of the story and left the rest to the audience.

I was not expecting a love letter to a horror icon.  I was expecting a popcorn flick with a decent cast.  I was pleasantly surprised and I think you will be, too, if you give it a chance.

Fall 2014 TV

I know, this is another of my crap posts about TV because I don't have any movie ones ready.  Still, I try to stay current and I haven't done one on this season's new crop yet.

  The biggest new thing this year is obviously Gotham.  I've watched the first four episodes now and I'm finding it to be shaky at best.  I get what they want to do by making a procedural set around Jim Gordon (Ben Mackenzie) as an honest cop dealing with corruption and weirdos but I feel like they are seriously fucking around with canon timelines and I just don't know how far they'll be able to stretch this premise. 

  I am much happier with Selfie, a show I initially wrote off as sounding stupid, but was suckered in by Karen Gillan and John Cho as leads.  This modern-day My Fair Lady sees Eliza (Gillan) hiring Henry (Cho) to improve her real-life image, as she has based everything she is around her online persona.  It sounds flimsy but I think there is a lot of room to grow, especially once they start fleshing out some of the side characters.

The award for Most Improved Series is going to Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for taking the show in a much darker arc.  Honestly, Hydra was the best fucking thing that could have happened to them.  I still think they need to kill Ward (Brett Dalton) off, since there's no reason for him to still be on this show, but I'm sure they'll do something with him.  It makes me excited for Agent Carter, which is coming out as a mid-season show around December or January, I think.

I haven't added a lot to my roster this season.  Frankly, I don't have a lot of time and I end up getting way behind on things and having to catch up all at once.  I set Constantine up to record but I haven't watched it yet.  I wasn't kidding when I said I had 30 episodes each of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.  Literally every moment I have not being asleep, eating, or doing homework, I have been watching those two shows.  I'm down to three left of each so I can hopefully get back to the final season of Dexter tomorrow and then it's back to business as usual.  Just bear with me until then.

Cirque du Soleil: La Magie Continue (2001)

    I turned in my paper today.  I'm just thankful it's over.  I even managed to watch at least a movie for you guys, even though it's really more of a performance.

I love Cirque du Soleil.  I try to see one per year live and I own several others on DVD.  There is nothing like them in all the world, as far as I know.  La Magie Continue was the second full-scale production of Cirque du Soleil, back when they were struggling Canadians and not global phenomenons.  It originally premiered in 1986, and was a financial flop.  I guess somebody repackaged an old recording because this doesn't even look like something filmed in 2001.

It's easy to look back now, in light of all their success, and say that you can see the seeds of what would become an amazing troupe of performers, but I'm not going to lie.  This is bare bones stuff.  They just didn't have the money to really blow people away, but there is no denying the amount of talent their people have.  There are a couple of juggling acts, a contortionist, a trapeze artist, and a group of tumblers, plus a performance by a trio of Chinese "Meteor Jugglers", which I have just learned from Circopedia is the proper name for somebody who spins two bowls of water attached to a rope while doing acrobatic tricks.

The show only runs about 50 minutes, which feels really short especially for a Cirque show.  I would say give it a watch if you're interested in seeing the origins of Cirque du Soleil, otherwise, I would probably watch one of the newer ones.

My Week with Marilyn (2011)

  I have a confession to make.  I didn't finish my English essay yesterday.  I'm only halfway done.  I don't think I've ever struggled this hard to put words on paper before.  It's very unpleasant.  Not to mention has thrown off my entire weekend.  I don't have a single thing drafted for Monday's post.  It took me a day and a half to get through an episode of The Voice and I still have one episode left of Dexter season seven.  Y'all, I am stressed.

Not as stressed as Marilyn Monroe, though.  That poor bitch.  This movie is a dramatization of a memoir written by Colin Clarke, who was a young third assistant director on Lawrence Olivier's film with Marilyn called The Prince and the Showgirl.

In the movie, Clarke (Eddie Redmayne) and the rest of the crew are fascinated by the glamorous Monroe (Michelle Williams), but the production begins to suffer due to her personal problems and lack of experience, infuriating director and co-star Olivier (Kenneth Branagh).  The more Olivier screams and harasses, the more withdrawn Monroe gets, until she will only allow Clarke near her.

Michelle Williams does a phenomenal job of playing the delicate-as-tissue-paper Monroe without making her seem pathetic or annoying.  This is a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown, totally isolated by her fame.  Emma Watson has a good supporting turn here, as well, as the wardrobe girl thrown over by Clarke for the chance to be near Monroe.  She only has a few minutes of screen time but she feels very real in the part.

I've personally never seen what the fuss over Marilyn Monroe was about.  Ok, she was pretty for the time but I've never felt there was anything particularly special about her.  I think I can empathize with this character but only because of Michelle Williams' portrayal.  Still, it's a very good movie and it did make me want to watch The Prince and the Showgirl, so there's that.

ABCs of Death (2012)

  I'm supposed to be writing a four- to six-page paper for my English class right now.  Instead, I'm writing this blog post.  That probably says something about me, but I don't care.

