Virtual Fools

Last month I came to the conclusion that I need to watch more movies. Between the time I spend at work and my other media habits, I was slacking on my Netflix rentals and felt there were some flicks I needed to add to my resume. So I set out to watch 25 movies in the course of 30 days. Not all were classics, not all were good, not all were even watchable, but I tried to pepper myself all around and watch different genres and eras. Below are my “four sentence reviews” for the 27 movies I ended up watching. Enjoy.

#1 Blade Runner
I began with this because I felt bad for never having seen it. I now understand why its the quintessential science fiction film. Harrison Ford has always played “Harrison Ford.” Amazing visuals for its era.

#2 28 Days Later
It had a great sense of style, was well paced, and the acting was great. It never felt campy in the way that some flicks of the genre do. Fast Zombies are scary. An outbreak like that might ease traffic congestion in London.

#3 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I could tell this was a pretty good movie, but I just didn’t care. As much as I liked Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, I didn’t feel invested in the outcome of their struggles. Michael Gondry should stick to music videos. I’ve come to realize I’m not a fan of writer Charlie Kaufman.

#4 Invincible
It’s biggest flaw is that there wasn’t anything wrong with it. As a inspirational Disney movie, it did exactly what it set out to do. It would be interesting to see how a different production company would have treated the same story. Watch it if you need a little motivation to work hard.

#5 Remo Williams
Wow. This 1985 movie starring Fred Ward was really bad in that enjoyable sort of way. It’s idiosyncrasies are its greatest strengths. It has the best “bullet dodging” in any film made before The Matrix.

#6 John Carpenter’s The Fog
A well told ghost story that I liked because it didn’t try to dress up its premise. As one of Carpenter’s earlier theatrical releases, you can see his visual composition and motifs developing. The simple use of fog machines and flashing lights validated all the work Kevin and I did on The House Between. Keeps me from wanting to move to a small coastal town.

#7 Three Businessmen
A truly brilliant film about globalization, the impact of technology, and hypermodernism. The entire plot serves as the film’s MacGuffin (the device that drives the story forward but is ultimately not important to the film’s “meaning”). It’s a movie that’s over before you know it and though you might feel nothing happened, it’s packed with layers of meaning. Ghost Riders in the Sky.

#8 Accepted
This was a “I’ve had four drinks and I have nothing to do” watch. It’s probably the only way to enjoy it, as the story was trite and none of the characters stood out. I recall laughing a few times but don’t remember why. The female lead is a POA.

#9 Dark City
I can’t tell whether this was a good concept with poor execution or a poor concept with good execution. I think it was that its 90 minutes actually felt a little rushed for such a deep concept. The noir/sci-fi mix was very enjoyable even if other parts were flawed. Oh, and three years before he was Jack Bauer, Keifer had a gun-pointed “we don’t have much time” line.

#10 Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow
Absolutely awful. Don’t bother even watching it as a joke. I couldn’t wait for it to end. Poor Christopher Lee.

#11 Hollywoodland
Though the movie has a few hang-ups, it was all in all an interesting watch. No where near as good as L.A. Confidential in terms of the dark side of classic Hollywood. Ben Affleck was actually really good. The kid pointing the gun at Superman was one of the most sobering moments I’ve witnessed in film.

#12 Smokin’ Aces
I was ultimately disappointed with this movie. As individual components, the action, story, and characters were all good. However, they just didn’t come together — an issue that stems from poor pacing and the “reveals” being incorporated into the wrong parts of the movie. Ryan Reynolds gets a thumbs up from me.

#13 Sky High
Kevin and I watched this movie about a super-hero high school on a whim. It surprisingly was one of the best “kids’ movies” I’ve ever seen. Though quite predictable, it was a more enjoyable superhero movie than many of the films released recently based on existing intellectual property. Kelly Preston was smokin’.

#14 Oceans 13
It was nice to see the Ocean gang back in Vegas. I liked it more than Ocean’s 12, which is still a great movie. I liked the move away from the “siege” aspect of the heist into the internal workings of the casino. The dice-manufacturing scenes were perhaps the funniest subplot in an Ocean’s film.

