1,600: MURDER at 1600

The movie post that wordpress doesn't want you to see!  Between eaten posts and laziness, it seems like the count got off somewhere as far as the site here is concerned.  In truth, I'm up to 1626 at the moment. -In Bruges - a better movie than a city, if the movie can be believed.  I appreciate movies that deliberately subvert movie cliches (Hard Candy pointed out 'why are you threatening me while you're still tied up?) - in this case, it's the fact that blanks are still dangerous. Additional points are awarded for a lean and economic script that uses every part of the buffalo.  I do think, however, that this movie may in fact be zany.

-Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One - An early sort of pseudo-documentary.  Kind of interesting historically - or it would be if anyone at all claimed influence by it - but as an early example of such a common genre now it's mainly remarkable for the line 'every since we've been married I've had abortion after abortion after abortion….'

-Quick Change - This was great, it starts as a cool take on a heist and the ensuing getaway is a solid 90s comedy.  There's something about the writing conventions that just feels great when they hit the right notes.  I hope that comes from a sense of storytelling and not nostalgia.

-The Spanish Prisoner - A twisty turny Mamet thing, plus Steve Martin.  Really great until the last five minutes.  I just don't think he could have possibly gotten there that fast.

-Battlestar Galactica: Razor - This was a waste of time.  When it was new, I bet fans were happy to see nominally new BSG to tide them over, but I'll bet they would have been even happier to have a new story instead of this rehash of previously discussed events.

-Paranoid Park - Like Soderbergh, Van Sant makes the movies for everyone and the movies just for him, and in his case I prefer the latter.  This movie features the most useless subtitles ever.

-The Number 23 - Sometimes you hear about how bad a movie is, and you just have to look.  Turns out, pretty bad.  And nobody had ever even mentioned the Sin City-lookin' sequences.

-Final Destination - This was pretty dumb too.  While there's something familiar and comforting about a script that hits the right beats (in an interesting way) there's something about formulaic editing that just sucks the life out of a movie.  Line.  Cut to character about to speak.  Wait 1 second.  Character says line.  Cut to character about to speak.  Wait 1 second.  Character speaks.  Audience falls asleep.  Maybe they didn't shoot any reactions or mediums.

-Home Movie - From the director of American Movie, a series of shorts sewn together, each about people who live in unusual dwellings.  I may have oversold the movie with that last sentence.

-Ong-Bak: Thai Warrior - See, now what I learned in Gladiator (no, not Gladiator, Gladiator, from the writer of Striking Distance / director of Road House) is that the top of the head is the hardest part of the body.  Don't know why, that's just one of those things that stuck with me.  But here's Tony Jaa, going out of his way to bash people right atop their noggins with accuracy and enthusiasm.  He does a terrific job of it, going after guys in a flurry of human elbows and knees.

-The Yes Men - So these guys pretend to be these other guys, and in character as those guys they pretend to be a third set of guys who pull these elaborate pranks on the World Trade Organization.  The movie shows us some of the pranks, and how the people being pranked fall for it.  I guess you pay a ton of money to attend a conference, you don't suspect lies.  Anyway, I'm glad I didn't buy this on DVD for thirty bucks a few years ago.

-John Oliver: Terrifying Times - I have a standing appreciation of John Oliver.  I even claim that weird indie band 'before they were cool' kind of fandom.  The Department, Political Animal, The Bugle, The Daily Show, and this standup special are all the places you can enjoy John Oliver. And often Andy Zaltzman.

-Anvil! The Story of Anvil - At times almost heartbreaking, at other times so absurd and inextricable from Spinal Tap that it seems like it couldn't be real.  (The drummer is named Robb Reiner, for pete's sake.)  But hey, I want to believe.

-The Station Agent - Sought out after learning about writer / director Thomas McCarthy's involvement with the real best picture of 2009, Up.  This was roundly terrific.  I feel like it could lead to some seriously boring discussions though.

-Ninja Assassin - This was a return to $5 Mondays at Cleveland Cinemas.  Also, this sucked.  It didn't look very good, but I was hopeful based on a) director of V for Vendetta James McTeigue and b) the title.  And besides, ninjas.  And then what do they do?  CGI ninjas.  Waste of everyone's time.  Bleh.

-Avatar - I enjoyed watching this movie.

-Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian - I knew this was written by a couple of The State, but I guess I'd seen bad reviews or something.  It was mostly pretty good.  Some bits that didn't make sense to me were either explained in the first movie or didn't jibe with the first movie at all, depending on who I asked.

-X-Files: I Want to Believe - Often referred to as a 'monster of the week' movie in comparison to Fight the Future as a 'mythology' movie.  Morbidly amusing to note they killed off Mulder & Scully's child instead of having them lug him along to crime scenes or deal with babysitters or something.

-Unknown - I think I mixed this up with a Vincenzo Natali movie.  Maybe 'Nowhere.'  It was roughly Sci-Fi Original in quality.

-Sherlock Holmes - Really cool, really solid, I enjoyed this way more than I thought I would, after all the hand wringing that preceded it.  There's kind of a problem that Holmes knows all the details of a murder he neither witnessed nor investigated in any way when he's recapping everything for the audience.  Deleted scenes, I hope.  I wonder what happened to the competing Judd Apatow version...

-Up in the Air - On the one hand, this was pretty good.  But on the other, it's pretty much the same 'slick misanthrope suddenly feels the need for deeper meaning and finds it in family' thing that the director's already made two of.

-It's Complicated - Great cast, but still kind of boring.  I recall the discussion afterward being about how shoddily made parts of it were.  Bears an odd resemblance to Modern Family.

-Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask - Raised more questions than it answered, unfortunately.  How DO you make a man impotent by hiding his hat?  I've hidden hats before.  I don't -think- that was a side effect.

-Book of Eli - As of January 18, this is my favorite movie of 2010.  Cool and fun and works pretty well as Fallout: The Movie.  I felt an odd connection to it when I saw that it was written by Gary 'Gaz' Whitta, former editor at PC Gamer.  Sure, I don't actually know him, but I've read and listened to his work for a while, and it's no surprise that there are some game-like elements in the movie (a good thing).  The fact that people aren't really talking about this one is a benefit to you, the viewer.

-Across the Universe - This was strongly recommended to me, but it's not so much a movie as a collection of videos for Beatles covers.  I'm pretty sure that the reason the non-music parts don't make any sense is to cram in as many additional Beatles references as possible, but I just don't know their catalog well enough to appreciate it.  I guess I've never been into boy bands....

-Assassins - Stallone is an assassin just days from retirement, Banderas is an assassin just coming up.  Moore is a hacker in the finest 1990s computer technology tradition.  The whole thing is worth it for this one entirely inappropriate exchange.

-Laura - A fun old murder mystery where nothing is as it seems!  Really!  It's great when a movie lives up to one of those review cliches.  They probably could have sorted the whole thing out a lot sooner, but not in a 'well why didn't he say that one sentence two hours ago' kind of way.

-Heart and Souls - Kind of reminds me of the original story that lead to Monsters Inc.  Fun premise, well done, just another more or less forgotten '90s flick.

-Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil -  Not at all what I expected.  I guess it gets grouped in my head with The Bridges of Madison County or a River Runs Through It, probably for no other reason than having leafy green poster art, since I haven't seen those either.  Anyway, for some reason, I was under the impression this was going to be a good movie.

-Day Watch - Didn't like Night Watch, didn't like Wanted, didn't really like this.

-Food, Inc. - This was the movie being used to demo my new movie watchin' monitor, so I made it the first movie I watched on said monitor.  Not great.  Doesn't really add anything new to similar programs that have been coming out for what seems like years now.

-Black Cobra and Warriors of the Wasteland - Two more courtesy of Doc Mock.  Black Cobra himself, Fred Williamson, actually appears in WotW too.

And now, even shorter reviews for short films:

-Balance - A: Awesome.  It's right here if you want to see for yourself.

-Bullethead - yuck.

-Un Chien Andalou - I thought the cloud on the moon was more effective than the actual eyeball shot.

-100 Years at the Movies, President McKinley and Escort Going to the Capitol, President McKinley Taking the Oath - kind of neat, but mainly just me working on my lists at icheckmovies.

-Validation, Signs - two sketch-like shorts of a very simple premise heightened over time.  Neither mind-blowing nor disappointing.

-Hangar #5 and I Love Sarah Jane - two shorts made as effects demos, the latter in conjunction with fxphd, and notably better acting  (Sarah Jane would become Tim Burton's Alice, I think.)

-The Adventures of Andre and Wally B - very early pixar work.  Not terrific, with its off-camera punchline.