This is billed as a horror anthology but it's really not.  I would only consider one short, "E is for Exterminate", as real horror out of the whole alphabet, but it is pure nightmare fuel.  Most of the others are just gory and gross.  There are a few that are legitimately uncomfortable to watch ("L is for Libido" and "P is for Pressure") and a couple that are really funny ("Q is for Quack", "N is for Nuptials") but I found the vast majority to just be kind of meh at worst and conceptually fascinating at best.

That should probably get more of an explanation.

Ok, so there are 26 shorts, each by a different director exploring death.  Some went for the splatter factor, some went for the concept.  "S is for Speed", for example, explored the idea of a woman running from Death figuratively as she dies from an overdose.  "X is for XXL" showed a woman who'd rather be thin and dead than overweight and ostracized.  To me, this is more interesting than just showing people dying in various ways.

I doubt I'd ever watch any of these shorts twice but I am planning on seeing the second anthology when it becomes available.

Unbreakable (2000)

  As an origin story, this isn't a bad superhero movie.  I have issues with the writing, the pacing, and the style, but not with the fact that it is a superhero movie.

David Dunne (Bruce Willis) thought of himself as just a normal guy until he was the only survivor of a train crash.  He walked away without a single scratch, much to the relief of his family.  Then he is contacted by a mysterious man named Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) with a curious theory.  Price believes that David is his natural opposite, a man who cannot be hurt.  Price was born with a rare genetic disease that makes his bones super-brittle, so he read a lot of comic books as a child while waiting for things to mend, which is when he began developing the idea that comics are a form of oral history, only dressed up for marketing.  David initially believes Price is a crackpot, but cannot deny that there are things about himself that are strange.

I felt like the whole comic book angle was completely overplayed throughout the movie.  It's a neat idea, but not one that has to be shoved down an audience's throat.  I think if that had been more subtly handled, this would have been a smoother film.  The pacing was glacial with a subdued color palette that washed everything in blues and grays. The only person who really pops on screen is David, which makes sense from the comic book angle, but again, could have been a more subtle inference.

As a side note, what is up with Shyamalan and water?  Haven't like three of his movies revolved around it?  The Lady in the Water is the most obvious, but he's used it like Kryptonite for this movie and Signs.  There are probably others but I haven't really made a point of watching his films after that whole The Village disappointment.

The Boxtrolls (2014)

  This was the sweetest movie about genocide I've ever seen.  LAIKA is fast becoming my go-to studio for kids movies that aren't really for kids.  When I went to go see Coraline in the theaters, there was a little girl next to me who pulled herself into her jacket like a pillbug because of some of the imagery in that film.  It even freaked Christy out.  I didn't like ParaNorman as much, partly because I felt like it overplayed its hand.  The Boxtrolls is less overt horror, but what it does have lingers with you.

Fair warning, I would seriously reconsider taking any child under the age of seven to see this movie.

The good people of Cheesebridge have been living under the threat of monsters in their midst.  Boxtrolls are slithery creatures who come out at night to snatch unwary children.  They know this is true because of the oft-repeated cautionary tale of the Trubshaw baby who was stolen and presumably eaten.  That is until the town leader's daughter, the intrepid Winnie (Elle Fanning), sees a boy out amongst the Boxtrolls and starts to wonder.  Eggs (Isaac Hempstead Wright) has been raised by the Boxtrolls, but is troubled by the disappearances of many of his friends, orchestrated by Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley) and his squad of exterminators.  Snatcher has wrangled a promise of a prestigious white hat from Winnie's father, Lord Portley-Rind (Jared Harris), upon proof that every last Boxtroll has been eliminated.  The hat would allow him entrance into that rarefied echelon of cheese tasting only populated by the upper crust.  He is not about to let his future be derailed by a little girl in pigtails or a boy wearing a box.  Winnie and Eggs must somehow save the Boxtrolls and sway public opinion about them as well.

There is a thread on the IMDb message board describing this movie as a kids version of the Holocaust, and while I think that is an exaggeration, there is no denying the dark themes present here.  The Boxtrolls are persecuted, imprisoned, and forced to labor on a machine meant to cause their destruction.  Eggs deals with attempting to straddle two worlds, ultimately trying to decide who he is and who he wants to be, while Winnie struggles with having a father who would rather taste cheese than acknowledge her.

I'm clearly a fan of their process, but I don't have nor particularly like children.  Your tolerance may be lower.  Bear that in mind before heading off to the theater with your tots.

Forbidden Zone (1982)

  I don't even have the words to describe this movie.  Other than weird.  So very, very weird.

You guys know who Danny Elfman is, yeah?  Composer extraordinaire, has worked on pretty much every Tim Burton movie, plus about 100 other things?  Did you know that he was also the frontman for 80's rock group Oingo Boingo?  Because I didn't.  Well, he also did the music and appears in this movie, Forbidden Zone, as Satan.

Frenchy (Marie-Pascale Elfman) is just a regular teen who skips school one day to investigate the mysterious door in her basement that leads to an alternate dimension.  The king (Herve Villechaize) immediately falls in love with her, causing the queen (Susan Tyrell) to become irrationally jealous.  Frenchy's brother (Phil Gordon) sets off through the door to rescue her.

