Won't have time to write this up tomorrow, so I'm throwing up the ol' movie post a day early. Hooray!
Also, a quick fun fact: I reached 100 movies watched about three months earlier than I did last year. Lack of Life Achievement: Unlocked.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009): I poked enough fun at the movie the other day, so here are its good points: It looks fantastic -- the art direction is suitably dark and menacing without going over the top, and the special effects and whatnot are kickass. Outside of the budding romance stuff, which is awkwardly handled, the movie also does a solid job with the main story. There are changes and additions and subtractions here and there, but I don't really mind the movie trying to be its own story a little bit, as long as it's not too obtrusive. (But removing the big final battle is kind of eh, even if the filmmakers have their reasons.) The movie is also genuinely funny at times, even though those instances are outnumbered by the unintentionally funny scenes, haha. And, hey, even with all its faults, Half-Blood Prince has me way more excited to see the two Deathly Hallows movies than I was before, so that's something.
The Omega Man (1971): Doesn't really hold up at all. There are some interesting ideas in it (most of which were born from Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, upon which this movie is based), but those ideas are obscured by really corny antagonists and an awful romance sub-plot. Just an incredibly frustrating movie to watch -- for every, "Oh man, that's interesting!" scene (like noted right-winger Charlton Heston's character watching, and actually identifying with, the documentary Woodstock), The Omega Man mucks it up with a bunch of crap that will make your eyes roll out of their sockets.
Hitman (2007): I think it's an OK movie for what it is trying to do. There are a ton of plot holes, the acting is really wooden at times (though at least where Agent 47 is concerned, I think that is occasionally the point) and the action is solid but not really spectacular or anything. But when your competition is Super Mario Bros. and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, it's pretty tough to not look like gold. Plus, I am sure as hell not going to complain about getting an eyeful of Olga Kurylenko for an hour.
Leaving Las Vegas (1995): I find it slightly amusing that I recorded this off Encore's romance channel, because while there are romantic elements in it, Leaving Las Vegas is not really about romance at all -- at least not the lovey-dovey Hollywood kind. Ben Sanderson (Nicolas Cage) is an alcoholic at the tail end of a total meltdown, who heads to Las Vegas to slowly kill himself via drink. Sera (Elisabeth Shue) is a prostitute who comes across Ben, develops an attachment to him and takes him in, caring for him while he plunges closer to death. The movie pulls no punches and makes no compromises in developing their relationship as two people who desperately use love to shield themselves from their pain, even if for a little while (Sera more so than Ben). Cage deservedly won an Oscar for his performance, but Shue is just as good with a role that is at least as tough. She has to take a fairly unbelievable character, whose life is just as painful as Ben's, and really make her come to life, and she goes all the way with it.
On the queue for this week: Nothing at the moment. Maybe there will be something at the library. Who knows?
Total Movies: 100 (Gaslight, The Last King of Scotland, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Darjeeling Limited, This Film is Not Yet Rated, Diary of the Dead, Bullets Over Broadway, Interiors, Husbands and Wives, The Professional: Golgo 13, Lars and the Real Girl, Lolita, Quills, Hamlet, Iris, Manhattan Murder Mystery, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, The Savages, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Stranger, Love and Death, Harold and Maude, Spartacus, Scarlet Street, Sabrina, Zelig, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), Stardust Memories, Barry Lyndon, Be Kind Rewind, Radio Days, Deconstructing Harry, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Creating Rem Lazar, Undefeatable, Ninja Terminator, Ninja Dragon, Rumble Fish, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, In Bruges, The Bank Dick, Marathon Man, Clannad, Air, Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress, MirrorMask, Slither, It's a Gift, Splendor in the Grass, Waitress, North by Northwest, Monkey Business, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, The Brave One, 3:10 to Yuma, Bringing Out the Dead, Gurren Lagann: Gurren-hen, There Will Be Blood, Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder, The Princess Bride, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Spellbound, Frenzy, Anatomy of a Murder, Clue, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Changeling, Shadows and Fog, Into the Wild, Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Synecdoche, New York, Carlito's Way, Shoot 'Em Up, Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Up, Yor: Hunter from the Future, Tropic Thunder, True Romance, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, A Woman Under the Influence, Casablanca, Frost/Nixon, Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Le Samouraï, Inland Empire, The Reader, Doubt, Arachnophobia, Manhunter, Wild At Heart, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, The Omega Man, Hitman, Leaving Las Vegas)
