3 Nov- "Don't waste my time"

In Time (2011)

dir. Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, 1997)

CAST
Justin Timberlake (The Social Network, 2010)
Olivia Wilde (Cowboys & Aliens, 2011)
Johnny Galeki (Hancock, 2008)
Matt Bomer (Magic Mike, 2012)
Ray Santiago (Accepted, 2006)
Alex Pettyfer (Magic Mike, 2012)
Brendan Miller (Accepted, 2006)
Yaya Alafia (The Kids are All Right, 2010)
Cillian Murphy (The Wind that Shakes the Barley, 2006)
Toby Hemingway (Black Swan, 2010)
Melissa Ordway (Ted, 2012)
Abhi Sinha (The Social Network, 2010)
Amanda Seyfried (Red Riding Hood, 2011)
Emma Fitzpatrick (The Social Network, 2010)
Vincent Kartheiser (Rango, 2011)

I watched In Time because I was looking for a fast-paced and somewhat silly action movie to while away the evening, also, my fella hadn't seen it yet. We were not disappointed.

Still, I couldn't help but imagine Andrew Niccol meeting with the producers and pitching his idea, "You guys! You know how they say 'time is money'? What if time was money?!" and the producers were like, "Run with that idea, Andy! But make it like an old-time gangster movie, too!" and Andrew Niccol did it, because money is money.

First of all, everyone in the movie itself acts as if this time/money thing is very novel, and not as if society has been carrying on this way for generations. The number of time puns is appalling and also delightful (as long as you love puns, as I do)

For example:
"Don't waste my time," said after a large amount of time is gifted to the protagonist
"You've taken years off my father's life," said to the protagonist after he wins a large amount of time in a poker game
"I'd say 'your money or your life, but since your money is your life," Said while the protagonist executes a heist
"I'm going to clean your clock," said as a thug threatens another person. Also, their gang is called the Minute-men.

On top of this, the scenery and costumes are overtly styled in a manner reminiscent of 1930s gangsters, with Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried acting the parts of Bonnie & Clyde running around robbing "time banks" and driving black Lincoln Continentals.

The antagonist is the typical Jaubert-style cop (timekeeper) played by Cillian Murphy. Murphy does his best with the role, but it's still a cliche characterization, in the tradition of The Fugitive's Lieutenant Gerard, or the aforementioned character from Les Miserables. Like any of those characters living a black and white world of law-abiding morality, Murphy refuses to support the protagonists even as he detests the actions of the film's villain.

So what can I say? In Time provides the veneer of novelty while playing out a trite concept with the same reassuring tropes we've already seen over and over again. It was fun.

4 July - "A toast to the end of the world"

Independence Day (1996)

dir. Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow, 1996)

CAST
Will Smith (I Am Legend, 2007)
Jeff Goldblum (The Big Chill, 1983)
Bill Pullman (Sleepless in Seattle, 1993)
Randy Quaid (Brokeback Mountain, 2005)
Robert Loggia (Big, 1988)
Mary McDonnell (Donnie Darko, 2001)
Vivica A. Fox (Batman & Robin, 1997)
Margaret Colin (The Devil's Own, 1997)
James Rebhorn (Cold Mountain, 2003)
Harvey Fierstein (Mrs. Doubtfire, 1993)
Adam Baldwin (Serenity, 2005)
James Duval (The Doom Generation, 1995)
Lisa Jakub (The Beautician and the Beast, 1997)
Giuseppe Andrews (American History X, 1998)
Bill Smitrovich (Iron Man, 2008)
Mae Whitman (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, 2010)
Harry Connick Jr.  (New in Town, 2009)

Independence Day is not my favorite fourth of July movie (that would be this one) but it is still a pretty good one. I think we can all agree that the best scene is when the dog leaps out of the way of the explosion, and that it is very inspiring when Bill Pullman tells us that the fourth of the July will no longer be an American holiday, but a day when the whole world will celebrate it's Independence Day (that's the eponymous moment).

