Three films a day

• 1/29 – Assault on Precinct 13 (2005) (tofw)
  
  I caught the very beginning of the original on cable some years ago. I wasn’t in the mood for it, so I turned it off before things got heavy; I figured maybe I’d try to catch it when I was in the right mood. Anyway, I never got around to watching the Carpenter version but with Hawke and Fishburne both involved in the remake I figured it’d be worth a shot.

  I won’t remember anything about this movie in a week, but it didn’t hurt to watch, so I’m OK with it.   My time was certainly enhanced by little things. For instance, my companion kept a running tally of (what she considered) gratuitous curses; she lost count for a moment somewhere in the 50s, but we think 72 is about right; at least we didn’t get into Mamet territory, where a curse every other minute would be tame. We both rolled our eyes at the unnecessary (and actually unflattering) down-blouse shots of Maria Bello (which were even more noticeable than the down-blouse of Rachel Weisz in trailer #1 for Constantine). And also I realized at some point that I first encountered many of the actors on tv shows like The Sopranos (Drea de Matteo), ER (Bello), High Incident (Matt Craven), and Dark Angel (Peter Bryant & Fulvio Cecere). I kept having such little things to keep me interested, so it was an enjoyable experience, pretty much.
  
  

  Actually, the user comment IMDB served up just now nailed my general impression of the movie in its first sentence: "It seems ridiculous to say, but I liked this movie because you couldn’t predict the order of deaths". Indeed.
  
  [@Century 12 Evanston]

  
  

• 1/26 – Paris – When It Sizzles (1964) (dvd)
  I couldn’t help thinking of the much talked-about (and truly disappointing) Adaptation while watching this. Both movies mock the conventions of mainstream movie-making. Both end up being exactly what their on-screen protagonists don’t want; that is, in the end they show the same tendencies as every other cynically-made film out of the factory.  Paris When It Sizzles, which is not a well-regarded movie (and rightly so, I guess), at least does us the favor of being cute; Adaptation couldn’t even give us that much. I’m sure it could have been a much better film, though. And at some point, hopefully, I’ll get to see the French film on which this is based. I just have to wait for someone to decide it’s worth putting on DVD, I guess.
  
  

  
  

• 1/25- Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) (gitn)
  This is a love/hate kind of thing, apparently. Surprisingly enough, I come in on the love side. Big time. And I’m not exactly a fan of the other work Ferrell has done. But, well, I thought it was a terrific piece of comedy, which threw some preposterous stuff at the audience—and amazingly, a pretty decent amount of it worked for me.

  I’ve seen reviews and comments which say this movie can only be appreciated by stoned college-aged boys. And I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous. The best comedy in the movie isn’t nearly as simple as that. As David Edelstein said in his review,
  

  
  You have to imagine a narrative structure that is extremely conventional: Beat by beat, the movie could be that awful Robert Redford-Michelle Pfeiffer picture Up Close and Personal (1996). Ferrell and McKay take that template and add jokes. They add jokes so broad that scene after scene goes past dumb, past unreal, and into some stratosphere of camp that throws you totally out of the movie. Manly men discussing love break unselfconsciously into a dainty pop tune, then snap back into their brusque man-talk. Burgundy and his sports guy (David Koechner) and weatherman (Steve
  Carell) and investigative reporter (Paul Rudd) cross paths with rival
  anchor teams like street gangs: They trade insults about toilets and
  their mothers, and, in one spectacular sequence packed with star
  cameos, they go at it with guns and knives and medieval instruments.
  You’re not laughing at anchormen. You’re laughing at formula movie
  rituals blown sky-high.

  That’s exactly it! This is the kind of movie the Zuckers should have started making after, say, Top Secret! but they never seemed to sense this was the way to go.  No, better still, they should have gone this way after Police Squad was canceled; they perfected their formula with that show and everything after that was plug-and-play. Problem is, comedy suffers when it gets too predictable and everything they’ve touched since—well, everything I’ve seen—has been much too direct (for lack of a better word). This movie has the same basic nature as a Zuckers (or Abrahams, after they parted company)-style wackiefest, but its execution surpasses anything those guys have done since, well, Top Secret!.