-Dug's Special Mission - Very recent pixar work.  Much more terrific.  Looney Tunes in flavor.

-9 - Slightly less good looking than the feature that followed 4 years later, but containing just about as much story.

-Some Folks Call it a Sling Blade - Another short that was expanded into a feature.  Rather less CGI intensive though.

-Anna is Being Stalked, The Delicious - two by Scott Prendergast, whom I heard interviewed on TSOYA.  The former played at Sundance.  I would not be able to explain why.  There was nothing for me in these.

-The Cat Concerto - Inspiration for the Mouse Organ?  No, that's a Katzenklavier, this is an Oscar-winning Tom and Jerry cartoon.

-The Cat Piano - speaking of the Katzenklavier...didn't really dig this one.

-Skhizein - a little bit weird and unsatisfying, which probably effectively communicates the feeling of being displaced by 97 centimeters.  Terrific idea.

and finally...

-Murder at 1600 - You might be surprised to learn that this suspense featuring Wesley Snipes as a cop who plays by his own rules and builds meticulous scale models of entire cities who is called in by White House staffers going through the motions of pretending to be interested in solving a murder and insists on pushing through the lies, upholding the law, and bringing the murderer to justice was chosen only because of the number in its title and is not, in fact, especially good.

Movie Picks for 2010

So far, I'll tell you this: Book of Eli is my favorite film of 2010.  Will it be able to hold the title after I've seen any other movie hitting theaters in the next 12 months?  Are there, in fact, any other movies being released this year?  More than 250 of them, supposedly.  Let's take a look. My categories aren't quite the same as last time, although I've got twice as many movies in my top tier, they don't represent "the best chance of both being good and doing well" so much as the titles that have grabbed my interest the strongest.  Assuming they're all released, the A-List are the movies I won't hesitate to go see, even though quality-wise there are some gambles in the mix:

The A-List: Buried, Carlos the Jackal, From Paris with Love, Get Low, Greenberg, Harry Brown, Inception, Iron Man 2, Knight and Day (sure, this might be terrible, but half of the trailer is intriguing), The Last Airbender (From M. Night, and apparently condenses 60 episodes of a good cartoon into 1 live-action movie, so it might be terrible too, but let's hope not), Let Me In, The Mechanic (the original is terrific, and Statham is probably the Bronsonest modern actor we've got), Paul, Prince of Persia (should be stuffed to the gills with neat Parkour stuff. Hopefully it's a Pirates 1 and not a Pirates 2), A Prophet, Red Tails, Splice (from Cube-master Vincenzo Natali!), Stone, Four Lions and The Town (if Affleck directs as well as last time, with Gone Baby Gone).

The B-List:  I'd like to see most of these, they've got something in their corner that makes them more appealing than 60% of this year's announced titles: 13,  The A-Team, The American, Black Swan, Blitz, Brighton Rock, Cemetery Junction, Centurion and Eagle of the Ninth (an unrelated pair of movies about the Roman 9th Legion), Clash of the Titans, The Company Men, The Conspirator, Daybreakers, Due Date, Edge of Darkness, Eat Pray Love, Enter the Void, the Expendables, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, Frozen, Green Hornet, Guardians of Ga'Hoole (from Zack Snyder), Happy Tears, Henry's Crime, Hereafter, How to Train Your Dragon (Dreamworks is a big red flag, but I like Chris Sanders...whose movie is it really going to be?), The Irishman (Cleveland mob movie!), Ironclad, Jack Goes Boating, John Rabe, The Joneses, The Karate Kid (Kung-Fu Kid, you mean), London Boulevard ([ready for closeup joke]), Lottery Ticket, Machete and Predators (representing a return to the Rodriguez that makes things), Micmacs (Jeunet), Morning Glory, Mother's Day, Mr. Nobody, Never Let Me Go, North Face, The Other Guys, Please Give, Priest, Ramona and Beezus (I hope it does well enough to spawn a sequel so we can see those french fries at the end of Ramona Quimby, Age 8), Rapunzel, Red, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead (!), The Rum Diary, Salt, Sanctum, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (worrisome, it looks like the late 80s have been thrown in a blender with Michael Cera, but on the other hand, it's Edgar Wright), Shutter Island, Social Network, Solomon Kane, The Sorcerer's Apprentice (Jon Turteltaub is one of those people that I should get on with just great, but it doesn't work - this is something that I should love, but I bet I'm let down again like Nat'l Treasure.  Ah well.  We'll always have 3 Ninjas), The Tempest, Tomorrow When the War Began, The Tree of Life, Triage, Tron: Legacy, True Legend, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, Twelve, The Way Back, The Extra Man, Wild Grass, The Winning Season, Womb, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

The C-List: These have some promise, but I'm either doubtful about the end product or there just isn't enough info out there yet to boost it to one of the above categories.  I'm sure I'll see a few of 'em, but these are more likely to be rentals because they haven't grabbed my attention (yet).  Lower expectations based on the advance material that's available right now might make for some nice surprises by year's end.

