The Godfather (1972)

Happy Halloween!  It's my second favorite day of the year!  Here's a totally unrelated movie.

  This is one of the most iconic films in American history.  If you've never seen it, you need to bump it to the top of the queue right now.  Not necessarily because you want to, but you need this as part of your overall familiarity with film.  This put Francis Ford Coppola on the map, turned Al Pacino into a household name, and wrung one last great performance from Marlon Brando.

Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) is head of a crime family and rules his family and subordinates as well as he can.  When he is injured by a rival gang, his sons Sonny (James Caan), Fredo (John Cazale) and Michael (Al Pacino) are pulled in to the family business.  Only Michael has the ruthlessness to carry out some harsh business decisions, but it costs him on a personal level.

Every time I watch this film, I get something new out of it.  That's what makes this one of the greatest movies ever made.  I can hear three bars of the score and instantly be transported into that world.  Even at 40-years-old, it has lost none of its power.

Gigi (1958)

  After the heaviness of Gandhi, I had to take a break and watch something happy.  This effervescent little musical won Best Picture in 1958, along with eight other Oscars, for Warner Bros. 

Gigi (Leslie Caron) is a carefree Parisian schoolgirl whose grandmother (Hermione Gingold) has a family friendship with an extremely wealthy sugar baron named Gaston (Louis Jourdan).  Gaston often escapes to their house to get away from the boring rituals of upper class society.  He and Gigi have a playful brother-sister relationship but her grandmother worries about the future.  Gigi is being trained by her Aunt Alicia (Isabel Jeans) to be a respectable courtesan and Grandmother warns Gaston that his attentions may soon conflict with the path laid out for the young woman.  This forces him to reexamine his feelings for her.

Can you love a musical and still disagree with everything it stands for?  Gigi is fun, lighthearted, and entertaining but I cannot ignore the fact that it is still about a family training a girl to be a professional mistress.  And coldly roping in a family friend to be her first meal ticket.  That's hardcore.  It's also extremely catty in its depictions of how the women of Paris handle gossip about their peers.  That part is in the Pro column.  I'm not gonna lie, I laughed hysterically when Aunt Alicia and Gigi's grandmother are discussing the "suicide" of one of Gaston's exes.  That is some quality black humor in an otherwise schmaltzy musical.

Gandhi (1982)

  This is another of my Best Picture winners from Columbia.  That doesn't really do justice to the sheer epic nature of the film.  This was a monumental undertaking with a transformative performance by Ben Kingsley.

Mohandas Gandhi (Ben Kingsley) was just a young London-educated Indian barrister when he came face to face with the hypocritical rules of the British Empire in South Africa.  He began implementing his principles of civil disobedience, reaching across the religious divide to unite the mine workers and demand better treatment.  From there, he turned to his home country, linking up with a small group of highly motivated individuals, who were tired of seeing the indigenous people suffer under British rule.  Gandhi organized people of all castes to refuse participation in laws that were unjust, including the British monopoly on salt production.  He even demanded an end to hostilities between the native populations of Muslims and Hindus.

Obviously, I know who Gandhi was and what he stood for, but I don't think I ever really investigated the particulars.  I had no idea he started in South Africa and I wasn't really aware of the role he played in the establishment of Pakistan.  I don't think I can overemphasize how good Ben Kingsley is here.  For all intents and purposes, he was Gandhi to me.  He took on this role in a way that I don't think another living actor could have.  And I will tell you, I cried like a little girl for about half the three hour running time.  I was so dehydrated when this movie was over.  The word epic gets thrown around a lot for pretty much anything over two hours long but this is the real deal.  They don't make sweeping biopics like this anymore.

Micmacs (2009)

  I love Jean-Pierre Jeunet.  I have seen almost all of his films and each one is a jewel of cinema.

Bazil (Danny Boon) has had a rough experience with the arms trade.  When he was a little boy, his father was killed by a landmine and, as an adult, he was shot in the head by a stray bullet, which caused him to lose his apartment and his job.  He is adopted by a family of misfits living in a salvage yard and finds his purpose:  to bring down the two arms companies that made the landmine and the bullet.

If you've seen Amelie a dozen times but never checked out any of the director's other work, this will move you in the right direction.  It's almost a primer for some of his darker (but still whimsical) films like Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children.  Jeunet actually seems to be moving to progressively more lighthearted fare with each passing year.  His most recent feature is called The Young and Prodigious T. S. Spivet, which I have not seen yet, but is centered around a ten-year-old genius.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)

  I went hiking yesterday.  It was fine, except for the part where the trails weren't marked and we got lost for over an hour.  We made it out and back to civilization, then had pizza.  After that debacle, I was in the mood to watch something easy and funny that I didn't have to analyze.

