Haha, posting this a bit later than intended -- I spent much of the morning decorating the Christmas tree with my siblings, and then talking about a bunch of dumb, random things with them. Good times. Then I watched the season finale of Dexter, which is easily the best of the four season enders, and now the wait for season five is going to be pure torture (pun not intended).
And now, movies. Yay!
Suspiria (1977): Maybe the best example of how to do a style over substance movie right. Suspiria's plot is paper-thin (an American woman goes to a German ballet school secretly run by a coven of witches), the dialogue is average at best and downright awful at worst (plus, a good portion of it is laughably dubbed in English) and the characters are not particularly deep. But the style is just out of this world fantastic. The director, Dario Argento, is amazing at using color; this movie is like a brilliant, vibrant painting stretched out over 90 minutes. Not a single frame is dull or uninteresting to the eye. There are a couple of scenes that are uncomfortable to watch, because they teeter dangerously close to the Saw-esque torture porn that I hate in horror movies, but other scene are just so elaborate and ingenious that you cannot help but appreciate (even if they are pretty violent). The opening scene is probably one of the five most famous scenes ever among horror fans.
Away We Go (2009): It's a cute, fun movie. A few critics apparently complained that the lead characters, Burt and Verona (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph, respectively), are smug and condescending, but I didn't see that at all. They come across many different families in their journey to find the perfect place for their child to grow up, and they dismiss a good portion of them because they're insane and/or broken. But it isn't as if they have no sympathy for people who have simply been dealt a bad hand by life. It happens. Bad parents sometimes get good children, and good parents sometimes get the short end of the stick. Raising a family is tough. Burt and Verona are just like any other good parents -- they want their kid to have the best life possible. The movie isn't especially realistic (Burt and Verona are mostly idealized characters in an idealized relationship, even though they have their fights), but Away We Go is a good, pleasant movie to watch. Why would people complain about this?
Ghost Town (2008): Solid movie. It follows its formula to a tee, and everything wraps up in a nice, tidy bow at the end, but it's also funny, and the characters are at least likable. Ricky Gervais plays such a perfect Grinch-type character: He's so grumpy and despicable when he wants to be, but it's also not weird and stupid when he is moved by something. I enjoyed it -- actually, it's kind of weird that Ghost Town didn't come out around the holidays last year. I think it could have been a decent movie to see on Christmas or something.
Gran Torino (2008): I am incredibly biased, but Clint Eastwood can pretty much do no wrong in my eyes. Loved this movie from start to finish even though it follows a fairly predictable story arc. But a couple of things really make the movie work for me: First, Eastwood is completely believable as an old, mean, scary bastard who nonetheless values true character in people. The character almost slides headlong into parody at a couple of points, but the movie is so surprisingly funny that I didn't mind at all.
The other thing that I love about the movie is that a lot of it is ultimately about the continued evolution of American culture as a patchwork quilt of many different types of people, but the movie doesn't shove that message down the throats of the viewers. Walt Kowalski doesn't grow to like his Hmong neighbors because he suddenly values and appreciates their culture and background -- he likes them because they're good people, and that's it. His worldview doesn't change so much as he reconnects with the kinds of things that have mattered to him his whole life. It just so happens that what is important to him is also important to his foreign neighbors. I like that approach: Everyone has his or her own culture and ways to value, but at heart, a lot of the same things are important to many different people. We take different paths but end up at the same destination.
On the queue for this week: Taking Woodstock (2009) (hopefully), Ace in the Hole (1951), Son of Rambow (2007), Repulsion (1965), maybe Suspicion (1941), maybe Star Trek (2009)
Total Movies: 161 (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)