The Adjustment Bureau, Afterlife, Abel, Agora,  Animal Kingdom, The Beaver, Biutiful, Black Death, Breaking Upwards, Brooklyn's Finest, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Cop Out (I want to back Kevin Smith, but that's one rough trailer), Cracks, The Crazies, Date Night, The Debt, Despicable Me, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Dinner for Schmucks (a title that says 'no, we're not remaking a french film.  why?  what have you heard?'), The Disappearance of Alice Creed, Dorian Gray (the same one we didn't get last year), The Dry Land, The Experiment,  Fair Game, The Fighter (dropped a category from last year, somehow), The First Gun, The Ghost Writer, Glorious 39, Heartless, Hesher, Hot Tub Time Machine, Howl, The Hungry Rabbit Jumps, It's a Wonderful Afterlife, It's Kind of a Funny Story, The Kids are Alright, The Killer Inside Me, Killers (fun idea, lots of worrysome names), The Last Word, Letters to Juliet, Life During Wartime (aka Happiness 2), The Losers (is this the double for the A-Team, or the Expendables?), Love and Other Drugs, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, MacGruber, Main Street, Megamind, Middlemen, Mother and Child, My Own Love Song, My Soul to Take (the Wes Craven movie, not the duo of horror and action movies I worked on a few years ago that seem to have vanished from IMDB again), Nanny McPhee 2, The Next Three Days, Nightmare on Elm Street (couldn't've cast a better new Freddy, but it's not like any of the other Platinum Dunes horror remakes have been any good), Night Catches Us, Ondine, The Lightning Thief, Perrier's Bounty, Red Dawn, Remember Me, Repo Men (which was apparently shot before Repo: The Genetic Opera), Robin Hood, The Romantics, Route Irish, Runaways, Saint John of Las Vegas, Secretariat, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, Shanghai, Skateland, Somewhere,  Solitary Man, Stay Cool, Sympathy for Delicious, Takers, 3 Backyards, Unstoppable, Unthinkable, Valhalla Rising, Wall Street 2, Warrior, Waska,  Welcome to the Rileys, What's Wrong With Virginia, The Wolfman (I'd hope for more, but it's turned over an awful lot of creatives.  You bring in a half dozen writers, almost as many directors, editors, and composers, and there's going to be some wildly differing ideas on what kind of sauce was being made in the first place), Yogi Bear (might get a watch just for Andy Daly), You Again, and Your Highness.

No Thank You: These are mostly movies I want to avoid.  They have something (usually multiple somethings) in their corner that's working against them.  Here is the trite, the cash-grabs, the formulaic, the pot jokes, and the Jonah Hill.