Pseudolus (Zero Mostel) is a Roman slave desperate to buy his freedom.  He sees his chance when he realizes his master's son, Hero (Michael Crawford), is in love with the girl next door.  Unfortunately, the house next door is owned by a procurer of pleasure slaves, Marcus Lycus (Phil Silvers), and the girl Hero loves is a virgin already promised to psychotic general Miles Gloriosus (Leon Greene).  Pseudolus convinces Lycus that the virgin has a rare plague and to keep her next door so as not to infect the rest of his stock.  Matters are complicated further by the arrival of Hero's father (Michael Hordern), who thinks that the virgin is a new house maid.

There is a lot more going on in this film but I don't want to spent the next hour trying to nail it all down.  There are disguises and crackpot ideas, gladiators, breeders, acrobats, and eunuchs.  It's complicated, hilarious and a musical.  Sometimes, you need a movie that is just pure joy and for me, this is one.

The Tempest (2010)

  Julie Taymor is the only person I like doing Shakespeare adaptations.  Her sense of surrealism is perfectly matched by her subject and the result is absolutely magical.  She's such a good director, she made Russell Brand not annoying.  And I would have said that was impossible.

Prospera (Helen Mirren) was the Duchess of Milan until her treacherous brother (Chris Cooper) conspired to have her deposed and exiled with her baby for the crime of witchcraft.  She survived, washing up on an island and overthrowing the resident witch before claiming the other's servants.  Now, with her daughter Miranda (Felicity Jones) approaching marriageable age, Prospera uses her sprite Ariel (Ben Whishaw) to steer the King of Naples (David Strathairn), his son (Reeve Carney), his brother (Alan Cumming) and his advisor (Tom Conti) to the island along with her brother for a little revenge.

Everybody in this movie is fantastic.  The cinematography is beautiful, the effects are astonishingly good, the costumes are gorgeous, and the soundtrack is lovely.  There is absolutely nothing I would change.  I love love love Ben Whishaw.  He's so talented it kind of makes me want to die.  It was also great to see Djimon Honsou letting his hair down, metaphorically, as the angry spirit Caliban.  That makeup job was amazeballs.

I can't believe this only got nominated for costume design.  What the actual, Academy?

From Here to Eternity (1953)

  It's been quite a while since I broke out one of my Best Picture collections.  This sweeping tragedy won eight Academy Awards, including ones for Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed, and was nominated for five others. 

Private Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) has transferred to a different Army unit on Hawaii from the bugle corps after being supplanted due to favoritism.  His new commander, Captain Holmes (Philip Ober), finds out that Prewitt used to be a boxer and pressures him to join the division team.  Prewitt refuses so the Captain authorizes his non-commissioned officers to haze Prewitt until he changes his mind.  The First Sergeant, Milton Warden (Burt Lancaster), hates the Captain for being a lazy sod and begins having an affair with the man's brittle, dissatisfied wife (Deborah Kerr).

It's a little melodramatic for my tastes but I've never been a big fan of star-crossed romances.  I have to say it's an accurate portrayal of life in the Army, at least as far as the drinking and screwing around.  It was interesting to see Donna Reed playing something other than a perfect housewife.  As Lorene/Alma, she was steel-heartedly determined to make enough money off the soldiers stationed in Hawaii to retire back to the mainland and marry someone respectable, despite being in love with Prewitt.  It was nice to see her capable of that kind of darkness.

I Love You Phillip Morris (2009)

  This movie was so cute. 

Steven Russell (Jim Carrey) is doing time in a Texas prison for some con jobs when he meets fellow inmate Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor), who is transferring to a new section that day.  Steven is not about to let the penal institution come between him and his true love, however.  This leads to a series of prison escapes, falsified jobs, and truly outrageous cons, all in the name of love.

This is based on a true story.  That part is hilarious.  I don't know how much of it is true but even a tenth would be insane.  Jim Carrey is fantastic here, hearkening back to his early comedic successes.  Ewan McGregor is always good.  Together, they were so adorable I was actually a little sad they're not a real-life couple.  Watch this movie.  You will not regret it.

From Hell (2001)

  I think I am always just shy of actually loving this movie.  Every time I watch it I see something new but it doesn't linger for me like the best ones.  I have no idea why.

