Anime watching + Thanksgiving shenanigans = not much movie watching from me this week, though I had three good ones. Next week, however ...
WALL-E (2008): The story isn't the absolute best Pixar has done, I think, but the storytelling and visuals are maybe its best work. It's a bold move to make the first half-hour or so nearly void of dialogue, but it works splendidly -- a movie that actually takes advantage of being visual?? You don't say! Some of the shots are just friggin' stunning, too. I actually gasped when the camera pulls back to show all the garbage towers WALL-E has made during the however many years he has been carrying out his job. That is such a cool visual. And, yes, WALL-E and EVE are very cute together. Good movie, and a good birthday gift for me. :)
Casino Royale (2006): Would you believe this is the first James Bond movie I've ever seen? My mom is a big James Bond fan, and everything, and yet I haven't seen any others, unless you count watching half of Goldeneye and checking out the N64 game a thousand times from local video rental stores as having watched the movie. Anyway, this is a damn good action movie -- the stunts are very thrilling, and I like how they show the inexperience and impatient savagery of Daniel Craig's Bond. The parkour stuff in the beginning of the movie is particularly exciting. Eva Green is pretty friggin' hot, too. My only problem with the movie is that it's a tad long. It's never boring, though, so that's not such a big problem.
I'm Not There (2007): Enjoyment of this movie is directly tied to how knowledgeable about Bob Dylan's life and career one is. If you barely know anything about the guy, then this will probably be incomprehensible to you. If, like me, you know a bit about the guy, but are hardly an expert, you'll get some parts but be like, "O_o;" at others. And, if you're a Bob Dylan expert, you'll probably love this. I admired this more for how well made it is (definitely the most daring musical biopic you'll see) and for how good the actors are (Cate Blanchett definitely earned her Oscar nomination) rather than for how accurate it is as a portrait of Dylan, although he is not really the easiest man to portray, as this movie proves. I think it's worth watching because it breaks so hard from the traditional biopic formula and for how well the actors capture the various facets of Dylan.
On the queue for this week: Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), His Girl Friday (1940), 2 Days in Paris (2007), Blow-Up (1966), It Happened One Night (1934), La Vie En Rose (2007) and Zodiac (2007)
Movie Count: 118 (Live Free and Die Hard, Time Bandits, The Hustler, Black Dragon (Miracles), Hollywoodland, Blood Diamond, Animal Crackers, Marie Antoinette, Inside Man, The Fountain, Tombstone, Jurassic Park (Rifftrax), No Country for Old Men, Juno, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Rifftrax), There Will Be Blood, Rize, Born Into Brothels, Eastern Promises, Gone Baby Gone, Hard Candy, The Matrix Reloaded (Rifftrax), Hot Fuzz, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs, Phone Booth, The Dark Knight, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Predator, Ratatouille, Renaissance, Pretty in Pink, Scanners, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, Stop Making Sense, The Killing, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rifftrax), Voices of a Distant Star, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Amadeus, Touch of Evil, Paths of Glory, Gangs of New York, Five Easy Pieces, Perfect Blue, Novocaine, A Fish Called Wanda, A Hard Day's Night, Arsenic and Old Lace, Out of the Past, The Lady from Shanghai, The Wild Bunch, The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Bringing Up Baby, Pleasantville, Citizen Kane, They Live, The Terminator, The Adolescence of Utena, The Castle of Cagliostro, The Professional, High Plains Drifter, In the Heat of the Night, Michael Clayton, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Munich, Traffic, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Bug, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, The Maltese Falcon, Rashomon, Big Trouble in Little China, Sleeper, Badlands, Johnny Guitar, Mildred Pierce, Shadow of a Doubt, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, Hard Boiled, Targets, Away from Her, Hud, The Hidden Fortress, Seven Samurai, He Was a Quiet Man, Gilda, Borat, Ikiru, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The Boxer, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, The 39 Steps, The Philadelphia Story, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Adam's Rib, Throne of Blood, Ran, Peeping Tom, Clueless, Shadow Magic, 5 Centimeters Per Second, Children of Men, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Volver, Atonement, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Iron Man, Dial M for Murder, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Emperor and the Assassin, WALL-E, Casino Royale, I'm Not There)
