In This Our Life (1942)

  I got this as part of my Bette Davis collection and while I didn't really connect with the story, I found it to be extremely open in its depiction of the racial discrimination so prevalent at the time.  For it to be mentioned, even in passing, was huge.  I don't think I've seen another movie from the 40's or 50's even allude to the rampant inequality that was endemic.

Spoiled but pretty Stanley Timberlake (Bette Davis) runs off on the eve of her wedding with her sister's husband, Peter (Dennis Morgan).  But her partying ways and frivolous spending soon cause her to have to move back home, only to find that her sister, Roy (Olivia de Havilland), is now set to marry Stanley's former fiance, Craig (George Brent).  Stanley immediately makes a play to win him back, is rebuffed, and storms off behind the wheel.  She accidentally strikes a pair of pedestrians and blames the accident on Craig's legal secretary, a black man, trusting that her word will see him go to prison for the crime.  Roy is the only person who believes in Perry's (Ernest Anderson) innocence and she sets out to convince Stanley to tell the truth.

There's also a vaguely creepy thread through the film concerning Stanley's relationship with her uncle.  It's clear that she's his favorite niece and he lavishes attention and money on her but his behavior strays uncomfortably close to inappropriate.  It's a masterful performance by Charles Coburn to make it so innocuous and yet so not.  It's not surprising that a story like this would interest director John Huston, who has never shied away from uncomfortable subjects.  It could have been just another silly melodrama meant to distract people from the war but it shows surprising depth and grit.

Predator 2 (1990)

I apologize for the lateness.  I had no Internet or cable for almost the entire day.  As you may well imagine, this was an intolerable situation.  It was like being back in the Stone Age.  Or the 90's.  Not sure which is more horrible.  Speaking of the 90's...    I skipped the original Predator because I bought it a while ago on blu-ray and I haven't gotten to the letter P yet.  I know I've seen this one before but it was at least 20 years ago and I remembered next to nothing about it.

Los Angeles is experiencing an unprecedented heat wave and a corresponding rise in violence.  Two rival gangs have turned the city into a war zone.  Police lieutenant Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover) is doing all he can to put an end to the hostilities but he is unprepared to face the true threat:  an alien sportsman treating the town as his own private game reserve.  The more Harrigan discovers, the greater danger he and his team are in.

This also has Bill Paxton, Gary Busey, and a very young Adam Baldwin (Jayne from Serenity, or Casey from Chuck, if you prefer).  It's definitely not the best in the franchise but it does provide a bit more backstory on the Predators.

The Invisible (2007)

  As you may or may not have noticed, I didn't get a Christy Experiment for March.  It completely slipped my mind.  I told her she could have two picks for April and this is the first of them.

Nick (Justin Chatwin) is an upper middle class high school student who is assaulted and left for dead by the local troublemaker, Annie (Margarita Levieva), who mistakenly believed that Nick dimed her out to the cops.  He wakes up a wandering spirit, trying desperately to find someone who can find his body before it actually dies.  By a stroke of luck, only Annie can hear him.

I will tell you all right now that I didn't get this movie at all.  Also, there may be some spoilers from here forward.  What the hell was this trying to say?  The rich kid deserved to live more than the poor kid?  The girl needed to pay for almost killing the boy by giving up her life?  That's not an equal exchange.  I found this movie to be baffling in that respect.  There's a whole romantic subplot where the nearly-dead boy is essentially stalking the girl by following her everywhere while she is breaking into his house to moon over his emo poetry.  I didn't get that either.  Most damning of all, it is absolutely boring to watch.

If somebody can tell me one coherent idea contained within this movie, I am all ears.  Otherwise, I have to think that it's teenaged claptrap masquerading as art.