Inspector Abberline (Johnny Depp) is called to investigate a series of murders in Victorian Whitechapel.  Prostitutes are being found in grisly fashion, sometimes with organs missing or partially eaten.  Abberline discovers that all the prostitutes are connected through a secret so big it could destroy the empire and that one in particular, Mary Kelly (Heather Graham), might be the key to unlocking the identity of Jack the Ripper.

It's an interesting movie with a lot of different layers.  Heather Graham is woefully miscast and sticks out like a sore thumb but that can't be helped.  Everyone else is very good.  I can't think of anything else to say about it.

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

  This is the Christy pick for October.  She loves Channing Tatum and I just do not see the appeal.  Not that recasting him could have saved this movie; it was just an observation.

Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) is a maid.  Her dimwit cousin convinces her to donate her eggs for extra cash but the clinic is just a cover for an intergalactic dynasty to test DNA.  Every few billion genetic recombos results in what would loosely be called a reincarnation for one of the ruling Abrasax family.  Jupiter is the spitting image of their mother and this puts her ahead of the three Abrasax children, since intergalactic law states that a reincarnation can be reinstated with all of her titles and properties.  Balem Abrasax (Eddie Redmayne) sends hunters to find and kill Jupiter but his brother Titus (Douglas Booth) has anticipated that and sent a hunter of his own, a spliced wolf/human hybrid named Caine (Channing Tatum), to find the girl and bring her to him.  No one's motives are entirely pure, however, and Jupiter finds herself wading through some deadly politics with the fate of the Earth in her hands.

This was written and directed by the Wachowski twins, the same pair who did The Matrix trilogy.  There are some good ideas here but they are mostly ignored to focus on the love story between Jupiter and Caine.  I was very disappointed by that and a little grossed out because 1) Channing Tatum and 2) they're not even the same species.  Humanoid does not equal human.

The visuals are beautiful, especially the space shots, and the costumes and CGI are amazing.  It's a little murky because of the post-production 3D conversion, I think, but you can still see enough to be entranced.  Honestly, I think this might have worked better as a TV series.  Then they could have really spent the time to flesh out this story instead of squishing it into a two-hour block.  It most likely would have been prohibitively expensive with the cast so they would have to go but I still think the small screen was the way to go here.

Fright Night (2011)

I really like this film.  I bought it a while ago and wondered if it was just a one-time thing, you know, how you see something and you like it but then you see it again and you think "Ugh, what was I thinking?"  But no.  Still good.  Originally posted 22 Dec 13.    I was not expecting to like this movie.  I didn't like the original and I'm not a fan of Colin Farrell.  I was pleasantly surprised, however.  Not only did I enjoy the movie, I added it to my "must buy" list (but not until after Christmas.  Everyone knows you stop buying for yourself this time of year.)

Charlie (Anton Yelchin) is trying to survive high school.  It seems to be working out so far.  He's dating a hottie named Amy (Imogen Poots), he's ditched his loser best friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), and is on his way to being cool.  Then a new neighbor moves in next door.  Jerry (Colin Farrell) works construction on the Las Vegas strip, necessitating blacked-out windows and a nocturnal schedule.  Ed, however, seems to think that Jerry is responsible for the disappearances of several families in the area.  He tries to convince Charlie that Jerry is a vampire, but since everyone agrees that Jerry is a terrible vampire name, no one believes him.  And then Ed goes missing.  Reluctantly, Charlie comes to accept that all is not right with his neighbor.  He seeks out vampire expert and Vegas showman Peter Vincent (David Tennant) to help him destroy the evil before it takes everything he loves.

I was enjoying this movie in a vague way until David Tennant showed up.  That's when I decided I had to own it.  If you've only ever seen him as the 10th Doctor, you are missing out.  Marti Noxon did the screenplay and, while that is probably not a household name for many of you, her writing is whip-smart.  She cut her teeth on TV shows like Angel and Buffy the Vampire Hunter then moved on to Mad Men and Glee.  These seems like disparate shows but they're all characterized by great dialogue.  Nothing feels forced or stilted and that goes a long way with a remake. 

The CGI gets a little dodgy in parts and the vampire faces are a little cartoonish, but overall, an excellent effort.

Rabbit Hole (2010)

  This was an Oscar and Golden Globe nominee from 2011 and 2010, respectively.  I am just now getting to it.  Yikes.

Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart) are each dealing with the loss of their four-year-old in their own ways.  Where Howie finds some comfort in group therapy, Becca finds a measure of closure in stalking the teenaged boy (Miles Teller) who was driving the car that killed her son.  Not stalking like a revenge thing, more of a "if my kid had grown up, maybe this is what he would have been like" thing.