  Oh, sure, it had its flat moments. And it was almost never die-laughing hilarious (though the previously-mentioned scene where the manly men break into song is, I must say, too good for words.) But this movie, and Ferrell, really surprised me. The people who made it (full props to co-writer Ferrell, by the way) understand the conventions and flaws of Hollywood films and mocked them unerringly.
  
  Yeah, I never expected to say these things about a Will Ferrell movie, either.
  

• 1/22 – The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) (tofw)
  
  OK, some part of me expected to be let down by this film, which is perhaps exactly why it let me down. I don’t think it’s as simple as that, though. While Wes Anderson and company made a movie which I thought was terribly funny and enjoyable at parts, I also found the whole thing a little cold and flat. Interestingly, when I asked the person I watched it with what she thought of the whole thing she used exactly those same two words to describe it: cold and flat. And she didn’t go in expecting a possible letdown. She’d never seen a Wes Anderson film and didn’t know what to expect at all, actually.

  Letdown or no, it still had some of my favorite comedic moments from this month’s worth of movie-watching. The movie brought the funny, but its family/relationship stuff just wasn’t very, um, satisfying. And since it’s a movie about human relationships, this is a weakness. A big one, if you ask me. Worth the time? Yes. But not the best these guys could have done.
  
  [@Century 12 Evanston]

  
  

• 1/18 – Bell Book and Candle (1958) (dvd)
  I didn’t know until today that there were two 1958 romances starring Kim Novak and James Stewart. Hitchcock’s Vertigo—his masterpiece, if you ask me—premiered in May and this little comedy came out in October. I don’t mind saying the better movie came first, but Novak and Stewart make this one enjoyable, as well. Even though I’ve seen it done many times before I’m still a sucker for romantic comedies which go through the classic three-step cycle (a perfect example of another three-step romantic comedy is The Truth About Cats and Dogs).

While I was sitting in Phoenix’s airport Saturday morning I started reading After the Quake, a collection of short stories Haruki Murakami wrote in the wake of two unfortunate events in Japan: the Kobe quake of ten years ago, yesterday and the sarin attack on the Tokyo subway (ten years ago, in March). I’d bought the book from a Borders in 2003—not too terribly long after I was blown away by Dance Dance Dance—but I’d never gotten around to starting it.

I’d packed the book in my carry-on for my November flight to Phoenix but I spent that whole trip playing around with my laptop, and watching a Battlestar Galactica episode I’d downloaded via Bit Torrent the night before. (Speaking of which, I have another Galactica ep waiting for me when I’m done writing this.) In fact, I was a bit surprised when I dug into my carry-on for a book and came out with After the Quake. I’d simply forgotten that I had it with me. And as the world is trying to deal with the aftermath of another major natural disater, I thought it was fitting for me to start reading it now.

At the start of the book Murakami quotes one of my favorite movies of all time, Jean Luc Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou:

radio:...garrison already decimated by the Vietcong, who lost 115 of their men…

woman: It’s awful, isn’t it, it’s so anonymous.

man: What is?

woman: They say 115 guerrillas, yet it doesn’t mean anything, because we don’t
know anything about these men, who they are, whether they love a woman,
or have children, if they prefer the cinema to the theatre, We know
nothing. They just say…115 dead.

If you know me personally and you’ve ever wondered why I get so sad and agitated watching the news, that’s why in a nutshell. Nothing has changed from then to now. I’m not saying I know how, or if, it should change. It’s still sad.

• 1/18 – Band of Outsiders (1964) (dvd)
  In some ways, with all his in-jokes and references, Godard’s early 60s films are very similar to what Quentin Tarantino does today. I think there’s a tremendous difference in the end product, though, since I find QT’s material to be empty of anything beyond the references (as Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek noted, after seeing the first Kill Bill, "Quentin Tarantino supposedly loves movies. So why is this ultraviolent, style-crazed revenge fantasy so empty?"). Godard, on the other hand, seems to explore the medium (and his ideas) and do more than simply refer. Of course, I may be giving 60s JLG more credit than he deserves; perhaps if I was as well versed in the culture of JLG’s time as I am in what QT references, I’d also find JLG’s movies hollow stylistic exercises, as well.