2 July - "Why don't you like my spots?"

I Heart Huckabees (2004)

dir. David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook, 2012)

CAST
Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore, 1998)
Isabelle Huppert (Time of the Wolf, 2003)
Dustin Hoffman (Hook, 1991)
Lily Tomlin (Krippendorf's Tribe, 1998)
Jude Law (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, 1997)
Mark Wahlberg (Boogie Nights, 1997)
Naomi Watts (Eastern Promises, 2007)
Kevin Dunn (Almost Heroes, 1998)
Tippi Hendren (The Birds, 1963)
Said Taghmaoui (Hidalgo, 2004)
Jean Smart (Youth in Revolt, 2009)
Jonah Hill (Megamind (voice), 2010)
Isla Fisher (Rango, 2011)
John Rothman (The Devil's Advocate, 1997)
Talia Shire (Rocky, 1976)
Bob Gunton (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, 1997)
Saige Ryan Campbell (All I Want for Christmas, 2007)

I Heart Huckabees is one of those comedies that finds its humor in the absurdity of situations rather than jokes or physical comedy. The protagonist, played by Jason Schwartzman, hires a duo of existential detectives to discover meaning behind His coincidental encounter with the small Sudanese man three times in one day. As is the way with existential crises, however, the investigation rapidly spills into other aspects of his life, mainly the collaborative project between the protagonist's environmental organization and Wal-Mart-esk Huckabees superstore to preserve a patch of wetlands from development. Brad, the Huckabees representative for the wetlands project, sees this as a good PR move, but soon he and others around our protagonist are drawn into existential dilemmas of our own. The characters address the big questions, what am I? And why am I here? with the humor stemming from the absurdity of these personal dilemmas manifesting very tangibly and publicly in day to day life. 

I've seen I Heart Huckabees several times now. I find it to be more accessible than many other indie comedies, which are often so dark that they hardly merit being called comedies (as in Sunshine Cleaning). This is the exception, the tone consistently remains light even as the subject matter becomes heady. Great cast, too.

2 July - "I'm the thief you tried to cheat"

The Saint (1997)

dir. Phillip Noyce (Clear and Present Danger, 1994)

CAST
Val Kilmer (Batman Forever, 1995)
Elizabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas, 1995)
Rade Serbedzija (X-Men: First Class, 2011)
Henry Goodman (Notting Hill, 1999)
Alun Armstrong (Braveheart, 1995)
Evgeniy Lazarev (Iron Man 2, 2010)
Tommy Flanagan (Braveheart, 1995)
Pat Laffan (War Horse, 2011)
Malcolm Tierney (Braveheart, 1995)
Tony Armatrading (Eragon (voice), 2006)
David Schneider (28 Days Later..., 2002)
Emily Mortimer (Transiberian, 2008)
Velibor Topic (Robin Hood, 2010)
Barbara Jefford (The Ninth Gate, 1999)
Julian Rhind-Tutt (Stardust, 2007)
William Hope (Sherlock Holmes, 2009)
Roger Moore (voice) (The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977)
Richard Cubison (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2007)
Michael Byrne (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, 2010)

If you like terrible action movies, as I do, The Saint is not one to miss. Notable mainly for Val Kilmer infinitely amusing disguises and accents. The romance is ridiculous, although Elizabeth Shue's character is charming, in her own way. If you discovered that the poetic South African who seduced you was actually an international thief, would you be delighted to see him again? And if the  woman you seduced and then thieved surprised you at the airport, would you exclaim with a smile, "You found me!"?

I think it's the earnestness of the lead actors that makes one bad action movie delightful and another just boring. If I feel like the actors aren't having fun, aren't even trying, then I don't see any point in trying to get into the story either. The Saint is a ridiculous mess, but it's is a sincere mess.

30 June - "There are no second chances here. This is the last chance house"

Double Jeopardy (1999)

dir. Bruce Beresford (Black Robe, 1991)

CAST

Tommy Lee Jones (Small Soldiers, 1998)
Ashley Judd (Flypaper, 2011)
Jay Brazeau (Watchmen, 2009)
Bruce Greenwood (Star Trek into Darkness, 2013)
John Maclaren (The Day After Tomorrow, 2004)
Annabeth Gish (Beautiful Girls, 1996)
Michael Gaston (Hackers, 1995)
Gillian Barber (Jumanji, 1995)
Daniel Lapaine (The 10th Kingdom (TV mini-series), 2000)
Roger R. Cross (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 2008)
Keegan Connor Tracy (White Noise, 2005)
Dave Hager (Lincoln, 2012)
Spencer Treat Clark (Gladiator, 2000)

Although the essential premise, that having been framed and convicted for the murder of her husband Ashley Judd as Elizabeth Parsons can now hunt down and execute her two-timing, death-faking husband without fear of legal repercussion, is inherently flawed (they could still charge her with a multitude of other offenses), the idea is still a fun one to explore. Double Jeopardy may be near the top of the list as far as my favorite movies go. Of course, that it is basically a female-driven version The Fugitive doesn't hurt, replete with Tommy Lee Jones' Travis Layman being essentially the same as his Lt. Samuel Gerard.