This movie is very emotional, since it does deal with a subject most people find unpleasant to even think about and I think it has a lot of really important points to make about dealing with grief and offering comfort without pushing your personal experiences on the bereaved, but it was totally a downer to watch.  If you've been feeling too happy or too up-beat lately and you want to come back down to your cold, depressing normal, go ahead and pop this into the DVD player.

Even Nicole Kidman's costumes were dispirited.  Everything she wore was drab blues or grays and wrinkled as hell.  Part of me applauds the decision to make her seem more realistic but the other part of me was slightly put off.  I have certain standards in my fictional characters thanks to the inherent fantasy of Hollywood.  I don't care if you just went through a bomb explosion, your hair should look sexily tousled and your clothes should be artfully smudged with a complementary color of dust.  I don't need a main character who is too depressed to iron.  That's my role in the real world.

Friday the 13th (1980)

  You know what month it is, right?  Halloween!  Yes, it lasts all month.  (Actually, it's just a coincidence that the next three movies I planned to watch from my personal collection were all horror films but just go with it, ok?)

This is one of the big three classic slashers.  I think it should be required watching.  One of my favorite things about it is the idea that horror doesn't just happen in October.  This is set on June 13, the beginning of summer, when things are warm and green and daylight seems to last extra long.  None of that matters when you're being stalked by a crazed lunatic and I think that's great.

Camp Crystal Lake has a history of mishaps.  In 1957, a boy drowned in the lake.  The next year, two counselors were brutally murdered.  But, in 1980, the camp reopens.  A group of kids all sign up to be counselors and agree to meet two weeks early to get the camp back in shape.  But someone doesn't want Crystal Lake back in business.  One by one, the teens are picked off in gruesome ways until only one girl (Adrienne King) is left to discover the truth.

I can't even begin to count the ways in which this film was influential.  The first person perspective, the twist ending, the now iconic score -- it adds up to a great horror flick, even if the effects are a little dated now.  It even perpetuates the tradition of A-listers boosting their careers, because Kevin Bacon is one of the counselors that breaks a cardinal rule:  no premarital sex.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013)

  Another day, another YA adaptation.  This one isn't the worst but it's not great.

Clary Fray (Lily Collins) is a normal teenager, or so she thinks, when she starts having visions of a certain symbol which no one else seems to be able to see, not even her best friend, Simon (Robert Sheehan).  Clary's mother (Lena Headey) knows what the symbol means but is kidnapped before she can explain.  Clary gets a crash course in demon hunting from taciturn Jace Wayland (Jamie Campbell Bower), head of a team of rune-wielding Shadowhunters based in New York City.  He tells Clary that because she is able to see the super-secret symbol, she is also a Shadowhunter and her mom has obviously hired someone to magically repress her memories.  The people who kidnapped her mother were looking for a magical cup, one of three objects of power given to the Shadowhunters.  Clary's mother stole it when became clear that her lover (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) was planning to use it for nefarious purposes and hidden it.  Clary and Jace must find the cup before everyone else.

Instead of following the trend of having the doe-eyed teen girl be unable to choose between two equally hot men, this one immediately friendzones the human kid and throws all its weight behind the broody outsider.  The twist is that he **SPOILER ALERT (highlight between the asterisks to read)** is possibly her brother.  Not even half-brother.  Full siblings.  **END SPOILER**  Obviously, this is not a tactic that will be emulated often but it does serve as a quick douse of cold water and also a source of hilarity for those cynical viewers like me.

I can't really say that I would encourage anyone to watch this.  I had read previously that this novel series started as Harry Potter fan fiction, with the Jace character explicitly based on Draco Malfoy.  I cannot find any actual evidence of this other than hearsay, but if you look at the movie through that lens, it's hard not to credit the rumor with truth.  Slap the dude in a green hoodie and he practically screams House Slytherin.  If you liked Harry Potter, you might like this film.  Personally, I felt that it was wildly uneven in tone, used a mashup of character cliches, and wasted several very talented actors.

Open Season (2006)

  This is actually the Christy pick for September but it didn't arrive until Oct 1.  Netflix didn't have a disc available until then.

Boog (Martin Lawrence) has a pretty cushy life for a grizzly.  He has his own bed in the garage of Ranger Beth's (Debra Messing) house, crunchy fish treats, and a job entertaining tour groups.  A mistaken act of kindness sees Boog freeing a stunned deer from the hood of a psychotic hunter's (Gary Sinise) truck.  The deer, Elliot (Ashton Kutcher), tries to repay this favor by taking Boog out for a night on the town.  The resulting damage forces Beth to release Boog back to the woods, two days before hunting season.  He has to make it back to his beloved town before he ends up a rug on someone's cabin floor.