  I doubt it, though. I think it simply comes down to resonance, like it always does. JLG’s stuff works on me. When, for instance, (in Pierrot Le Fou) Anna Karina’s Marianne gets the better of a gas station attendant with a move she says she learned from watching Laurel and Hardy or (in Band of Outsiders) Sami Frey’s Franz calls himself Loopy de Loop, I think it’s funny. I can’t help it.

  I also laugh at how hopelessly out of their depth Franz and Arthur were (almost like Abbott and Costello, at times, actually). And they weren’t trying some elaborate, audacious bank robbery, mind you; this is one of the simplest jobs in cinematic history. But, like any heist film—whether it’s by Dassin or Kubrick or Peckinpah or Tarantino—the complications are the spice of it. The most hilarious thing to me, though, is that these guys are not your typical thugs and crazies. They’re even playful. I haven’t read the novel which inspired this movie but I doubt, sincerely, that the two are made of the same cloth. It should be a noir story, but somehow we get, essentially, Jules and Jim, but this time with guns. And that’s part of what I love about early Godard—this should have been strictly a genre film, but somehow it wasn’t.

If we operate with the belief that things happen for a reason I’m definitely puzzled by my recent upswing of Jim Backus sightings. Sure, I’ve only caught him twice in movies I’ve watched in the last couple of weeks. But. This is Jim Backus.  I can say with absolute certainty that if you don’t count Gilligan’s Island reruns, I didn’t see Mr. Backus on my screen once in 2004.  Or 2003.  This is anomalous. And it’s happened before. For example, during one weekend last summer I saw two people lose tires to blowouts, after going years without seeing even one such incident. If things really happen for a reason, the blowouts were a sign and so too is my recent Backus goodness.  It won’t be until later, much later perhaps, that I understand why. But I’m going to roll with it.

• 1/16 – Don’t Bother to Knock (1952) (dvd)
  I can describe the movie in one sentence: Marilyn Monroe does her best possible interpretation of mental illness. Maybe it’s just me, but I find that a little bizarre. Marilyn, like her mother, spent time in institutions, so I found watching the ill-fated icon as she pretended to be suffering (complete with fake wrist-slash scars) a little disconcerting.

  And this goes back to something I was telling a friend the other day. I can’t watch/read/listen to certain celebrities anymore without re-contextualizing the work around the performer’s real life. Don’t think for a second that I’m doing it on purpose, either. I guess I first noticed it happening with Judy Garland—years ago, after I found out about her personal problems, I couldn’t watch her movies without a tinge of sadness creeping into me—but it happens with a lot of different people now.

  Of course, (insert lame Jim Backus joke here; hey, we both knew it was coming and I’m too lazy to finish writing it).
  

  
  

I didn’t realize Sean Penn had recently starred in a movie about the guy who tried to hijack a plane and fly it into the Nixon White House. I’d been looking for Samuel Byck’s name on the web, on and off, for almost ten years now. It wasn’t something I needed to know, desperately, so I never tried much beyond a simple web search; I would have gone straight to the library if it’d ever become more than a silly curiosity.  It was kind of funny, I guess, because for the life of me I couldn’t write a search clear enough to find information based on the keywords I could remember: "hijack", "plane", "assassination attempt", "Nixon" Oh well. I guess I should be thankful that I had IFC on this morning. And a bit bitter that I didn’t ever read or see Assassins—especially since  I love Sondheim.