Ashley Judd lends her own flair, however, and adds herself to the delightful group of leading ladies who can reasonably pull of the character of a mom-who-kicks-ass. Tommy Lee Jones, in turn, complements but doesn't overshadow, and is totally comfortable in his familiar space of a crotchety official who gradually begins to believe in the mission of his adversary.

Also, when Parsons surprises her incognito husband at a bachelor auction: delightful!

29 June - "The bat's stubborn refusal to expire is driving us insane"

Batman Forever (1995)

dir. Joel Schumacher (Twelve, 2010)

CAST
Val Kilmer (Heat, 1995)
Tommy Lee Jones (Double Jeopardy, 1999)
Jim Carrey (Peggy Sue Got Married, 1986)
Nicole Kidman (The Golden Compass, 2007)
Drew Barrymore (Poison Ivy, 1992)
Chris O'Donnell (The Three Musketeers, 1993)
Rene Auberjonois (The Patriot, 2000)
Joe Grifasi (13 Going on 30, 2004)
Pat Hingle (Hang 'em High, 1968)
Kimberly Scott (Love and Other Drugs, 2010)
Debi Mazar (Collateral, 2004)
Michael Gough (Sleepy Hollow, 1999)
Jon Favreau (Iron Man 2, 2010)


Some will say that there's little to be gained in watching the '90s Batman franchise films, especially once Michael Keaton cut out of the picture, and while Batman Forever lacks the Tim Burtonyness of the earlier two films, it's still a delightful colorscape which balances the gloom and dourness of the perpetually distopian Gotham City with the neon light show of its villains, Tommy Lee Jones as Harvey Two-Face and Jim Carrey as The Riddler (also known as every Jim Carrey character from the '90s).

12 June - "Philosophy failed. Religion failed. Now it's up to the physical sciences."

Flatliners (1990)

dir. Joel Schumacher (Batman Forever, 1995)

CAST
Kiefer Sutherland (Twelve, 2010)
William Baldwin (The Squid and the Whale, 2005)
Oliver Platt (X-Men: First Class, 2011)
Julia Roberts (Mary Reilly, 1996)
Kevin Bacon (X-Men: First Class, 2011)
Beth Grant (Rango, 2011)
Benjamin Mouton (Basic Instinct, 1992)
Kimberly Scott (Batman Forever, 1995)
Julie Warner (Tommy Boy, 1995)
Patricia Belcher ((500) Days of Summer, 2009)
Jim Ortlieb (Home Alone, 1990)
Angela Paton (Joe Dirt, 2001)
Ingrid Oliu (Stand and Deliver, 1988)

I'm not sure what genre to categorize this as. It may just be a tame horror movie, but you may just want to generically slot it under suspense or drama. When in doubt, do as my friends at Vision Video do, and put on the drama shelf. The premise is that a group of medical students--and I would love to know where they filmed the creepy, converted-seminary hospital scenes--kill and then resuscitate each other into order to explore the phenomenon of near-death experience. They discover that experimenting with brain-death gives them quite a scare, and each character (except for Oliver Platt) is forced to face the wrongs they have committed in the past.

As I said, this movie has remarkably lovely (in a spooky way) sets which feel as if they are heavy with symbolism but probably aren't (just like a Wes Anderson movie). The character development is subtle but effective, you feel as if you know enough about each person by knowing very little. It's the kind of conservative scriptwriting that I find most appealing in movies. I think this is a greatly underrated movie, especially for it's now-they're-super-famous cast and delicate subject matter. The tone remains clinical even as the symptoms begin to defy a clinical explanation.

