Last post of the year has to be a movie post, of course! I was actually going to watch something new today, but my brother and sister roped me into watching -- and laughing at -- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince again. Good times!
Taking Woodstock (2009): A fun movie but ultimately kind of empty. The story behind how Elliot Tiber (played by Demetri Martin) helped find a venue for Woodstock is interesting, and there are aspects of Tiber's life that could be played up for interest (the fact that he is gay seems thrown in more because the creators are obligated to show it for a few seconds than because it is a legitimately important part of this guy's life), but the movie just doesn't go far enough with anything and it really lacks the energy people think of when it comes to Woodstock.
Sherlock Holmes (2009): Wrote about it a bit after I saw it, but the movie feels more like a collection of cool scenes and ideas than a completely cohesive movie. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are a fun team; they have good chemistry, and I like Watson pushing back when Holmes is being a jerk. The look of the movie is cool, too, and I love the music. But it has the potential to be much more than it is, which is pretty frustrating, and for a Sherlock Holmes story, the mystery kind of blows. lol
Star Trek (2009): Enjoyed this even with my obscenely limited knowledge of Star Trek. My favorite part is the random appearance of Spock (I'm such a dork for time travel, even though it is one of the most abused plot devices in science-fiction), because, really, it's Leonard Nimoy as Spock -- even I can get hyped up for that. The action is really good, and the movie is just a bunch of lively fun. My siblings and I had a bunch of fun throwing jokes around about the redshirts. Even the red bug creature has no chance of staying alive in this movie.
Suspicion (1941): The most frustrating type of movie: It's good for 90 percent of the movie, subverting the types of romance Hollywood loves to glorify, and then the ending absolutely ruins everything. So, so bad and an infamous example of studio interference completely ruining things. The basic story behind the ending is Cary Grant's character is built to be the villain throughout the movie; he's a total asshole, he doesn't work and he gambles away the money he whittles away from the woman he married for her inheritance (played by Joan Fontaine). It's heavily implied throughout that he is a murderer, and that soon he will poison his wife. The original ending had the guy poisoning his wife with untraceable poison mixed in with a glass of milk, except she knows he will do this and writes a letter explaining everything to her mother for her husband to mail. She'll drink the poison, die and her husband will mail the evidence that will incriminate him. This ending has obvious problems (why would he mail the letter without looking at it first?), but it has a much bigger impact than the actual ending, which explains all of the husband's strange behavior as a desire to commit suicide and actually has the gall to have the wife shout, "Oh, if only I had noticed you had problems, too, then everything would have been OK all along!" Just a god awful and frankly misogynistic ending all around, all because the studio didn't have the balls to tamper with Cary Grant's image, even though he spends most of the movie playing an unsympathetic asshole. Argh. Just thinking of the wasted potential pisses me off.
On the queue for next week: I'll leave it as a surprise!
Next page: My top 25 movies I watched for the first time this year. This has a bit less quality throughout than last year (just because I watched a bunch of really great movies last year), but all of them are well worth seeing.
Total Movies: 168 (Gaslight, The Last King of Scotland, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Darjeeling Limited, This Film is Not Yet Rated, Diary of the Dead, Bullets Over Broadway, Interiors, Husbands and Wives, The Professional: Golgo 13, Lars and the Real Girl, Lolita, Quills, Hamlet, Iris, Manhattan Murder Mystery, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, The Savages, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Stranger, Love and Death, Harold and Maude, Spartacus, Scarlet Street, Sabrina, Zelig, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), Stardust Memories, Barry Lyndon, Be Kind Rewind, Radio Days, Deconstructing Harry, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Creating Rem Lazar, Undefeatable, Ninja Terminator, Ninja Dragon, Rumble Fish, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, In Bruges, The Bank Dick, Marathon Man, Clannad, Air, Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress, MirrorMask, Slither, It's a Gift, Splendor in the Grass, Waitress, North by Northwest, Monkey Business, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, The Brave One, 3:10 to Yuma, Bringing Out the Dead, Gurren Lagann: Gurren-hen, There Will Be Blood, Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder, The Princess Bride, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Spellbound, Frenzy, Anatomy of a Murder, Clue, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Changeling, Shadows and Fog, Into the Wild, Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1987), Synecdoche, New York, Carlito's Way, Shoot 'Em Up, Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Up, Yor: Hunter from the Future, Tropic Thunder, True Romance, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, A Woman Under the Influence, Casablanca, Frost/Nixon, Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Le Samouraï, Inland Empire, The Reader, Doubt, Arachnophobia, Manhunter, Wild At Heart, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, The Omega Man, Hitman, Leaving Las Vegas, Cape Fear, Say Anything ..., Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa, Chasing Amy, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Point Break, 500 Days of Summer, Man Bites Dog, Burn After Reading, Glory, Training Day, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, White Heat, All About Eve, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), The Big Heat, Death at a Funeral, Valkyrie, Shane, Stalag 17, Secondhand Lions, Bride of Frankenstein, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Witness for the Prosecution, In a Lonely Place, Dracula, Escaflowne, Dark Passage, X/1999, Watchmen, High Anxiety, Point Blank, Murder, My Sweet, The Thing from Another World, Revolutionary Road, Commando, Coraline, Rachel Getting Married, V for Vendetta, Let the Right One In, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Beast with Five Fingers, This Gun for Hire, Jackie Brown, Beverly Hills Cop, The Boys from Brazil, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Back to the Future, Shivers, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Wrestler, I Love You, Man, Frankenstein, Disturbia, Suspiria, Away We Go, Ghost Town, Gran Torino, Ace in the Hole, Repulsion, Son of Rambow, Taking Woodstock, Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek, Suspicion)