I’m always entertained by how my long term memory works (i.e. always with odd chains of associations). I remembered Byck (if not by name) because his story was mentioned in a documentary about presidential assassinations (and attempts). I saw it in the ‘83-’84 school year and it has stuck with me (because of its bizarreness) ever since. I can remember when I must have seen it because Mr. Fleming screened the movie for us in his Current Events class. The three biggest things I remember from that class were the Beirut bombing, the KAL 007 incident, and, I’m not joking, The Making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  I also seem to believe he was the guy who made our class watch On Golden Pond, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why he would do that.

What does any of this have to do with the movie I saw this morning? Nothing. I just had to shout out, with glee (with glee!), that my longest-lasting casual search for some relatively obscure thing I had sticking around in my head is finally over.

• 1/13 – Some Body (2001) (ifc)
  OK, this one completely satisfied me.  It catches the desperation, the loneliness, the thrill, and the volatility of serial dating/ random fucking and holds it up to the light.  This is the dark underside of the romantic comedies I occasionally go for. And it’s brilliant. If it’s the last movie I see this month, and it may well be (we’ll see), I’m going out on a great note.
  

  
  

• 1/10 – The Last Broadcast (1998) (ifc)
  I thought The Blair Witch Project was an interesting idea which ultimately fell a bit short of the mark. This movie, which precedes its more famous faux documentary cousin by a year, fails much more spectacularly. I don’t want to give the big twist away, but, oh god what a waste. It’s a shame, too, because I had high hopes for it, like I do most movies which try to be less "staged", whether they come from Henry Jaglom or Shane’s World.
  

• 1/11 – Supreme Sanction (1999) (tmc)
  Kristy Swanson is no Milla Jovovich. But Kristy Swanson staring down the scope of a Steyr Aug is nothing to sneeze at. Now, I’m not someone who thinks women and guns are an instant recipe for hotness, but Kristy Swanson is fun to watch. Yeah, I know what you’re gonna say and you’re right: The Buffy movie was crap. But that wasn’t Kristy’s fault; hell, it wasn’t even Luke Perry’s fault. Whether she’s playing a spooky killer robot replica of a dead girl or the most bizarre Stockholm Syndrome case in Hollywood history, Swanson brings her A-game. That’s right, Kristy is big. It’s the movies that are small.

  
  

  And this movie is almost microscopic (though The Chase will always remain her low-point). But I loved it. This cookie-cutter action-movie exchange (which I don’t think I got word-for-word, but close enough) between the movie’s two principals sealed it for me:

  Swanson: Come with me if you want to live.
  Dukes: Who are you?
  Swanson: I’m the fucking tooth fairy!

  I’m glad to know the tooth fairy gets out of Darkness Falls, on occasion. And, boy, she looks much better (though, since we’re being honest with each other, she’s not quite my type) in the daylight. Yeah, OK, her Sig Sauer helps.

  
  

And the not-so-great things keep on coming…

• 1/9 – No Good Deed (2002) (tmc)
  I lose my critical perspective when Milla Jovovich is involved.  At this point I’ve stopped pretending there’s anything I can do about it.  I’ve almost never hated a film Milla’s been in—the only exception right now is The Messenger, though the upcoming remake of Ultraviolet, one of my favorite miniseries, threatens to be a second.  If you’re not smitten with Milla this probably falls short of being worth the time. Sure, it tried pretty hard, but its mix of noir, romance, and comedy didn’t entirely work.  Still, Milla.  Milla, sitting between Samuel Jackson’s legs, with a cello in between hers.  Can you get hotter than that?

• 1/10 – Foxy Brown (1974) (actn)
  There’s a remake of this film coming up? And it stars Halle? I didn’t realize that. Hollywood, really, can’t you leave anything alone? Prediction: The new one will try to be funny ("ironic", even), and that’s exactly what’ll kill it.

  For what it’s worth, the original Foxy was decent enough, with its lesbian bar brawl; a scene where a bad guy (all the bad guys are white… duh) gets run over by a plane; and (borrowing one of Maxwell Smart’s catch phrases), "the old hiding the gun in the afro trick".  Since I did myself the favor of not taking it seriously I didn’t have any problems with it.

