A Year of Movies

Week 7: Feb 12, 2010 to Feb 18, 2010
Total Number of Movies Watched: 17

Yes, a crazy amount this week. I wasn't feeling well, so I spent a chunk of time vegging in front of the TV watching a lot of really great movies. I'll tell you right now, I don't have a single favorite this week either--though there are a few of my all-time favorites in this week's addition. Let's get to it.

69. Inside Man -- Great heist movie. Great story. Intricately plotted. Clive Owen and Denzel Washington give some great performances in this one. Can I say 'great' one more time? Okay, great music in this one too. Yeah, I know, I made a comment about music in another movie, but I loved the background music during the opening sequence. This is one of my all-time favorite movies.

70. Night of the Living Dead (the original) -- While I wasn't impressed with the beginning of the movie, by the end, I overall liked this movie. I found a couple of the main characters annoying--the main female character and the husband who comes up from the basement (their names escape me at the moment). I've never seen this movie before, and I don't believe I've seen any of the remakes (well, I've seen Shaun of the Dead and a couple of other zombie movies, including Zombieland, but I don't think I've seen and of the 'Night of the Living Dead' remakes. Are they worth watching?)

71. Hollywoodland -- Ben Affleck was impressive in this one. I know he gets criticized for his leading man roles a bit, but I really liked him in this one. He really seemed to grasp the character's desperation well. Because of this film, I went out and watched the film that will be #83 on this weeks list. I'll talk about that later.

72. Maverick -- Mel Gibson really does comedic, action roles well. He does dark, scary action roles well too but he was quite the charmer in this one. I liked James Garner in this too. Funny movie.

73. Iron Man -- Another of my all-time favorite movies. Now, admittedly, before this movie came out, I really didn't know much about Iron Man, so I didn't know what to expect but I was blown away by how good this movie was when I first saw it in the theaters (and I can't wait to see Iron Man 2 in May). The CGI didn't overwhelm the story--it enhanced the story (and I'm hoping that element remains with the sequel). I can't imagine anyone else playing the role of Tony Stark better than Robert Downey Jr. It's good to see him get his act together--I've always been impressed by his skill. I anxiously await the other Marvel Superhero movies and look forward to hopefully seeing a movie someday which combines a number of the superheroes into one.

74. Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- Years ago, I watched this movie so many times I think I had most of the lines memorized. Still, after all these years, a very funny movie.

75. Gone in 60 Seconds (The Original) -- A much better car chase scene than the one in 'The Chase'....or even in the remake with Nicholas Cage. I mean, the last 40 minutes or so of this movie is primarily one long chase scene, with no CGI cars, no special effects, just pure driving fast and crashing hard fun. Once you get past the weak beginning of this movie, the rest is really good.

76. No Country For Old Men -- The very first time I watched this movie, I didn't like it. Then, I read the book by Cormac McCarthy, and I didn't like it. Then, I thought about the movie and the book and decided to try them both again. The second time through, I liked the movie, and the book. Now that I've seen the movie a few more times, it has become one of my favorites. It's not your traditional Hollywood movie with a tidy ending, but then, this is a Cohen Brothers movie. Excellent, dark movie.

77. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince -- I'm a big fan of the Harry Potter books and in general I like the Harry Potter movies, but I've found you can't really compare the two. Too much has been cut out of the books in order to make the movies and while this was another good installment in the movie series, admittedly, I'm anxious for the last book to be filmed (into two movies), so I can just watch the movies in order one after the other because too much of gap exists between my viewing of each movie, and there's just too much info and too many little details that exist in the books that don't exist in the movies, but it helps if you've read the books to fill in those missing details in the movie....does that make sense? Aside from money, is there a good reason to make the last book into two movies? If I recall, the last book had roughly 300 pages or so of Harry and friends camping out and basically doing very little right smack in the middle of the book. I can't imagine the filmmakers having to make a big deal about that part of the book. Or course, perhaps a good chunk of the last film will be 'the ending' a la the last thirty minutes of so of the LOTR trilogy where each character basically had their 'good bye' scene(s).

78. Mutant Chronicles -- Very dark, very bloody movie starring Ron Perlman and Thomas Jane. While not a great movie, I think it worked for what it meant to be--a dark and bloody action movie.