44-Inch Chest,  Alice in Wonderland, Alpha and Omega, And Soon the Darkness, Area 51, The Backup Plan, The Baster, Beastly, Bitch Slap, Born to be a Star, Bounty Hunter, Burlesque, Case 39, Cats and Dogs 2 (More like G-Force 2), Chloe, Confucius, Crazy on the Outside, Creation, Cyrus (Jonah Hill?  Yuck.), Dear John, The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, Death at a Funeral, The Descent 2, Easy A, Extraordinary Measures, Fish Tank, Flipped, Furry Vengeance, Georgia, Get Me to the Gig (Jonah Hill?  Yuck!), Going the Distance, The Greatest, The Good Guy, Green Zone, Grown-Ups, Gulliver's Travels, HIGH School, Hippie Hippie Shake, Holy Rollers, I Love You Phillip Morris, Jackass 3D, Jonah Hex, Kickass, The Last Song, Leap Year, Legion, Life as we Know It, Little Fockers (the only good thing this franchise has ever brought me is a pal who liked to do Jimmy Fallon's weekend update bit on camping trips), Marmaduke, Multiple Sarcasms, Nowhere Boy, Our Family Wedding, Rabbit Hole, The Resident, The Roommate, Saw 7, Season of the Witch (flashlights off!  Don't disturb the witch!), Sex and the City 2, Shrek 4, She's out of my League, The Spy Next Door, Tooth Fairy, Piranha 3D, Step Up 3D (only, of course, because I haven't seen the first two installments of either series.  I wouldn't know what was going on), Tell Me, To Save a Life, Twilight 3 (does the fact that they're rushing these out mean the studio considers it a flash in the pan?), Tyler Perry's next cynically exploitive something something (working title), Valentine's Day (just following the Love Actually formula isn't enough to get a hopeful rating anymore, especially when this one looks to be following that formula a little too closely), When in Rome, Wonderful World, The Yellow Handkerchief, You May Not Kiss the Bride, Youth in Revolt (I can hardly imagine a less appealing movie.  Maybe if it had Jonah Hill in there somewhere), and The Zookeeper (oh.)  This category also lands Harry Potter 7 and Toy Story 3.  I'm not sure if there's a Potter entry that worked as a good standalone movie and while I'll probably end up seeing TS3, the recent double feature rerelease of the first two doesn't have me looking forward to another rehash of the same elements.

2009 of Movies

A year ago I threw imaginary darts at an imaginary wall of movies as I imagined them.  Let's see how I did. I saw 35 of 2009's releases, according to IMDB. (Edit: Should be more like 40 for the year, since IMDB lists Hurt Locker, Ponyo, Taken, Brothers Bloom, and Anvil! as 2008s) I'm pretty sure reposting last year's lists and breaking them into ratings and thumbs and stars isn't an interesting thing to do, but in broader strokes, every A-list pick I saw I liked, I liked more of the B-listers than I didn't, and I was delighted to find three I bet against on my top list for the year.

Top list for the year? Well okay.  Since this is the year that we got the results of the writer's strike, it felt kind of thin on the ground to me.  Maybe I just missed out, since it seems I only saw, say, 5 of Ebert's 21. If I have to pick ten you should take a look at, I'm going with: Anvil!, Brothers Bloom, District 9, Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, The Informant!, Moon, Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek, and my favorite movie of the year, Up (along with it's two companion shorts, Partly Cloudy and Dug's Special Mission).

Also likable enough:  Avatar, Coraline, Drag Me to Hell, Taken, Up in the Air, Ponyo, Watchmen, Banlieue 13: Ultimatum, Night at the Museum 2.

Didn't particularly like: Crank 2, Friday the 13th, Funny People, It's Complicated, Push, The Girlfriend Experience, Wolverine, Zombie Girl, Terminator 4.

Hated: Zombieland, Ninja Assassin, Monsters v. Aliens.

I still need to track down and make time for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, This is It, In the Loop, Tyson, Big Fan, World's Greatest Dad, Julie & Julia, A Serious Man, Whip It, The Road, Princess and the Frog, 9, The Cove, and just maybe The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Public Enemies, and the Hangover.  That's a list borne of things I might've picked on my own, and titles I wouldn't've expected if not for some emphatic positive reviews.

Of the 2008s I missed in last year's post, I was underwhelmed by Man on Wire and Let the Right One In (victims of their own hype?) and Timecrimes.  I liked Dear Zachary and In Bruges and Zach & Miri, and I never got to Counterfeiters, Appaloosa, or Boy A.

2010 Picks are on the way!

#1,512: Hard Candy

-Take the Money and Run – Early Woody Allen.  Has its good parts.  We don’t get too many movies built out of fun jokes anymore, like we did from the folks that came out of the Your Show of Shows writers’ room.  Something to ponder… -How to Rob a Bank – The biggest mistake made by this first time writer/director who hasn’t done anything before or since, was having some kind of free screening for the cast, crew, and family.  Without those valuable dollars, the film was left leaning on fans of 90s rock band Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale to bring in the powerful $109 opening weekend en route to a powerful thousand dollars domestic take.  Also, the movie is terrible, not least because every character talks just the same.

-The Killing -  Early Kubrick.  Only 5 big Kubricks left for me.  I didn’t like this as much as I expected to, or as much as I think I’d like hearing someone else describe it.