When I talk to non-soccer people about the FA Cup I usually liken it to March Madness, even if the comparison is a bit flattering to the basketball
tournament.  The FA Cup, after all, is bigger, open to almost all
comers (even teams outside of English soccer’s four major tiers), and
it gives the winning team a spot in an even bigger continental
competition.

Still, they are very similar, because in either tournament you’ll
get a David vs. Goliath matchup where the smaller team pulls off an
amazing upset.  I still remember when Northern Iowa beat three-seed
Missouri in the first round of the 1990 NCAA tournament, thanks to a
buzzer-beating three pointer from Maurice Newby.  Who, you ask?
Exactly. That’s the charm of either tournament, complete nobodies
standing firm against their supposed betters.

Just like the first round of the World Cup, the third round of the
FA Cup is always a joy. It gives people like me, who spend most of
their time only watching England’s twenty best sides, a chance to see
teams like Yeovil Town, Scunthorpe, and Yeading (consider them just a
few of the Northern Iowas of English soccer) take their shots at
notoriety.  Some of these teams take their chances well, too. Last year
second tier Millwall  fought all the way to the final. And in 1973
Sunderland won the whole thing while they were playing as second tier
squad—beating the then-mighty Leeds United in the final, no less.

On Saturday three of England’s Premier League teams were cut down by smaller clubs; most notably Manchester City were beaten 1-0 by nearby Oldham Athletic, a team two tiers below them. Also, Aston Villa scored against the run of play against an inspired Sheffield United, but they promptly shipped
three against the lower league squad to go crashing out, as well.

The three biggest Premier League teams had scares of their own, with Arsenal and Chelsea each needing to come from behind against their small-fry opponents.  And when storied Manchester United tried to sneak by fifth-tier Exeter City with a substandard squad they were held to a 0-0 draw  (which means United will have to play Exeter again); so embarrassed were the eleven-time winners and current holders Sir Alex Ferguson apologized for his team’s performance (I think the Aussies ought to apologize to Fergie for using that horrible photo).

Even if I didn’t hate United I’d be pulling for Exeter, of course. On top of the "little guys succeeding against the odds" angle, there’s a bottom line aspect to these situations. Little teams make scads of money whenever they take the field against a club like Manchester United or Arsenal. The heads of Exeter City, a team whose entire debt may be wiped out by their take from the first match, celebrated when they drew ManU for this round (sounds odd, right? Celebrating getting setup for a match you should, by all rights, lose). They must be thrilled that they’re getting another cut of big box office receipts.  And the chance to show United, for once and for all, who’s boss. I’d love to see them move on and make even more money from the situation.

And that’s the crazy thing about FA Cup matches: I’m not stupid enough to bet for Exeter City. But I’m also not crazy enough to bet against them, either.

I’d planned to spend Sunday watching gridiron football, but I decided instead to watch some movies.   I’m pretty sure I made the right choice, because I really wasn’t interested in either game.

• 1/9 – Knights of The Round Table (1953) (tcm)
  After swallowing every last drop of the awful King Arthur last month (I never thought I’d hate a movie co-starring Keira Knightley; I even liked Love Actually) I figured I’d give this cheesy 50s technicolor swashbuckler a chance.  I’m glad I did.  It’s entertaining and goofy (the combat scenes are pretty laughable, actually). Sure, it does not compare to either the greatest swashbuckler (Curtiz’s The Adventures of Robin Hood) or the most interesting King Arthur story (Boorman’s Excalibur, which is based on the same book as this), but it was worth the time all the same.

• 1/9 - The Last Waltz (1978) (tmc)
  Ten years ago I didn’t really get the appreciation some of my friends had for The Band (and the idea of watching a movie featuring them turned me off right quick).  Sure, I’d become a Dylan fan by then, but I didn’t find much appealing in the music of his former backing band (I remember liking The Basement Tapes, though).  And then in 1998 I heard a snippet of the incredible "Rag Mama Rag" and, well, I found my hook. Not long after I downloaded their first album from one of the alt.binaries.music.mp3.* groups and suddenly I understood what the Beatles (and my friends) saw in them.  In early 2000 I bought their first two albums on CD and they’ve become two of my favorite albums of all time.
  