24 May - "He'd let you die."

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

dir. J.J. Abrams  (Super 8, 2011)

CAST
Chris Pine (Carriers, 2009)
Zachary Quinto (Star Trek, 2009)
Zoe Saldana (Burning Palms, 2010)
Karl Urban (Priest, 2011)
Benedict Cumberbatch (War Horse, 2011)
Anton Yelchin (The Beaver, 2011)
Bruce Greenwood (Double Jeopardy, 1999)
Simon Pegg (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 2010)
John Cho (Total Recall, 2012)
Joseph Gatt (Thor, 2011)
Tony Guma (Mission: Impossible III, 2006)

I saw Star Trek 2 on a rainy day in Rome, New York, with my friends from the the 2013 Tuscarora Migration Project as we took a hiatus from kayaking due to inclement weather conditions on Oneida Lake. It was probably the perfect movie to see under such conditions.

Since Star Trek already established our characters back in 2009, now we have the luxury of jumping straight into plot and conflict. Just to be safe, however, the movie opens at a breakneck pace with Kirk and Spock racing like devils through a white-red-yellow alien landscape, being chased by mud-daubed alien primitives. It was a great homage to something that might have happened in so many original series episodes. It also served the purpose of re-establishing our characters, Spock is logical to a fault, Kirk flies by the seat of his pants, and everyone else is just tagging along for the ride.

Unfortunately, we also had to sit through the "development" of Spock and Uhura's romantic relationship, which used Spock's self-sacrifice in the first scene to spin off a whole sub-plot of Uhura and Spock passive-aggressive infighting. This was tedious and otherwise irrelevant to the plot.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays Khan, a genetically-modified superhuman based on the DNA of Ghengis Khan, historical badass. They don't mention that in the movie but they say so in the TV series when the Khan character is first introduced. Our heroes also have to deal with the war-mongering head of Starfleet Command, and in all other ways to save the day.

Problems:

I'm hoping that when Spock Prime (Leonard Nimoy's reprisal of future-Spock) referred to Spock defeating Khan only at "a great price," he was alluding to the next sequel, because all in all, it was not very difficult to defeat Khan.

Uh-oh, Dr. McCoy used Khan's blood to cure Kirk's severe radiation poisoning. This means the laws of death no longer apply and it's going to create a slew of plot holes in the future.

26 Nov - Life of Pi

Life of Pi (2012)

dir. Ang Lee - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

CAST
Suraj Sharma
Irrfan Khan Slumdog Millionaire (2000)
Gérard Depardieu The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)

I went to see Life of Pi in 3D at the for-real movie theater with a fella. We watch a lot of movies together but at $10 a pop (even with a student discount) going to the cinema still seems like a big deal. We saw another movie together...it was Taken 2. Which I think would have been better named, Taken, Too. But no one asks what I think. He didn't even read the book, Life of Pi, I mean, by Yann Martel. I know I read it when it first came out because I still have the hardback copy at home somewhere. Sometimes I'm really disappointed when I choose a book based on the bright colors (plus a tiger) on it's cover, but in this case I was right to choose as I did. I think I read it twice.

The movie preserved the key elements of the book, but I think lost a little in the streamlining of the plot. While I'm never thrilled about a movie that's more than 2 hours long, I wish some of the parts where Pi's just sitting around were preserved. These are the scenes where we get to feel the thrill of his smallest accomplishments, learning to fish, using the solar still, when he catches a turtle. Without these trials, Pi's survival is punctuated only by fortuitous interventions, the school of flying fish, the carnivorous island, etc.

1 Aug - "The supermodels, Willy? That's all they are. Bottled promise."

Beautiful Girls (1996)

dir. Ted Demme (The Ref, 1994)

CAST
Matt Dillon (There's Something About Mary, 1998)
Noah Emmerich (The Truman Show, 1998)
Annabeth Gish (Mystic Pizza, 1988)
Lauren Holly (Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, 1993)
Timothy Hutton (Serious Moonlight, 2009)
Rosie O'Donnell (A League of Their Own, 1992)
Max Perlich (Ferris Bueller's Day Off, 1986)
Martha Plimpton (The Goonies, 1985)
Natalie Portman (The Professional, 1994)
Michael Rapaport (True Romance, 1993)
Mira Sorvino (Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, 1997)
Uma Thurman (Les Miserables, 1998)
Pruitt Taylor Vince (JFK, 1991)
Sam Robards (American Beauty, 1999)
David Arquette (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1992)
Adam LeFevre (Jungle 2 Jungle, 1997)
John Carroll Lynch (Fargo, 1996)