79. Runaway Jury -- This is one where I liked both the book and the movie even though the movie doesn't really follow the book all that closely. Lots of good actors in this--Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, John Cusack, Rachel Weisz...all doing a really great job. I loved the Hoffman-Hackman scene where they confront each other in the bathroom. Reminded me a bit of the De Niro-Pacino scene in Heat.

80. Defiance -- An incredibly moving movie based on the real story of Jewish brothers who fought back against the Nazis in WWII and survived in the eastern European woods for a couple of years with hundreds of other Jewish families whom they rescued. Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber were both great in this.

81. Lakeview Terrace -- Samuel L. Jackson is so good in this. He plays a conflicted father and cop suffering the loss of his wife, trying to raise his kids on his own, while dealing with his own prejudices (which were tied into the loss of his wife). While he was the 'bad' guy in this movie, he wasn't just your typical bad guy. At times, he really came off as being a sympathetic man--at other times....not so much.

82. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective -- Vintage Jim Carrey. Goofy. Silly. Crazy. Wacky. As I've said before, sometimes you just need to watch these mindless, entertaining movies.

83. Gone With The Wind -- As I mentioned earlier, when I watched Hollywoodland, Ben Affleck's character George Reeves makes a big deal about the fact that he was in Gone With The Wind. I've never seen GWTW so I thought, now is the time to finally break down and watch this movie. Reeves character was only in the first few minutes of the movie (which only added another level of enjoyment to the previous viewing of Hollywoodland). Anyway. Nearly 4 hours later, I was finally done with GWTW. I know this is supposed to be one of the most beloved movies of all times. I know Scarlett O'Hara is supposed to be one of the most beloved characters in movies of all times, but to quote Rhett Butler: Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. I did not like this movie and I did not like Scarlett O'Hara. I've enjoyed other 'classic' movies. I've liked other 'epic' movies. This is not one of them. I could not stand Scarlett's constant selfishness and the way she used people all the time. Some say midway through she changes with the line about how she will never starve again. I don't see the change. She didn't say 'we will never starve again (including her family) just 'I will never starve again'. And then, what did she do to make sure she never starves again? She goes out and marries a rich guy whom she doesn't love. The only 'change' this time is the last time she got married, she married a guy she didn't love to make her 'love' jealous. (And the only reason she loved the man she 'loved' was because he was in love with someone else and wasn't going to marry her.) I know, it would be easier to understand this if I included all the character's names, but I dislike the movie so much I really don't care to spend more time than I already have talking about it. And the ending--with Scarlett in tears saying 'tomorrow is another day'..... Okay. Enough. I really didn't want to be a film 'critic' here so I'll just stop.

Moving on....

84. Smokin' Aces -- Well, I had to purge myself of the previous movie, and what better way to do that then to watch something with lots of guns and lots of action. Now, I don't 'need' lots of guns and action to enjoy a movie--that's NOT why I dislike GWTW so much, but anyway, as for Smokin' Aces, it is just a wild, crazy action movie with a good twist at the end.

85. Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball -- Well, since I had this one too and I still felt the need to purge....(LOL). Not quite as good as the first movie but still a lot of action and a lot of guns and...well...some very politically incorrect action too. Considering what some of the characters do with a canon they acquire from a circus, I'm surprised some members of society didn't object to this movie....(Or did they and I didn't hear about it? Or, has this movie escaped the attention of many?)

Well, that's finally it. As I said earlier, lots of favorites this week- Inside Man, Iron Man, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, No Country For Old Men, Defiance...and of course, I don't think I need to mention the movie I liked the least this week, do I?

As I mentioned earlier, I'm not looking to become a film critic here--I generally love movies too much to really criticize them (well, usually!) -- so I'm only giving a quick overview of my thoughts here about each of these movies. I have a few friends who are equally into movies where I can talk to them for hours about characters, plots, directors, camera angles, actors etc. but those types of conversations are difficult to reproduce in this type of setting.

However, if you'd like to share your own thoughts about these movies, or want to suggest some additional movies for me to watch, I'll likely add them to my 'to-be-watched' list.

Thanks for reading and good luck with your own pile of 'to-be-watched' movies.