  The movie itself?  Oh, it was fine. I’m usually not one to bother mentioning strictly technical things, but the excellent camerawork simply needs to complimented. The highlight for me came with Van Morrison’s performance of "Caravan" (a personal favorite). But Neil Young leading The Band through "Helpless" (with Joni Mitchell —I think—lending backing vocals, no less!), the brass band-reinforced "Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", Mitchell’s "Coyote" and the Staple Singers helping out on "The Weight" were certainly also standout moments, as well. Oh, and Muddy Waters. Dear god, did Muddy Waters bring it.

• 1/9 – The Heiress (1949) (tcm)
  

  I have wanted to see this adaptation of Henry James’ Washington Square for years.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the film, which many think surpasses the book, was a very direct melodrama. Maybe my memory of the novel is shaky, but the attitudes and motivations of the characters seemed a bit more clear-cut in the film. I’m not complaining, exactly, especially since the movie has made me want to read the book again. It’s a fine adaptation (of the play based on the book), don’t get me wrong, but it’s like hearing a well-regarded interpretation of a symphony which doesn’t quite go where you want it to; I can’t deny its quality, but I didn’t love it. At the very least, I should thank The Heiress for dissuading Tom Cruise and Mike Nichols from having a go at Washington Square. But I’m very interested in seeing the version done by Agnieszka Holland and Carol Doyle.  Holland has always seemed interested in the same aspects of drama and art that move me, so I’m hoping any adaptation she worked on would be considerably different. And if nothing else I like both Jennifer Jason Leigh and Ben Chaplin so I’ll be renting the later version on DVD very soon. Well, some time this year, I hope.
  

Since high school I’ve been doing most of my movie-watching at the same time: at night and in the wee small hours of the morning.  In any year at least 2/3s of the movies I’ve seen were things I’ve watched between 10pm and 6am.   It’s no different this year, so far.  Only Wuthering Heights, which came on at 6:30 pm, was outside of this window.  I watched three straight movies this morning. I do that.

• 1/8 – Darkness Falls (2003) (wam)
  When I first got into multiplayer First Person Shooters (summer of 2000), my friends and I would stay in the office all hours of the night playing deathmatch in games like No One Lives Forever.  One of the user-created maps we played one legendary night was called, get this, Diescraper.  That’s right: Die. Scraper. We joked, as we played it, about how it sounded like a horror movie title: "Come visit Diescraper, the office building of tomorrow, where nothing can go wrong."  And so, of course, something goes wrong.  You’ve seen that movie before: we all have. But of one of the many questions it begs is who would enter a building called Diescraper? Someone, apparently.

  I’m betting these same people would live in a town called Darkness Falls. A New England town named Darkness Falls, no less.

  Now, I know.  You’re wondering why I would bother watching such a thing.  Yeah, it’s a fair question.  See, I occasionally crave bad horror films. I can’t explain it because I’m not even a fan of the genre (as I’ve said so often before, only Repulsion has ever scared me). When I’m in this mood stiflingly bad horror co-starring Emma Caulfield is almost irresistible: I watched mid-period 90210 for folks like her and Tiffani Amber Thiessen; bad horror is easy, comparatively.  And if the villain of the story is the Tooth Fairy, well, of course I’m gonna watch it.   

  And, well, it was predictably horrible.  It was so bad it wasn’t even entertaining. It was not quite as memorably bad as some of the movies Caulfield’s fellow Buffy alums have made (Eliza Dushku’s Soul Survivors being the worst of the lot I’ve seen, though it’s crucial to note I haven’t laid eyes on Nicholas Brendan’s Demon Island), but it’s really quite awful.
  
  And it completely satisfied my needs.