Beautiful Girls is one of those movies about High School friends being unable to cope with the reality of adulthood. You can put it on the shelf next to The Big Chill and St. Elmo's Fire. Uniting the friends is an inability to manage their romantic relationships. There are two rational, self-aware characters in this movie, one is Vera, the bartender's cousin from Chicago, played by Uma Thurman. The other is the sassy friend, played by Rosie O'Donnell. The men seem to excuse their own inability to commit to their respective womenfolk by the fact they haven't yet found "the perfect woman" the sassy friend scolds them for chasing a fantasy, and says that they would get bored of their imaginary supermodels even if they ever managed to find them. That's true enough, their girls may dress like New Englanders in the '90s, but they're all played by very attractive actresses. Uma Thurman's characters I guess is supposed to represent the perfect woman made real. but she's unattainable because she has a boyfriend back in Chicago that is mentioned all of twice. She's cool, does he own thing, and her friendly gestures are always misinterpreted as permission for a romantic advancement. She turns all the guys down.

So what's the point? It would seem that based on this movie, men are children and women are adults that must put up with their ridiculous behavior. That's a silly idea.

27 May - "Always count your bullets, senoritas"

Bandidas (2006)

dir. Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg

CAST
Penelope Cruz (All the Pretty Horses, 2000)
Salma Hayek (Desperado, 1995)
Steve Zahn (That Thing You Do! 1996)
Dwight Yoakam (Wedding Crashers, 2005)
Sam Shepard (Black Hawk Down, 2001)
Gary Carlos Cervantes (Scarface, 1983)
Joseph D. Reitman (Lady in the Water, 2006)
Daya Fernandez (Minority Report, 2002)

Bandidas is a comedy about two oversexualized Mexican women, one who is from a wealthy family and knows about archery and horseback riding and etiquette (Hayak), and one who is from a poor family and is rough-and-tumble (Cruz). At first they hate each other because Hayak is snooty and Cruz is ill-mannered, but when a land-baron has both of their fathers murdered, they team up and become friends instead. Steve Zahn plays a nerdy detective and although the ladies engage in a rivalry for his attention, he ends up with a white woman from the good ol' U.S.A. instead. This was an amusing movie, but it was also racist and sexist and it's important to acknowledge that sometimes we find ourselves amused for all of the wrong reasons.

2 April - "You are the epitome of everything I have ever looked for in another human being."

Chasing Amy (1997)

dir. Kevin Smith -Mallrats (1995)

CAST
Ethan Suplee - Desert Blue (1998)
Ben Affleck - Dazed and Confused (1993)
Casey Affleck - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
Jason Lee - Dogma (1999)
Dwight Ewell - Party Girl (1995)
Joey Lauren Adams - Mallrats (1995)
Guinevere Turner - American Psycho (2000)
Carmen Llywelyn - Never Been Kissed (1999)
Matt Damon - Mystic Pizza (1988)
Welker White - Dead Poets Society (1989)
Ernest O'Donnell - Clerks. (1994)
Brian O'Halloran - Clerks II (2006)

I'm almost positive that this is my second-favorite Kevin Smith movie (Clerks - obviously). It's about comic book artist Holden (Ben Affleck) who falls in love with fellow comic book artist Alyssa and is undetered by the fact that she is homosexual. With perseverance, he succeeds in winning her heart, surprise! The catch comes when he learns more about the sexual misdeeds of her past, and is unable to accept her for her past. The irony is not lost on the supporting characters, who altogether scold Holden for rejecting the woman he loved because he couldn't condone the person she had been, even though she had completely changed herself to be with him.

The difficult question that always sticks with me after I watch this movie is whether Holden is supposed to be a villain or not. Of course you could say that in true Kevin Smith form there aren't any real villains (except in Dogma) but only these schlubby man-children trying to establish a coherent purpose as they bumble through their mundane lives punctuated only by comic book references and the recollections of women they've banged in the past (but rarely turn up in the course of the movie-story itself). But I repeat the question: is Holden an unlikely hero for winning Alyssa's heart and then tragically losing it, or is he a villain for discarding her hard-won affection?