Filmed in black and white with a mix of live action and animation, there's no denying Forbidden Zone is imaginative.  As a straight art piece, it's an interesting foray into a creative mind.  As a movie, it's damn near too weird to exist.  Every scene set in "school" was too bizarre for words, the characters are insane, the plot makes no sense, and the acting is godawful for the most part.

This was Richard Elfman's directorial debut, and he enlisted brother Danny and wife Marie to help him out with it.  Both male Elfmans went on to have successful careers in the industry, but this movie is proof that everyone starts somewhere.  I cannot in good conscience recommend it for light watching, but if you really want to see the genesis of a career, give it a shot.

The Perfect Host (2010)

  This was such a great mindfuck of a movie.  David Hyde Pierce is amazing.

Career criminal John Taylor (Clayne Crawford) has just committed a robbery, but cut his foot in the process.  On the lam, he cons his way into the home of Warwick Wilson (David Hyde Pierce), who is expecting guests for a dinner party.  What John doesn't know is that Warwick is far from the mild-mannered suburbanite he pretends to be.  The party quickly devolves into a dangerous game between two predators.

See, some of you might think that I have spoiled the central conceit of the movie, but you don't need the twist.  That is the mildest part of the entire film.  Watching John realize that he has picked the wrong fucking house to hide out in -- that's what you're here for.  I'm not going to say it's flawless, because there were a couple of tonal missteps, at least in my opinion, but it's definitely worth a watch.

Love and Death (1975)

  I've never watched a lot of Woody Allen films.  My mother never liked his work, so I didn't grow up with it and I've never really cared to delve that deeply into his oeuvre.  After Midnight in Paris, however, I was more willing to give him a chance.

Boris (Woody Allen) is in love with his cousin Sonja (Diane Keaton), who is in love with his brother Ivan (Henri Czarniak).  When war breaks out, Boris is sent to the front.  By pure accident, he manages to kill a dozen French generals and is labeled a war hero.  Sonja, meanwhile, has married a herring merchant and had dozens of affairs.  Boris loves her anyway and manages to woo her after her husband suffers a self-inflicted gunshot wound preparing for a duel.  They have several happy years, after a dozen miserable ones, and are finally ready to have children when war breaks out again.  Sonja has a brilliant plan, however, and convinces Boris that they should assassinate Napoleon (James Tolkan).

I've read enough Russian literature to know that this is possibly one of the best spoofs I have ever seen in my entire life.  Everything in it is perfectly on point.  Because it is so specialized, however, I'm not sure the jokes are the most accessible and you shouldn't have to have a reading list to watch a movie.  But, if you've read Dostoevsky or Tolstoy and enjoyed yourself, give this movie a try. 

The Fifth Element (1997)

  I don't know if you guys are aware, but you can totally make requests for me to watch and review specific movies.  All you have to do is write it in a comment, or email it to me.  For example, I was asked by one of my followers to review The Fifth Element, as I had not previously done so.  And voila!  Here it is.  So don't be shy.  If you want to see something specific on this blog, all you have to do is ask.

In the future, a great evil is threatening our entire galaxy.  Only a weapon created by placing stones representative of the four elements around a fifth, a perfect being, can stop it.  The fifth element is a woman named Leeloo (Milla Jovovich), who crashes into the back of Korbin Dallas' (Bruce Willis) cab after escaping from the police.  Korbin is just an ex-soldier trying to make a living and has no wish to be caught up in a bid to save the world.  But he finds himself doing just about anything to get near Leeloo, even if it means dealing with a psychotic arms dealer (Gary Oldman), a loudmouth DJ (Chris Tucker), and a nervous priest (Ian Holm).

This is the movie that put Luc Besson on the map for me.  There are just so many amazing moments in this film.  It's incredibly quotable, as well.  I don't know a single person in 1997 who didn't walk around saying "super-green" and "multi pass" like they were things.  If, somehow, you've never seen this movie, you are really doing yourself a disservice if you wait any longer.

Splice (2009)

  This was billed as a horror movie, but it's not.  Not unless you are absolutely terrified by Freudian psychology.

Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) are gene splicing wizards.  They created an entirely new organism capable of synthesizing proteins useful in pharmaceutical research and are ready to move on to working with human DNA.  However, their boss (Simona Maicanescu) pulls the plug on their research.  Undaunted, the pair forge ahead and create Dren (Delphine Chaneac), a human-animal hybrid.  Clive wants the abomination terminated but Elsa sees Dren as a test run for the baby she's too scared to have herself.  They try to keep her hidden out at Elsa's family farm but soon realize that Dren has a mind of her own.

Remember how Alien was an allegory for rape?  That's kind of what this is, except it's about raising a child and much less subtle.  Her creators are hopeful but nervous, no one gets enough sleep, it affects every area of their lives and just when they start to think it's useless, there will be a sudden breakthrough.  Then Dren becomes a teenager and everything goes to shit.  So maybe it is a horror movie after all.

Honestly, I wouldn't go to any trouble to watch this one.  If it's on, okay, but don't go searching for it. Watch Species instead.