I hate medicine. On the one hand, the cough medicine I took last night has helped me tremendously with the soreness that just about ravaged by throat yesterday. On the other hand, I feel like a slight breeze could tip me over. The medicinal feeling is the worst -- it's as if all my body parts are moving independent of my will, even though I know I am controlling them. And the brain fog is just bizarre. I can't wait until I get better.
Movie time!
Beverly Hills Cop (1984): Pretty funny, and it is pretty exciting by the end, but man, Eddie Murphy is really awkward at times. It's mostly his laugh, but it's an incredibly awkward laugh. If anyone here has seen Bowfinger, the laugh sounds like Eddie Murphy's geeky doppleganger let loose for five seconds at a time after Axel Foley (Murphy's character) tells a joke. Also, watching this movie while keeping in mind Bill Simmons' theory that Axel Foley is gay makes certain scenes WAY funnier than they should be. Such as Foley taking the two cops tailing him to a strip club and talking about how hard his dick is, and how the policemen have to have limp dicks because they're working. Funny on its own but hysterical with the added subtext.
The Boys from Brazil (1978): I have very little experience with Ira Levin (who wrote the book that inspired this movie), but I remember Stephen King mentioning in Danse Macabre how Levin writes with some completely absurd stories and yet makes them work. (For comparison, Levin also wrote Rosemary's Baby, which is at least as absurd as this, and yet is also an amazing movie -- and, I assume, a good book.) The story is about a Nazi hunter, Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), who is tracking down a despicable Nazi scientist, Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck -- no, really), who is at the tail end of a plot to create a new Hitler via clones whose lives have been engineered to mirror Hitler's as closely as possible. The plot has a bajillion holes in it, but that doesn't really matter, because the movie is completely aware of how absurd it is, and it does not demand the viewer take it seriously at all.
For instance, Peck is a good actor given the right role, but he overacts to a hilarious degree in this movie. However, does it hurt the movie at all? Of course not, because it is already batcrap insane. Seeing Peck act like an evil bastard, swear and strike people (can you imagine Atticus Finch doing any of those things??) simply adds to the bizarre experience. Maybe the best part of the movie are the Hitler clones. The same kid plays all of them, and they are spread throughout Europe and North America -- there is American!Hitler, Austrian!Hitler and so on. My favorite is Britler. The accent had me rolling with laughter. I'm just sad we didn't get Chinese!Hitler or Mexican!Hitler. What also had me laughing is that the Hitler clones all have Hitler's hairdo, but they are all 14 years old. There is no higher comedy than seeing Hitler's haircut on a pale teenager.
Perhaps the funniest part of the history of The Boys from Brazil is that Laurence Olivier was actually nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award. Not that Olivier's performance is bad at all, but can you imagine the fights that must have taken place leading up to the nomination? "It's Laurence Olivier! ... But he's playing a Nazi hunter. It's sort of like a Holocaust movie! ... But there are Hitler clones." I wonder what the reaction to that nomination was like at the time?
Anyway, The Boys from Brazil is not really a great movie, but it is a lot of fun to watch. I bet it'd be great to see with some friends during a boring afternoon.
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946): In film noir, the femme fatale is normally the most despicable character, but while Cora Smith (Lana Turner) has some definite problems, Frank Chambers (John Garfield) is nearly as despicable as she is. He makes nothing about having an affair with a married woman. ("Stealing a man's wife, that's nothing, but stealing a man's car? That's larceny.") He pretends to joke about killing Cora's husband (he laughs it off later, but he's not joking), then makes a big show about backing off later when Cora brings it up. He cheats on Cora when he is with her. And so on. Cora is most definitely not an innocent woman -- she noticeably manipulates Frank as the movie goes on -- but Frank is far from the tough, tragic film noir heroes whose lives spiral out of control because of one misstep. One other character I have to mention -- Arthur Keats (Hume Cronyn) is a hilariously slick, slimy lawyer. I enjoy the movie before he shows up, but his appearance takes it to another level.
On the queue for this week: I have no idea.
Total Movies: 150 (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, Revolutionary Road, Commando, Coraline, Rachel Getting Married, V for Vendetta, Let the Right One In, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Beast with Five Fingers, This Gun for Hire, Jackie Brown, Beverly Hills Cop, The Boys from Brazil, The Postman Always Rings Twice)
