I'll try to keep this relatively short since I am so sick that I can barely concentrate right now. lol
Ace in the Hole (1951): It baffles me why Billy Wilder hasn't achieved the legendary popularity of, say, Alfred Hitchcock or Orson Welles; film geeks love him, and a good number of his movies are popular, but the man himself isn't an iconic name for whatever reason. He should be, though -- every time I see a new movie of his, my respect for him grows greater. Ace in the Hole is definitely one of his best. It's a sharp, dark, uncompromising movie about a cynical journalist (Kirk Douglas) who manipulates a story about a man trapped in a cave. The story grows to amazing heights as people from all around America come to see the spectacle. What's particularly effective about the movie is that it does not lay an unsympathetic eye solely upon the opportunistic journalism of Douglas' character; the journalists who try to get in on the action are hypocrites, the public who laps up the story are a bunch of attention-starved voyeurs and the people who actually should care for the victim are too busy pursuing their own selfish needs, save for one or two people. This is the kind of story that, unfortunately, will never be dated.
Repulsion (1965): Never watch this while you are as sick as I was a couple of days ago, because the first half hour or so is really slow, and I almost fell asleep at least five different times. That isn't a knock on the quality of the movie, however, because once it settles in and the suspense is ratcheted up to almost unbearable levels, then nobody will be able to tear their eyes away. In a weird way, the movie is like a mix of the style of the time (especially in how it looks and the music) and techniques you'd see down the road (the paranoid fantasies of the main character are like something you'd see in a Cronenberg movie). Good psychological movie, but it can be pretty rough to watch at points.
Son of Rambow (2007): Cute movie about a misfit from an ultrareligious family who befriends the class bully one day, and then they team up to create a remake of the first movie the misfit has ever seen in his life -- Rambo: First Blood. It's a very silly, innocent movie with a nice style to it. I particularly the little bits of animation that occasionally bleed into the movie's reality, and also the moments when the boys' imaginations color their perception of what is happening.
On the queue for this week: Taking Woodstock (2009), Suspicion (1941) and Star Trek (2009)
Total Movies: 164 (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, Back to the Future, Shivers, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Wrestler, I Love You, Man, Frankenstein, Disturbia, Suspiria, Away We Go, Ghost Town, Gran Torino, Ace in the Hole, Repulsion, Son of Rambow)