• 1/8 – Don’t Make Waves (1967) (tcm)
  Typical late 60s throwaway where the brightest moment (for me, anyway) comes when Jim Backus and his wife, Henny, show up (as themselves!) for about 2 minutes.  Was he fulfilling some obscure contractual agreement? Doing someone a favor? Bored? I mean, at least now, almost forty years after the fact, a scene of "hey, it’s Jim Backus!" takes on a sort of Robert Loggia absurdity. Maybe back then he was a bigger star than I give him credit for. Aside from that, the extended footage of Sharon Tate on a trampoline was the only thing worth talking about. And again, that’s because I’m not sure I understand why they put it in the film.

  At the end, when everybody who needed to be paired off is, and the credits are shown they play the theme song, by the Byrds.  And I’m reminded of another late 60s throwaway, Candy, where the Byrds’ "Child of the Universe" plays during the credits.  I have seen too many movies.

• 1/8 – Deep Valley (1947) (tcm)
  
  I love Ida Lupino. She’s one of my ten favorite Hollywood actors of all time along with folks like Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Gena Rowlands, Sidney Poitier, Myrna Loy and Cary Grant. I didn’t particularly love the movie (hint:  If you start a romance with an escaped convict while he’s running from the law, bad things are sure to happen. To him) but Lupino enchanted me, as always.

Yep. This is definitely a losing streak.

I have a hunch.  Basically I think I go through periods where I love almost everything I see; films I didn’t expect much from tend to impress me quite a bit during those stretches.  Conversely,  I believe I get really cold sometimes, too.  I’m not sure why.  Sometimes I think that’s just the way it goes, other times I think my general mood has a lot to do with how engaged I am with the movies I watch.  Regardless, guess which period I’m in right now?

Since Kinsey (the last thing I watched in 2004; I was lukewarm about it but that’s because I have very little patience for most bio pics) I’ve been on a bit of a losing streak.  Sure, I liked Ghost in the Shell 2, but that could hardly nullify the soul-sucking blandness of Forgotten (frankly, nothing could) or the fact that A Man Apart (see below) could barely hold my attention. 

This isn’t because I have incredibly high standards, either. I liked the textbook predictable Wimbledon for crying out loud! I’m easy to please if you just give me something.  Most of the movies I’m seeing right now just aren’t.

• 1/5 – A Man Apart (2003) (enc)
  
  Well, if this doesn’t cure me of my weakness for Vin Diesel nothing will.  I know I’d just talked about giving up thillers (and this had some thriller elements to it) but breaking up is hard to do.  Really hard.  This was one of those grim revenge tales that folks like Steven Seagal and Cynthia Rothrock have seemingly made a career out of.  And it was every bit as boring as one of those movies, too. 
  

• 1/6 – Take the Money and Run (1969) (enc)
  
  This one was OK.  It’s not nearly as funny as I was hoping (it tried too hard, actually), but the two bank robbery scenes alone made it worth the time.  And I’m going to be just fine with any movie where "dancing with a mailman" is considered a federal offense—that’s right in line with how my sense of humor works.

• 1/5 – The Forgotten (2004) (gitn)
  
  I’m beginning to wonder if I should just give up on thrillers.  It’s been a long time since Alan Parker stunned my teenaged mind with Angel Heart (still a personal favorite) and I don’t think any thriller has been able to get quite the same reaction out of me since.  Instead I seem to be, at best, disinterested in most of these films and at worst downright offended (in fact, staying with Alan Parker, my reaction to The Life of David Gale was, in a word, violent).  What’s the point in my continuing to watch them, then, right?  I pretty much dropped mainstream comedies (some of the unfunniest stuff on earth), so I’ve given up genres before. I’ll have to think about it, I guess.

  I knew coming in to The Forgotten that it would have some mystery/thriller elements.  I just didn’t realize I was going to find it so damned annoying (if I’d looked at director Joseph Ruben’s resume before I watched the movie I would have known; I still don’t forgive Ruben for The Good Son, after all) .  Shame, too.  I like the actors involved quite a bit but I thought this was a story which didn’t even want to be told.   

  Yeah, maybe I should just give up on thrillers.