This wasn't a terrible movie, like most of the ones Christy has picked.  I think animated films are a much safer bet.  That being said, this sure ain't no Pixar.  It's cute and some of it is funny but it relies far too much on hackneyed perceptions about forest animals.  There's no real character arc for Boog and even less of one for Elliot.  Frankly, the only consistently entertaining character was Shaw the hunter, and that's because Gary Sinise was hilariously playing against type.  I would call this middling-to-good overall.

Morning Glory (2010)

  I'm not much for rom-coms but this wasn't horrible.  I think because it focused more on Rachel McAdams' character dealing with her life, rather than just spending 120 minutes chasing some dude.

Becky (Rachel McAdams) is a plucky, abnormally cheerful workaholic producer hired to turn a flagging morning show around.  She begins by firing a lecherous co-anchor (Ty Burrell) and hiring veteran newsman Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford) for gravitas.  Unfortunately, he is bitter, jaded, and completely opposed to doing the fluff pieces viewers expect.  Becky has six weeks to get him in line and get ratings up before her show is canceled.  Meanwhile, she has to avoid sabotaging a budding relationship with another producer (Patrick Wilson).

McAdams is a modern day Pollyanna here, determined to be cheerful and upbeat every second of screen time.  It is exhausting to watch.  She also spends a good chunk of the movie running across New York City.  Literally running.  It should have been a film about marathons.

This is a very slight film and I will probably never watch it again, but I didn't hate it.  If you want a movie that you can pop on while exercising or doing chores and not feel like you're going to miss something important if you step out of the room for a minute, this is a safe bet.

Barbie: The Princess and the Pop Star (2012)

  Yeah, this happened.  No, I haven't lost my mind or been replaced by a Stepford android.  A long time ago, when I was first populating my queue, Netflix recommended this film at four stars.  I was curious what about it would garner such a rave prediction so I went ahead and added it.  The next time I checked, Netflix had changed its mind and gave it only two stars.  So I don't know if it hadn't finished computing the personalized algorithm or if it just had a bug that was subsequently corrected, but I decided to say "fuck it" and leave Barbie in there.  Five years later, it finally hit the top of the list and appeared in my mailbox.

It sucks.

I knew it would, but I was surprised by the ways in which it sucks.  I have a goddaughter who is six-years-old and loves ballet, nail polish, and coloring.  She is a girly girl.  She would have been bored to tears by this movie.  The animation looks plastic, the plot is ridiculous, there are too many characters, and the musical numbers --God help me, it was a musical-- are insipid.

Princess Tori (Kelly Sheridan) wishes she could trade places with her idol, pop star Keira (Ashleigh Ball), while the latter is in town for a concert.  Keira wants to escape the pressures of touring and longs to be waited on hand and foot like a princess.  The two girls discover that they look exactly alike except for hair color and decide to trade places for a day.  Unfortunately, Keira's unscrupulous manager (Peter Kelamis) has a plan to steal a national treasure from the castle and only these two can stop him.

Mark Twain probably would laugh his ass off if he were alive to see his novel about class inequality and non-judgment turned into a cotton candy-colored commercial.  I understand the need to sell toys.  I understand that you want to have cute animal sidekicks and lots of sparkly costumes and accessories  that are sold separately.  All I ask is that you do that without making it so blatantly obvious that it makes adults want to be lobotomized with a nail gun.

Monty Python's The Life of Brian (1979)

 This movie is not as universally well-regarded as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, at least not in my circles, but it is a classic and should be seen by everyone.

Brian Cohen (Graham Chapman) is born one manger over from Jesus (Kenneth Colley) and finds his life inextricably linked to the Messiah.  As an adult, he joins the People's Front of Judea, a rebel group attempting to force the Romans out of Judea.  They assign him the task of painting anti-Roman sentiments on the walls, for which he is promptly arrested, after a minor lesson in Latin grammar.  He is sentenced to crucifixion, escapes, is mistaken for a prophet, and is recaptured.  None of his protestations seem to matter in the slightest.

It's Monty Python's take on religion.  If you know anything about them, that sentence should tell you exactly how much mileage you'll get from this movie.  It's random and silly and the same five people play multiple roles.  There is full-frontal male nudity and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Please adjust yourself accordingly.