Meant to write this yesterday, but I was still too tired from that marathon New Year's Eve/Day Skype session ...
This has been a good year of movie watching for me. From what I can remember, this is the second most movies I've watched in a year; don't think I'll ever top my sophomore year in college when I watched 250+ movies, haha. (That was the perfect storm of having no work, few responsibilities and several classes I barely cared about at all.) And if people watched a few of these flicks due to my posts each week, well, that's good to me too.
Let's see if I can get to 200 in 2011!
The Stepford Wives (1975): Apparently this movie battled accusations of misogyny back in the day, which is kind of hilarious if you think about it. If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of the point roaring over everyone's heads. Anyway, it's a pretty good movie, though it is kind of tough for me to evaluate since I knew the premise/twist going in. (Although, while watching the trailer afterward with Kei and Timber, I wonder if everyone knew about it. Trailers have apparently always been terrible about spoilers!)
The Beyond (1981): Ugh, I hated this. It could have been a solid supernatural horror flick, and that's what Lucio Fulci intended upon making it. However, his financial backers wanted a movie more like his earlier feature, Zombie, so he rewrote the movie to include hardcore violence and zombies. This leads to sharply contrasting mood s -- a serious approach to the supernatural with goofy, over the top violence -- that completely derail the movie. Zombie works because it doesn't take itself seriously at all; it doesn't pretend to be anything other than a gory zombie flick. But The Beyond tries to be serious, and then there are bad scenes where tarantulas rip the flesh off some guy's face. It's awful.
Romancing the Stone (1984): Wow, why did I never actually read what this is about before? Colombian drug dealers, jewel thieves, military police, adventurers, treasure maps, crocodiles ... it's got everything. At the time, I guess, there were a lot of Indiana Jones rip-offs, so the movie was initially viewed through those lens, but it's mostly similar at face value. It's more of a fun ribbing of silly romance novels. (The main character is even a romance novelist.) Good fun, I say.
On the queue for this week: Blazing Saddles (1974), The Descent (2005), Shutter Island (2010), other stuff
Final Movie Count for 2010: 190 (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, Dirty Harry, Swingers, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rifftrax), Harper, Chinatown, Hoosiers, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, Inherit the Wind, Airplane!, Emperor of the North, The Happening, Santa's Slay, Candyman, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mega Piranha, Phantasm, Goldfinger, The Thing, Black Sunday, The Devil's Backbone, Blood and Black Lace, The Hustler, Zombie, Macross Frontier The Movie: The False Songstress, Young Frankenstein, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Army of Darkness, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Radioland Murders, The Lost Skeleton Returns Again, Sunset Boulevard, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, How to Train Your Dragon, Sunshine, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, The Andromeda Strain, The Game, The Shining, Singin' in the Rain, Iron Man 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Major League, Undefeatable, Troll 2, Harry Brown, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Patlabor: The Movie, Patlabor 2: The Movie, Best Worst Movie, The Stepford Wives, The Beyond, Romancing the Stone)