#15 Killer’s Kiss
Amazing to see the leap in quality between this film and The Killing a year later. Interesting to watch young Kubrick at work, but there is very little that separates this from its generic noir contemporaries. You can’t fault him, however, as it was but a stepping stone in a great long career. Go watch The Killing instead.

#16 Cape Fear
I love Scorsese, yet I felt let down. It was a good suspense/thriller but did not shine beyond that. More than anything it made me want to see the original. Nick Nolte did also not tell any bedtime stories.

#17 24 Hour Party People
Watched this one as part of my new love for Steve Coogan. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think you were watching an actual documentary about the “Madchester” music scene in the 80s. The self-aware moments and Tony Wilson’s asides add an interesting layer to the text that’s absent in most music documentaries. “I’m being postmodern before it’s fashionable.”

#18 PotC: At World’s End
Better than the second, but very confusing. It’s stylistically the most interesting of the Pirates films because it takes artistic risks. It would have been better if they were able to either drop or at least condense one of the subplots. I’m interested in seeing it again for all the details I missed the first time through, but I’m afraid I will just be distracted by all the same things again.

#19 Van Helsing
Not a fan of this one. The melodramatic ending was a tad hackneyed for a film that’s almost pure action up until that point. It does have the best bat-werewolf fighting I’ve seen in a movie, however. Richard Roxburgh made a great Dracula, it’s just a shame it was in this flick instead of something with a tad more merit.

#20 Solaris (2002)
I was so bored that I ended up watching this 99 minute movie over the course of two days. Much like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I felt no investment in the outcome of Chris Kelvin and Rheya. The metaphysical themes felt trite and would have been more interesting as a subtext rather than the text itself. I’m interested to see how the 1972 original from Germany compares.

#21 Monster House
Now I understand why kids at the movie theater last year would leave this one frightened. It was surprisingly dark for an animated feature targeted to kids. There’s much more for adults to appreciate in this one than for their children. The only downside was Nick Cannon wasn’t hil-AR-ious.

#22 Saving Private Ryan
That’s right, it took me nearly a decade to watch this Oscar-winning picture. I can now understand why everybody thinks it’s so great. Even after 10 years of the taking part in the films and games whose style and motifs this movie influenced, I still felt the awe movie-goers felt when this was released in the theater. I’m glad I finally got to this.

#23 Sunset Boulevard
In a way this film is the most disturbing piece of noir I’ve watched. Norma Desmond is every bit as creepy as Norman Bates. Contrasting this film with Singing in the Rain, another meditation on the history of Hollywood, you get an interesting look at an industry that was moving at a pace that rarely allowed for self-reflection. I think I’ll refrain from my close-up.

#24 The Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf
I needed a 90-minute movie and On-Demand was down. The acting was as bad as the transitional wipes. Inclusion of breasts off-set by inclusion of hairy lycanthropic sex. Cool soundtrack, though.

#25 Transformers
Despite some obvious flaws that go hand-in-hand with a big-budget summer blockbuster, Transformers was a great movie. The animation was some of the most natural looking I’ve set my eyes on — I didn’t feel like I was watching a CGI film, but rather something filmed in the future. Between the production, plot, and humor, this movie is very much a product of this moment in time and it will be interesting to see how well it ages. Megan Fox = fist pound.

#26 Mission Impossible: III
Thanks to a fireworks rain-out, Kevin and I watched this film that was better than the second but still not as good as the first. I appreciated its restraint in some areas (like not showing the stealing of the Rabbit’s Foot). Kevin pointed out that this flick can be seen as paralleling Cruise’s Scientological settling down with Katie Holmes. I think this mission just got a hell of a lot more impossibler.

#27 Modern Times
I managed to squeeze in one extra film and I’m glad I did. The classic of Hollywood cinema may is one of the best satires ever produced. Not only is it still legitimately funny but it’s also an example of “independent” cinema in that era. Much like the Goonies, factory workers never say “die.”