-Bottle Rocket -I think I saw this on TV a couple years ago, but it didn’t make the list since I didn’t remember a thing about it.  It’s only been a couple of weeks since I saw it again.  Couldn’t really tell you anything that happened in it though.

-In the Realms of the Unreal – A doc that falls short of an amazing but unknowable subject: a gentleman in NYC who spent his life writing and illustrating tens of thousands of pages of a vaguely original fantasy story.

-Crank 2: High Voltage – On one hand, basically the same movie ast he first one.  On the other hand, I liked it a lot less.  Maybe a difference between theater viewing and DVD?  Not sure.  And I’m writing this too much later to remember specifics.

-Drag Me To Hell – A big crazy cartoon.  You have to suspend your disbelief about things like there being an ice cream shop next to that fortune teller on Olive.  Alison Lohman is always great, and the whole movie is worth it for the ending.

-The Caller - This was very….French.  Like a few items in the list, the setup and the puzzle are more fun than the solution.

-Creepozoids! and Endgame and Santa Claus and Poultrygeist – Courtesy of Doc Mock’s Movie Mausoleum.  Some girl from the Horror Convention Massacre made a big deal about being in Poultrygeist.  Didn’t even spot her.

-Seance on a Wet Afternoon - grabbed because it's on a bunch of lists.  I guess mainly to showcase Kim Stanley as the 'lady Brando.'  No acting really covers the convenient plot element of crazy that pokes through just enough to blurt incriminating evidence though.  The set up was kind of sharp though.

-Topkapi - Not a big fan of this one either, I guess because I was looking for a heist more than a heist parody.  Like Seance, the crime elements work pretty well.  In this case, the extra element is: Swingin' 1960s Italy!

-They Live - Might have napped through this the first time.  Made much more sense the second time.  Maybe just the longest fistfight you ever did see.  I always think the old John Carpenter movies must have been even more awesome in their day, since today they seem watered down by having been ripped off countless times.

-Astro Boy - The digital technology is pretty impressive, the way they auto-tuned an emotion into Nic Cage's voice at some point.  Also, they should have just made everything out of the same material as Toby's invincible hat.

-The Hot Rock - Now this was a great caper.  In fact, it's a bunch of great capers, since if everything went right it wouldn't be much of a movie.  The museum sequence is genuinely suspenseful and clever and terrific.

-The Friends of Eddie Coyle - Two in a row for director Peter Yates.  Also great, but dark and noir-y where the Hot Rock was lighter and more fun.  Watch this movie.

-The Final Countdown - Do not watch this movie.  There's no more gutless, toothless, bloodless and wimpy a production made from such a great premise.  The set up: what if a 1980s aircraft carrier traveled through time to Dec 6, 1941, with Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen on board?  The answer:  the USS Nimitz will take a dog 40 years into the future, and a hell of a lot of stock footage of planes taking off and landing will be shown.  Boooo.

-Rififi - This is noir + caper + the director of Topkapi.  The crime is like half an hour of the movie, with no dialogue or non-diagetic sound. [edit to add:  and that's awesome, in case I wasn't clear]

-The Machinist - Christian Bale was pretty good in this, but I don't know if he was the machinist.  I'm not sure the pieces of the puzzle really add up correctly though, even though there's an awful lot of 'look how clever we are here' in this one.

-The Squid and the Whale - I thought this looked awful when it came out, and I liked it kind of a lot.  I even went and re-watched Kicking and Screaming again afterward.    I like Noah Baumbach's writing.  I liked how instead of kids who talk like adults because the script is clever, these kids talk like adults the way real kids do: through mindlessly parroting things they don't understand.

-Genuine Nerd - Not a good doc.  Exploitive and laughing at the subject more than with him…or..something.  Bleh.

-My Neighbor Totoro -Thought I'd go back and check out some older Miyazaki.  I couldn't tell you why this one makes so many lists though.  I just didn't get it.  Nothing actually happened.  By the time it seemed like the end of the first act, the movie was done.

Hard Candy - (Presuming you've seen this one...)

BEFORE:   That's an awesome poster.  I'll check it out.

AFTER:  That was…kind of disappointing?

I turned briefly to internets to see if I was experiencing a common problem.  No good.  The macguffin is child molestation, which a) creates a thick fog of useless rhetoric in which everyone feels the need to waste line after line decrying pedophiles, which is 1) noble and 2) necessary to ward off all the posts calling everyone discussing the movie a pedophile but not really relevant to the discussion, and b) gets me all off track with 'mole station' puns.  ("Mole Station Zebra!"  "That's no moon…." &c., &c.)

