Rocket Surgery

In the same vein as my list of best books ever, I have decided to make my lists of best movies ever. And this time, for no defendable reason at all, there are 20 entries.

20. Requiem for a Dream

19. Star Wars: A New Hope

18. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

17. On Golden Pond

16. Ordinary People

14. Full Metal Jacket

13. The Shawshank Redemption

12. Animal House

11. Dances with Wolves

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Wow.

I don’t like comic books.  I don’t usually like comic book movies.  I liked the original Superman: The Movie from the seventies, and I thought the recent Spiderman movie was just obnoxious.

But The Dark Knight was great.  Heath Ledger had been making great buzz as The Joker, and all the talk about Oscar-worthiness got me interested in seeing it, and I was not disappointed.  At all.  In fact, I was pretty damn impressed.

I like dark movies, and this one was pretty dark - particularly for a comic book movie.  This is NOT the Adam West/Cesar Romero Batman and Joker from the TV series, or even the Michael Keaton/Jack Nicholson Batman and Joker from Tim Burton’s go at it.  This one doesn’t attempt to be fun, it goes for serious - and paradoxically, therein lies the fun.  The Joker doesn’t make over the top corny, campy jokes - any humor that comes from the Joker comes from his being sarcastic.  He’s more disturbing (and disturbed) than funny.  He’s a genuinely threatening villain.

And our hero is forced to examine his own ethics when confronted by the Joker’s complete lack of them.  How far can you go and what means can you use to defeat evil without becoming evil yourself?  Pertinent question for our times (viz., waterboarding).

The rest of the cast is great too.  Aaron Eckhart’s character did not develop as I expected at all - I love being surprised by movies - and I even liked Maggie Gyllenhaal who I normally don’t really care for.  Each actor was fully vested in their characters, and this was a true ensemble piece.

Four stars.

What a dumb movie. Not that dumb is always bad, of course.

But in an action movie, you want to have suspense…you need to perceive that the protagonist is somehow threatened during the action sequences.  When a 67 year old man is blown up by a nuclear weapon and is thrown for (presumably) miles on the inside of a lead-lined refrigerator, then gets out and walks away without a single broken bone or even a bloody nose or lip, he’s basically invincible at that point and some chick with a sword is no threat.  When it happens at the beginning of the movie, how can you possibly care what happens to this guy?

And then when Mutt goes swinging through the vines like Tarzan…my eyes were rolling.

It was amazing to me that Spielberg was involved.  They definitely jumped the shark with this one. 1 and a half stars.

I watched Paths of Glory last night — another Stanley Kubrick movie. This one is an anti-war movie set in World War I in France.  Kirk Douglas plays an idealistic colonel whose troops are ordered on an impossible suicide mission by a general seeking recognition and a promotion.  When the troops fall back without achieving their objective, the General orders a court-martial for three randomly selected soldiers to have them executed as an example to the rest of the soldiers.  Col. Dax acts as their defense.

Most of the time, I don’t like older movies.  Styles have evolved over time, and the acting in older movies from the 50’s and earlier often seems pompous and overdone.  This is probably because many actors were trained for the stage and still brought much of that acting style to the cinema, and they didn’t really take advantage of the medium which supports much more subtle performances.

This one didn’t suffer from this “problem” too much (perhaps because it was a war film and everything is amped up to 11 in war), so I found it pretty enjoyable.  I think this actually may have been the first time I’ve seen Kirk Douglas act at all, and he was indeed impressive.  I liked that there were no simple answers and no sunset ending–which made it that much more to think about.

Not the best Kubrick film, but it was solid.  Three stars.

I am becoming quite a fan of Stanley Kubrick.  I have always liked A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, and Dr. Strangelove, so I’ve been viewing some of the other things he’s done.  The Shining was good, 2001: A Space Odyssey was good, and Eyes Wide Shut was meh.

So for Father’s Day I got Barry Lyndon, which stars Ryan O’Neal as the title character.  I knew going into it from reading reviews that this movie was slow-paced, so being forwarned was helpful.  Being mentally ready for the slower pace, I spent the movie doing what Kubrick (presumably) wanted me to do as the viewer: taking it all in.  It was like the Rhine River ride at Busch Gardens–a nice way to slow down and enjoy the view.

Not that the movie was all eye candy.  The acting was quite good (I had never seen Ryan O’Neal do anything worth watching before), the character development was subtle, and the storyline, while meandering, also was not entirely predictable (always a plus).  The biggest problem I had with the movie was the music — that infernal Handel theme over and over and over.

But the movie (like the Handel theme) is stuck in my head days after watching it.  Three stars.

Missed it by that much.

