WARNING: THERE WILL BE A BASKETBALL RANT IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH THAT NOBODY HERE WILL GIVE A SHIT ABOUT, BUT I'M WRITING ANYWAY BECAUSE THIS IS MY BLOG.
Teen Wolf (1985): So, I watched Teen Wolf last week, actually, but forgot to write about, probably because my subconscious mind vetoed it from my memories. Seriously, though, how do you fuck up a movie about a basketball-playing werewolf? That is money in the bank! But personally, I couldn't enjoy it because all the basketball is terrible and completely took me out of every scene. How can I accept the Wolf as this amazing basketball player when he's tossing up layups like someone's grandma shooting free throws? WTF? He should have been laughed out of the gym. Speaking of free throws, couldn't someone have taught the actors how to shoot them? Though I guess that's slightly more forgivable since everyone on this team is supposed to suck. Also, apparently they're allowed to conduct themselves like hockey players since every foul is ridiculously strong and sends players sprawling to the floor. You'd think they'd be a bit more stringent about that for high school basketball.
Also, I'm very confused as to when and where Teen Wolf is supposed to take place. It has this weird 1950s nostalgia thing going on, but with modern (at the time) trappings, so I assume this is supposed to take place in the 1980s. (They probably didn't have any parties in the '50s like they have in Teen Wolf.) And since the movie was filmed in Pasadena, I'm assuming it takes place in Southern California ... I guess the whitest part of Southern California at the time, since there's like one black guy on both teams. Of everything in Teen Wolf, that's probably less likely than Michael J. Fox transforming into a werewolf. The one black guy doesn't even do anything, either! Something tells me he wouldn't be shooting spazzy underhanded layups.
If Teen Wolf were actually funny or interesting in any way, I probably wouldn't give a shit about any of this (OK, that's a lie, I'd still bitch about the awful basketball), but it's not. Man, what a disappointment.
Logan's Run (1976): This is one of the funnier movies I have watched this year; unfortunately, I think it is supposed to be serious, at least for part of it, anyway. It's difficult to tell given all the orgy rooms, human-eating robots and Michael York making computers explode WITH THE POWER OF HIS MIND. That wouldn't have been useful to Austin Powers? Come on, Basil! Anyway, of everything we saw, I think the robot was the funniest. He just hangs around waiting for people to escape so that he can freeze them for nobody to eat. That's just hilarious. The orgy room is funny, but like 99 percent of SF writers have sex on the brain, so that isn't really unusual in the genre. Plus, this is supposed to be a totally hedonistic society; I'd be shocked if they didn't have an orgy room! A close third in the funny department is the movie going on about 20 minutes longer than it should, kind of like a feature-length version of A Case of Spring Fever. Not a great movie, but it's fun to watch with other people.
The Naked City (1948): A weird sort of film noir, given that it plays like a documentary of a police investigation. No detectives doing shoe leather research in seedy environments and getting into fistfights with shady characters here. It's more like the 1948 version of CSI without David Caruso one-liners. Well, for the first half, anyway. It gets a bit more melodramatic later, but in a good way. I also really like how the story is framed, with all these little stories in the big city contributing toward the main crime in some way.
On the queue for this week: Dirty Harry (1971), Swingers (1996), Harper (1966)
Total Movies: 136 (The Taking of Pelham 123, The Station Agent, The Final Destination, Silent Movie, The African Queen, Departures, Moon, Bound, Solaris, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rifftrax), Wristcutters: A Love Story, In the Loop, Public Enemies, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (Rifftrax), Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Lagann-Hen, District 9, The Magnificent Seven, Night Moves, My Name is Bruce, Big Fan, Almost Famous, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, Drag Me to Hell, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Kara no Kyoukai 1-7, 9, Zombieland, Ninja Scroll, Primer, Re-Animator, Summer Wars, The Changeling, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Ponyo, Eden of the East: The King of Eden, Porco Rosso, Something Something Something Dark Side, Castle in the Sky, Robot Carnival, Halloweentown, Whisper of the Heart, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, Fiddler on the Roof, Kiki's Delivery Service, Genius Party, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, The Sky Crawlers, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, My Neighbors the Yamadas, THX 1138, The Stepfather, Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. The New York Knicks, Tremors, Horror of Dracula, The Brood, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, Rabid, Inglourious Basterds, Them!, The Yakuza, Alphaville, Ghost in the Shell, Priceless, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance, Whip It, A Boy and His Dog, Fletch, The Blind Side, Speed, June 17, 1994, Nobel Son, Invictus, Toy Story 3, The Two Escobars, Soylent Green, Up in the Air, Tyson, This Is Spinal Tap, The Proposition, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, The Informant!, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Macross: Do You Remember Love?, Coco Before Chanel, The Vanishing, Inception, Mind Game, Pale Rider, The Hurt Locker, Roujin Z, Broken Blade, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Black Christmas, Crazy Heart, The Man with Two Brains, Ninja Assassin, Panic Room, Mobile Suit Gundam I-III, Casablanca, Stray Dog, Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, Memories, The Gold Rush, Paprika, Martian Successor Nadesico: The Motion Picture - Prince of Darkness, An Education, Eden of the East: Paradise Lost, Dr. Strangelove, Doomsday, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Natural, Bungaku Shoujo, The Book of Eli, To Kill a Mockingbird, Aim for the Ace!, Animal House, The Princess and the Frog, Char's Counterattack, Date Night, Cool Hand Luke, Kiss Me Deadly, An American Werewolf in London, Teen Wolf, Logan's Run, The Naked City)