1 April - "That wasn't one of my first instincts "

Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

dir. F. Gary Gray

CAST
Jamie Foxx - Toys (1992)
Garard Butler - The Ugly Truth (2009)
Colm Meaney - The Commitments (1991)
Bruce McGill - Elizabethtown (2005)
Leslie Bibb - Iron Man 2 (2010)
Michael Irby - Flightplan (2005)
Gregory Itzin - Adaptation. (2002)
Regina Hall - Danika (2006)
Christian Stolte - Stranger Than Fiction (2006)
Annie Corley - The Cider House Rules (1999)
Richard Portnow - Kindergarten Cop (1990)
Viola Davis - The Help (2011)
Michael Kelly - Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009)
Dan Bittner - Adventureland (2009)
Brooke Stacy Mills - Hairspray (1988)
Brian Anthony Wilson - The Happening (2008)

I didn't like this movie at all. I don't even have anything good to say about it. It's about a guy who's wife and daughter are murdered, but through legal whateverness one of the guys who did it gets a light sentence because he cooperated with the rest of the investigation. The Gerard Butler character is so pissed off that he goes totally batshit crazy and orchestrates a complicated scheme to get back at the justice system. What I particularly dislike about this movie is not even the ambiguous morality, its the lack of a clear division between anti-hero and antagonist. My friend Cora clearly was in the anti-hero camp. She said that the point of the movie was to figure out how Gerard Butler was achieving these heinous murder-plots. I thought that was horrible to watch because most of the people that Butler's character killed were only tangentially related to the incident which pissed him off so much in the first place. He wasn't fighting for anything, and that made him a bad protagonist to root for. On the other hand, he makes a fatal error in the end and blows up, making Jamie Foxx the "winner" of the story and Butler the "loser." But even in that perspective I don't think any clear statement about the evils of either the justice system or the evils of vigilantism was made. And the grrrwehatecorruptlawyers trope induced in my the repulsive horror of what those ideas mean to people who really believe in them. Batman is pretty cool, but in the real world I don't condone vigilantes.You can't just go around killing people. Do I even have to say that?

The absence of a conflict resolution (was there even a conflict to begin with?) made me feel like I had only seen half of a movie. This wasn't a story, it was just a bunch of stuff that happens. I've seen movies about dudes with misdirected anger before, but Gerard Butler lacked the compelling interior logic of a character like Hannibal Lector. I say, if you're going to make an anti-hero, go all the way. It works for Dexter. But if you're going to waffle in-between you aren't going to accomplish anything meaningful.

26 March - "Fancy me a heroine"

The African Queen (1951)

dir. John Huston (The Unforgiven, 1960)

CAST
Humphrey Bogart - The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Katharine Hepburn - Little Women (1933)
Peter Bull - Dr. Dolittle (1967)

The African Queen is set in Africa during WW1. When Germans take over a village where a missionary and his sister are staying, the missionary dies of fever and despair and his sister, Rose, is left on her own to find a way to survive and get home. She teams up with Bogart's lowbrow character Charlie Allnut, but this odd couple ends up having more in common than they thought when Rose develops some spunk and decides that the pair of them need to take their little steamboat (the title character!) to liberate Lake Victoria from a German warship blocking English ships from entering the interior.

25 Mar - "I still like to laugh, but not at myself."

Don't Bother to Knock (1952)

dir. Roy Ward Baker


CAST
Richard Widmark (How the West was Won, 1962)
Marilyn Monroe (River of No Return, 1954)
Elisha Cook, Jr.  (The Great Gatsby, 1949)
Anne Bancroft (Great Expectations, 1998)

Don't Bother to Knock stars Marilyn Monroe as a young woman losing her grip on reality as she babysits the child of hotel guests while being courted by a licentious lout from across the courtyard who soon discovers he's bitten off more than he can chew. The main character delicately treads the line between fantasy and reality, anger and keen sadness. Ultimately, however, this movie isn't really about Monroe's character, it's about a unresolved romance between Jed, an airline pilot with zero attachments, and Lyn Lesley, a lounge singer who wants to be more than his sometimes fling. As Jed's courtship of Monroe's unstable character turns dark, the subsequent character growth is what allows him to return to Lyn with his whole heart after the alarming climax.