The Impostors (1998)

This movie is just pure happiness for me.  I know I've been posting a lot of repeats here lately.  I'm finally getting to some of the ones I bought months or even years ago and never opened.  In this case, I don't even feel bad because I just want to put the word out about this movie.  I really cannot recommend it enough.  Originally posted 07 Sep 10.   This is such a great movie I'm surprised that more people haven't heard of it. I plan on buying it as soon as I can. Stanley Tucci wrote and directed it and it is adorably hilarious, very much in the style of 40's-era madcap comedies.

Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt are a couple of out-of-work actors who find themselves trapped on an ocean liner after insulting Alfred Molina's performance of Hamlet. There's a deposed queen of an unnamed country, a broke recently-widowed socialite and her death-obsessed daughter, a sheik, a suicidal entertainer, a bomb-toting terrorist, a creepy German, and a couple of con artists.

The combined star power here is pretty awesome. Molina, Isabella Rossolini, Tony Shaloub, Steve Buscemi, Allison Janney, and a bunch of other people you would recognize if you saw. So what are you waiting for? Go watch it!

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

  What is with all of these depressing movies lately?  This is the worst by far.

David (Haley Joel Osment) is a robot in the shape of a small child.  He was created to be a surrogate for childless couples in the wake of global population limits.  Once David is imprinted, his software tells him to love that person unconditionally and can never be reprogramed.  Given to a couple whose biological child is in cryostasis, David imprints on Monica (Frances O'Connor) and she is happy for a while.  But when her actual child comes home, the stress of trying to care for a robot boy is too great. Instead of returning him to the company for destruction, Monica leaves him in the woods to fend for himself.  David latches on to the idea of finding the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio so he can be a real boy and win Monica's love again.  He sets off with some help from a talking teddy bear (Jack Angel) and a sexbot named Gigolo Joe (Jude Law) to the drowned island of Manhattan to find his answers.

You know how Into the Woods is known as "no one's favorite Sondheim"?  Well, I petition to make A.I. known as "no one's favorite Spielberg".  It's slow, it's creepy, and it's bleakly depressing.  The only good thing I can say about it is that the special effects are still mind-blowingly good.  Industrial Light and Magic really knows their shit.  There are some seams, especially around the bear, but most of it is pretty flawless.  That's not enough of a reason to watch this, though, not when there's literally an entire world of other movies out there.

Immortals (2011)

I'm really biased about this movie because I'm such a fan of the director's previous work.  It's just so beautiful.  I don't even mind Henry Cavill and I really don't like him as an actor.  It's probably not his fault.  He just keeps playing stupid lugs with Jesus complexes.  A lot of people didn't like this film.  That's okay if you're one of them.  Like I said, I'm willing to follow this director wherever he goes.  Originally posted 26 Nov 11.    I finally got to see this movie.  It was everything the new Clash of the Titans should have been.

I have been a fan of Tarsem since The Cell and certainly since The Fall.  Granted, those are the only two films he's directed before this one but they were both awesome.  Mirror, Mirror looks kind of awful but I'm sure it will still be beautiful because that's how Tarsem works.  His art direction is flawless.

Even here, with his most subdued palette yet, the frames are crisp and burnished looking.  It has the same basic colors as 300 but much more vivid.  300 could look a little muddy at times.  Not here.  Plus, our good friend the Bronze Bull is back for another appearance.  He gets way more screen time this go-round than in Red Riding Hood.  And much more historically accurate, as well.

Okay, so Theseus (Henry Cavill) is the lowest rung of society, a bastard born of rape.  Shunned by his village, he grows up learning the art of a warrior from an old beggar (John Hurt) who turns out to be Zeus (Luke Evans) in disguise.  Why is the King of the Gods spending a crapload of time with some poor bastard who lives in a trailer with his mom?  Because Theseus is the only one who can save the world.  (Also, because in most myths, he's the kid's uncle.)  See, the gods promised not to interfere directly in the lives of men unless the Titans were released from their prison under Tartarus.  A sybilline oracle named Phaedra (Frida Pinto) foresees that this will soon come to pass at the hands of Hyperion (Mickey Rourke), a king who has an axe to grind at the gods.  Hyperion is looking for a weapon, the Epirus bow, which can open the prison.  Now Theseus, a nobody, has to go up against the entire army with only help from a virgin oracle and a thief (Stephen Dorff, looking damn good for his age).