So…maybe the thing is that I'm not entirely clear on who the protagonist is.  Nobody's a hero, per se.  He's guilty, and she's some other kind of monster.  We're going to sympathize with him, because otherwise we're probably a little monstrous ourselves.  If we're going to watch him suffer for a couple hours, then movies teach us to hope to see the tormentor's comeuppance.

It feels a little bit like the Gothika problem.  That is, murdering someone who turns out to be a criminal doesn't excuse the murdering.  (Especially since in Gothika she had no idea.)  This story doesn't have the explicit moral relativism of say, Death Wish, but she does seem to get away with it.

So how is it really any different from your The Strangers or your Funny Games?  Jeff's imprisoned in his own home at the sadistic whim of some absurdly effective invader.  But, he's alone, and a criminal.  If anything, it's longer.  The in-house cat and mouse is kind of repetitive.  We could have probably skipped some of that and not missed it - the neighbor never does anything useful, for instance.

Perhaps it's just directorally weird.  The first feature from a music video director who went on to do the horrible 30 Days of Night and is on Twilight 3 now.  The physics-bending dolly move transitions, the completely weird and distracting mid-shot lighting and color changes, the vicious shaky cam to let the audience know when something exciting is going on…

…Or maybe this is just the most "torture-porn" flavored of the home invasion genre, with a big sensationalist gimmick, and a neat poster.  At least it got me to wonder about it.

Batting .333 on that batch, and there's another 30 I've already accumulated, plus maybe some year-end stuff I could do, fashionably late.

#1,514: KRAA! The Sea Monster

Surviving Disaster ended last month.  Better Radio rages on.  Applied for UCB's Maude and Beta teams.  Writing a lot of things.  Booked holiday plane tickets.  Watched some movies.  Watching movies faster than I'm writing 2 liners about 'em though, so I'm just going to do that in sections for a little while. -The Last Temptation of Christ - Courtesy of the hulu.  Started off funny.  Became less so.

-Let the Right One In - Cool, especially for explaining what happens to a vampire who ISN'T invited in.  I may have been late to the scene, but at least I saw it before the remake.

-Secret Beyond the Door... - Not a very good secret, frankly.  The orchestra liked this movie significantly more than I did.

-Closed Mondays and Your Face and Kiwi! -Animated shorts, like you read about, presuming you read about short films, or animation, or something.  Maybe a general interest publication with a particular focus this month on award-winning short subjects.  Kiwi was great.

-Shooter - I guess if they explained the shock reveal of the last couple minutes at the beginning when it was equally valid, it wouldn't be much of a movie.  Certainly, Marky Mark wouldn't've had to commit the dozens of murders he ought to be prosecuted for instead.

-Battle for Terra - Humans are the invaders! Oh no!  It wasn't clear why flying creatures need flying machines, or what they have to fear from falling.I think it looked good except for the humans, but it didn't stick with me.

-The Girlfriend Experience - A Soderbergh experiment.  Better than Bubble.  Making the story non-linear just seemed like a technique to spread a thin story...thinner?  That can't be the analogy.  That's not something you'd do on purpose.

-Toy Story and Toy Story 2 - in 3D!  Hadn't seen these before, but part 3 is coming.  Except now I don't want to see it.  Part 2 was almost exactly the same movie the first one was, with the same jokes, the same one song, same...everything.  Seems like a waste.

-Zombieland - Yuck.  This is to the zombie genre as timecrimes was to time travel.  It's the smallest possible amount of story they could bother with and still technically be a zombie movie.  Just terrible.

-The Informant! - Hey, this was really good.  Soderbergh's 90s by way of the 70s.  Lots of great comics in cameo roles, cool story, funny, well done, this is the opposite of cinematic warm mayonnaise.

-The Strangers - Worth it for one long genuinely creepy shot of Liv Tyler on the phone, with one of the strangers hanging around in the house, unbeknownst to her.

-Redbelt - I heard sometime later that this is a movie people don't like.  Those people are wrong.  Fancy Mamet-y plotting unfolds, honor is preserved.

-KRAA! The Sea Monster - Truly a misunderstood horrible monster of the sea.  Courtesy of Doc Mock's Movie Mausoleum.  (still, better than the sequel, KRAAmer Vs. KRAAmer)