4 May - "It doesn't hate or even care. It just happens"

Doomsday (2008)

dir. Neil Marshall - The Descent (2005)

CAST
Jason Cope - District 9 (2009)
Jeremy Crutchley - The Poseidon Adventure (TV 2005)
Rhona Mitra - Sweet Home Alabama (2002)
Bob Hoskins - Hook (1991)
Alexander Siddig - Reign of Fire (2002)
David O'Hara - Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
Adrian Lester - Case 39 (2009)
Nora-Jane Noone - Ella Enchanted (2004)
Malcolm McDowell - Easy A (2010)

Doomsday was an odd movie about a quarantined section of Great Britain that had been walled off because of some sort of virus, and then a special-ops team has to go in there to figure out why people are still alive in there after years and years. As is to be expected, without law, order, and electricity, society devolves into a tribal-esque, post-punk, Mad-maxy mess of biker gangs. I watched this back in May and I don't even remember what the essential conflict was, let alone how it was resolved. Verdict= unmemorable.

1 May: "Do you have a name honey? Good, because we already picked one for you"

Burning Palms (2010)

dir. Christopher Landon

CAST
Rosamund Pike - Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Dylan McDermott - The Mistress of Spices (2005)
Shannen Doherty - Girl Just Wanna Have Fun (1985)
Zoe Saldana - Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Nick Stahl - Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
Robert Hoffman - She's the Man (2006)
Paz Vega - Sex and Lucia (2001)
Lake Bell - It's Complicated (2009)
Adriana Barraza - Drag Me to Hell (2009)
Victoria Patenaude - The Last Exorcism (2010)
Jason Brooks - Star Trek (2009)
Victor Webster - Must Love Dogs (2005)
Kate Albrecht - Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Engagement (2004)
Cici Lau - Legally Blonde (2001)
Colleen Camp - Valley Girl (1983)
Tom Wright - Troop Beverley Hills (1989)
Dimitri Diatchenko - G.I. Jane (1997)
Jon Polito - Highlander (1986)

A disturbing collection of cinema vignettes set in L.A. Most of the themes-drug abuse, illicit sexuality, narcissism and apathy-remind of a Brett Easton Ellis novel. However, it doesn't quite achieve the put-togetherness of a Grand Hotel-style movie (that's when there's a bunch of intersecting storylines) because apart from two stories featuring Shannon Dougherty as a psychiatrist with a terrible accent, there is zero overlap in the plotlines. Overall, Burning Palms was fun to watch in a i don't want to admit that i'm fascinated sort of way, because the humor was alarmingly dark and totally sick. I probably won't watch it again but I imagine that I'll bring it up in casual conversation fairly often.

23 Mar- "Whatever you do don't let them starve"

The Hunger Games (2012)

dir. Gary Ross - Pleasantville (1998)

CAST
Stanley Tucci - Easy A (2010)
Wes Bentley - American Beauty (1999)
Jennifer Lawrence - The Burning Plain (2008)
Elizabeth Banks - Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)
Sandra Ellis Lafferty - Walk the Line (2005)
Paula Malcomson - The Green Mile (1999)
Rhoda Griffis - Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)
Josh Hutcherson - Howl's Moving Castle, voice (2004)
Anthony Reynolds - Down in the Valley (2005)
Woody Harrelson - Zombieland (2009)
Toby Jones - Les Miserables (1998)
Lenny Kravitz - Precious (2009)
Donald Sutherland - Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

Of course, everyone who's anyone who gives a shit has already seen The Hunger Games, but I was there on opening night, in the fifth row, craning my neck upwards to watch the story unfold. I liked it, I enjoyed it. I thought it was visually appealing, but I also think it could have been better. Here's why:

1) Adaption of a book based on a first person perspective
The book is told from Katniss's perspective, and the readers are limited in our understanding of her world by her physical limitations. For this reason, we can't really understand what goes on in the minds of the other tributes, for example, and we can't see the reactions of the audience in Panem. The medium of film is almost always in third person perspective (with the exception of found-footage based movies). That means we lose Katniss's inner dialogue, which is tough because she isn't a very verbal character, but it also means we are able to see a lot of the world than Katniss is. I don't think the filmmakers took advantage of that strength. The other tributes were irritatingly flat characters. In the book five out of the twelve were portrayed largely as mindless killers, but that doesn't mean the filmmakers couldn't show them as being more rounded out. Which brings me to the next point.

2) Uncreative storyboarding
The point of the Hunger Games is that they are televised for the people of Panem. Since the book was from Katniss's perspective, we didn't get to see how she was portrayed on film. But this time it's in a movie and we are the audience. I would have liked to see some more creative changes in perspective that could drawn the audience into the story-world and potentially make the movie a lot more meaningful. After all, it's supposed to be a critique of the brutality of watching other people suffer. Let's make the audience feel a little less safe and a little more culpable.