Is it accurate to the myths?  Not even a little bit.  Does that really matter here?  Nope.  The movie is action-packed without feeling rushed, the acting is good, the special effects are seamless, and the art direction is gorgeous.  It's not an Oscar contender but it's still a great time and definitely on my "Buy" list.

Speaking of "buy", did everyone have a good Black Friday?  I know I did.  Rob and I have been on nights for the past month so it was nice to have the shops open on our schedule for once.  I was expecting a lot more craziness but it looked like retailers finally had their shit together.  No one got trampled, there were no fights over merchandise, and the check-out lines moved at a good clip.  Almost disappointing in a way.  Anyway, I found seasons 3-6 of Supernatural for $12 a pop at Best Buy.  Merry Christmas to me!  Yes, I also bought stuff for other people.  Rob got a handful of blu-rays including Super 8.  Here's hoping you got everything you wanted.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

I found this on the server and I'm so happy because that means I don't have to buy it!  I was going to, just to complete my collection, but now I don't need to because I own a copy.  And it's a decent-quality copy, too, unlike some which I've found on there.  What can you do?  They were free.

Anyway, I was glad I watched this again because I needed to remember what I didn't like about it.  The only thing that stuck in my mind was how awesome the mermaid battle was and I knew there was more to the movie than that.  But why focus on the negative?  This could have been so much worse!  Sure, it was still a shameless grab for cash but it has cameos from Judi Dench and Keith Richards.  Movie #5, currently subtitled Dead Men Tell No Tales is currently filming and is slated for release in 2017 so if you were hoping this series had petered out, you are SOL.  Personally, Johnny Depp can swan around in eyeliner and craft store wigs until he's in his 80's for all I care.  I love Jack Sparrow.  Originally posted 22 May 11.    This isn't a terrible film for being the fourth in a series.  I was expecting it to be kind of bad just based on that criteria but it's not.  It's a little disjointed, a little frenetic, but not bad.  

Captain Jack is back and rescuing Mr. Gibbs from the hangman's noose when he discovers that someone calling themselves Jack Sparrow has been looking for a crew and a ship.  In need of transportation himself and very upset at the copyright infringement, Jack seeks out the impostor and ends up press-ganged into service on the Queen Anne's Revenge, captained by the one and only Blackbeard, who is searching for the Fountain of Youth.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gibbs is forced into leading Captain Barbossa, now a privateer in the King's Navy and missing a leg, to the selfsame place.  Ostensibly, they are there to thwart the Spanish for the glory of England, but things are very rarely straightforward with pirates.

I have to say that this installment was much darker in tone overall than the previous three.  The characters have grown a lot more callous with regards to human life and less this-is-based-on-a-theme-park-ride-for-kids.  The mermaid battle is one example.  Even though we're supposed to be more sympathetic towards Barbossa after all we've been through together, it's hard to see his actions (I'm not going to spoil it) as anything other than those of a stone-cold calculating bastard.  

By comparison, Ian McShane's Blackbeard is kind of lackluster.  He's doesn't vary his performance enough to show real menace.  I don't want to say he phoned it in, but "ring, ring, hooker, ring, ring".  Ditto for the Spanish villain.  I didn't even catch his name.  He could have been as creepy as Tom Hollander was in At World's End as the East India Trading Company guy but he's not on screen long enough.

I thought the mermaids were a great addition but I wish Astrid Berges-Frisby had been able to emote a little more.  It was like The Little Mermaid had been Botoxed.  Hopefully, she'll have a bigger part in movie #5.  I also hope they'll fix Sam Clafin's teeth.

Blackbeard doesn't have a monopoly on being a bad person.  I'm just sayin'.

Also, stick around after the credits for a teaser clip.  It's only about half a second long but intriguing.