Fewer movies this week (and more building up in my DVR xD), but there are some good -- and weird! -- ones here.
Point Blank (1967): Saw this once before but remembered only the very basics of it. But, wow, a bit of questioning while watching the movie, and some reading afterward, has completely changed my view of it. In the beginning, the main character, Walker (Lee Marvin), is shot and left for dead after being betrayed by a partner in a heist scheme. Throughout this opening, the movie blends scenes of walker coming to and swimming away from Alcatraz (where the heist took place), mixed with flashbacks and a flash forward of Walker riding a boat, with a tour guide talking about the extreme difficulty of escaping from Alcatraz.
The whole thing got a "No way!" reaction from me this time around, and after thinking about it, I realized it's because Walker probably does die at the beginning and everything afterward is a death-induced hallucination, which makes the rest of the movie make a hell of a lot more sense. Can't believe I didn't give that even a moment's thought the first time I watched the movie. The whole style is so bizarre, extreme and nonsensical that it seems almost insane I did not consider the death dream theory. Even if someone doesn't consider that, however, Point Blank is still a good -- if unlikely -- crime story with an obsessive tilt to it. Lee Marvin wants his $93,000 and will stop at nothing to get it.
Murder, My Sweet (1944): Another strange crime movie, this a film noir worth watching more for how it shows Philip Marlowe's (Dick Powell) journey into the darkness of crime than for its convoluted plot. (I'm still more than a bit confused about certain things in this movie.) Marlowe confronts ex-cons, blackmailers, a feuding family, a fraudulent psychic and more, and what's really interesting about this is how the movie visually portrays the psychological stress all this insanity places upon Marlowe. A lot of the effects could come off as gimmicky nonsense (particularly Marlowe's trip to an asylum after being drugged partway through the movie), but it works well to make the viewer feel every hit -- mental and physical -- Marlowe feels. Much as I love The Big Sleep, that movie is more about Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall being an awesome couple with awesome style, while this movie is a bit more true to the darkness of the crime Raymond Chandler wrote about.
The Thing from Another World (1951): Pretty good horror movie that is also much different than the 1982 John Carpenter movie (which is one of my favorite horror flicks). The monster in the Carpenter movie is much more threatening and frightening, while the characters in this movie (directed by Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby) are a bit more interesting and sympathetic. I lol'd at the over-the-top scientist, Dr. Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite), though. The movie is a definite product of the Cold War, and as such it has heavy overtones of anti-Communism and distrust of "meddlesome" and destructive science (it's just six years removed from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after all). Moral and ethical scientific boundaries are something you always want to think about, of course, but it's not handled with great subtlety here. Then again, in a movie with a plant monster that feeds on blood, that does not seem like such a bad thing to complain about. This movie is also notable for being one of the few horror movies with a halfway decent romantic subplot. I think it's because the woman is actually -- gasp! -- not a completely retarded caricature and is given the chance to have some wit.
One last bit of trivia: MST3K fans may be amused to note that Robert Nichols (aka Joe from This Island Earth) is in this movie. It is difficult to hear anyone but Rex Reason responding whenever Nichols' character speaks.
On the queue for this week: Revolutionary Road (2008) and whatever else I want to watch throughout the week.
Total Movies: 137 (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 (1987), 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, Cape Fear, Say Anything ..., Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa, Chasing Amy, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Point Break, 500 Days of Summer, Man Bites Dog, Burn After Reading, Glory, Training Day, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, White Heat, All About Eve, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), The Big Heat, Death at a Funeral, Valkyrie, Shane, Stalag 17, Secondhand Lions, Bride of Frankenstein, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Witness for the Prosecution, In a Lonely Place, Dracula, Escaflowne, Dark Passage, X/1999, Watchmen, High Anxiety, Point Blank, Murder, My Sweet, The Thing from Another World)