3) Josh Hutcherson
How about we just get one of those big Easter Island heads to play Peeta?

22 Mar- "I do not call myself subject to much at all"

The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

dir. Michael Mann (Heat, 1995)

CAST
Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood, 2007)
Madeleine Stowe (Bad Girls, 1994)
Russell Means (Pocahontas (voice), 1995)
Wes Studi (Dances With Wolves, 1995)
Steven Waddington (Sleepy Hollow, 1999)
Jodhi May (The Scarlet Letter (voice), 1995)
Eric Schweig (The Scarlet Letter, 1995)
Pete Postlethwaite (James and the Giant Peach, 1996)
Terry Kinney (Save the Last Dance, 2001)
Patrice Chereau (Time of the Wolf, 2003)
Dylan Baker (Love Potion No. 9, 1992)
Mark Joy (Pecker, 1998)
Tim Hopper (School of Rock, 2003)
Jared Harris (Far and Away, 1992)
Sebastian Roche (Beowulf, 2007)
Colm Meaney (Law Abiding Citizen, 2009)
David Schofield (An American Werewolf in London, 1981)

The Last of the Mohicans is easily one of my top ten favorites movies. Unfortunately, it's hard to make other people believe how awesome it is because the first twenty minutes are notoriously slow and usually folks get bored before they become enthralled in the awesomeness. Here are the reasons why I like this movie:
1) Chingachgook's awesome war club
2) Daniel Day Lewis placing emphasis on unusual syllables (he's "beholden to none")
3) Wes Studi as Magua, probably one of the best characters in film history
4) The score, by Trevor Jones

I've also read the book, but James Fenimore Cooper. I'm always interested in how books are adapted into screenplays, what stays in, what gets cut, what's changed, how the perspective moves from first person to third person. In the book, for example, the heroine Cora doesn't pair off with Hawkeye, Daniel Day-Lewis's character, she marries Duncan, the English captain she arrived in the colonies with. But in the movie Duncan sacrifices himself to save Hawkeye, Cora and Alice, which is good, because from a modern perspective Hawkeye's character is way hotter and deserves makeouts.

I've always liked Wes Studi. Magua, as a character, is one of the best. Magua first appears as an Iroquois scout for the English, but after he betrays Duncan's unit it's revealed that he was actually a Huron captive who was adopted by the Iroquois. His anger at having lost his Huron family due to the actions of Colonel Monroe have set him on a vendetta to avenge himself. He says that he wants to kill Colonel Monroe's daughters in front of him, "so that he knows his seed as been wiped out forever" and then cut out and eat Monroe's heart. But at the end, when Alice is preparing to leap off a cliff instead of going as Magua's captive, he tries to stop her. And it's not that I think it's odd that he had a change of heart, but that I think that's a very human response. It's different, when you're at war and filled with anger and murdering is almost normal, and afterwards, when the fighting is done and the resolution has been made and someone's about to die is very needless and tragic. Nobody wants that to happen. Magua: he's kind of a tragic character.

14 March- "You lost your arms in battle! But you grew some nice boobs."

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

dir. Mel Brooks (Blazing Saddles, 1974)


CAST
Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride, 1987)
Richard Lewis (Leaving las Vegas, 1995)
Roger Rees (A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1999)
Amy Yasbeck (Pretty Woman, 1990)
Dave Chappelle (You've Got Mail, 1998)
Issac Hayes (Dr. Dolittle 2 (voice), 2001)
Megan Cavenagh (A League of their Own, 1992)
Eric Allan Kramer (True Romance, 1993)
Tracey Ullman (I Could Never be Your Woman, 2007)
Chuck McCann (Dracula: Dead and Loving It, 1995)
Brian George (Blind Date, 1987)
Herman Poppe (Pale Rider, 1985)
Patrick Stewart (Gnomeo & Juliet (voice), 2011)
Dom Deluise (The Muppet Movie, 1979)
Mel Brooks (Young Frankenstein (voice), 1974)
Dick Van Patten (Spaceballs, 1987)
Clement von Franckenstein (Just Married, 2003)
Tyce Diorio (Epic Movie, 2007)


I watched this with the little brother last time I visited the fam'ly in Philly. He had never seen it before, can you believe it! There's a lot to enjoy about this delightful comedy, but don't forget that some of the chastity-belt-centric jokes may go over a 9-year old's head.