I went and saw Get Smart over the weekend.  It was pretty disappointing.  The casting was the best and most inspired part, but it was too much about action and whizbang and less about funny.   This was not a Get Smart movie - it was a typical action movie inspired by Get Smart.

Should have waited for it to come out on DVD.  One and a half stars.

Just finished watching No Country for Old Men.  I haven’t seen enough of the Coen brothers’ work to judge whether this was as much of a departure as it seemed — I’ve seen Raising Arizona, O Brother Where Art Thou?, and Fargo.  Of the three, it reminded me most of Fargo, being as dark as it was; but the Southwestern scenery and people reminded me of Raising Arizona.

One thing I like about the Coen brothers is the quirky characters.  They have something odd about them all; some subtly, some not so much.  Javier Bardem’s character Anton Chigurh was chilling.  It’s like he didn’t feel anything.  There were several times when he did things I didn’t expect — at least at that exact moment — which I love (predictable movies are boring movies).

Tommy Lee Jones was understated, which was a blessing.  Woody Harrelson is annoying in everything he does, and I mean everything.  Josh Brolin was very believable, and I did not expect how things turned out for any of the three main male leads.  Another pleasant surprise, to not be surprised.

And WOW, I could not believe that Carla Jean was Kelly Macdonald - Diane from Trainspotting - with that West Texas accent!  There was not a trace of the Glaswegian accent.  I was thinking that it looked a lot like her, but that couldn’t be her, but boy was I wrong.  Yet another unexpected nugget.

I was definitely engrossed.  I was not sure I’d like it, but I did.  Three stars.

Well, these two movies were so different that this really oughta be two posts, but I felt lazy.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was awesome.  I really liked the surrealism of it.  I liked the neat visuals they used to indicate the erasure of Joel’s memories, particularly the books turning all white (very subtle).  I also was amazed at Jim Carrey’s performance.  Normally I can’t stand him, and that was why I never got around to seeing this, to my loss.  It was fun watching Carrey be the reserved straight-man to Kate Winslet’s impulsive and loopy Clementine.  The side story was cool too because it turned out not to be such a side story.  I also enjoy non-linear timelines, so that was a plus too.  Four stars.

3:10 to Yuma was not quite as good, but good.  I’ve been on a bit of a westerns kick lately and have been watching some of the more critically acclaimed ones, and this was one of them.  I liked the character interaction between Wade (Russell Crowe) and Evans (Christian Bale).  I also liked the moral ambiguity of the two characters, where neither of the main characters was totally evil or totally good — reminded me a bit of Unforgiven, which was a far superior western.  Having said that, I liked that I couldn’t guess everything that was going to happen in advance, and I liked the acting.  The ending, however, seemed a bit preposterous to me.  I can think of a couple of better ways it could have turned out, but I won’t spoil it.  Two and a half stars.

I never read the book, but I certainly hope it was better.  It had to be, to be the classic that it is.

While this was definitely better than Speed Racer, it was not nearly as good as the first Narnia movie, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  At least that movie had some semblance of plot, some indication that there was a real reason why the Pensevie kids were in Narnia, and things actually developed.  This movie was a high-budget 2-1/2 hour episode of Itchy and Scratchy (”they fight, they fight, they fight fight fight fight fight!”).

Bad guy wants Prince dead so he can take the throne.  Pensevie kids are inexplicably brought back to Narnia to help him fight.  Deus ex machina in the form of Aslan saves the day.  The end.

Perhaps I am expecting too much from a kids’ movie, but it is truly a sophomore slump after the first one.  But really, it was just long and tiresome.

I just watched High Noon for the first time.  I decided to watch it after seeing Gary Cooper play Howard Roark in The Fountainhead and being very impressed with his screen presence.

The ballad that is sung by Tex Ritter at the beginning and played in snatches throughout was odd, but haunting.  It was also clearly what Mel Brooks was parodying in The Ballad of Rock Ridge in Blazing Saddles - but I never knew that before.

And here’s a small confession - I missed a simple, central detail to the plot that had me confused the whole movie (I HATE doing that).  I missed the fact that the three guys hanging out at the train depot were waiting for Frank Miller to arrive.  I couldn’t figure out for most of the movie what the three guys were waiting for!  I mean, if they were going to trash the town and kill Marshall Kane, why did they need to wait for the train?  Why not just ride into town and get started?  Boy did I feel like an idiot.

But it didn’t stop me from enjoying it.  It wasn’t the best movie I ever saw — or even as good as Blazing Saddles in my opinion — but it was good.  I liked Gary Cooper in this too, so I think I’ll rent a few other movies he was in, to see if I like them.  It was also a hoot seeing a young Harry Morgan and a young Lloyd Bridges.