I had so many things to do last week that I did not have time to watch all my movies, haha. I'll be watching Nashville this week and Short Cuts whenever I have a chance to request it again.
But enough of that. Let's get on to this week's movies!
The Player (1992): Very good, very twisted satire of Hollywood society. Tim Robbins is hilarious as a Hollywood executive who might be fired from his cushy job and who also kills a writer. Robbins is great at showing the emptiness of a man who does nothing but approve ideas for movies; he has no particular talent, and is in fact quite a soulless, cynical man, but he controls the lives of those who actually have something to offer. If you are sick of the Hollywood attitude, you will enjoy this quite a bit.
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007): A solid, fun documentary, although the movie's inaccuracies have been documented in many places around the 'net. But the story is still interesting, especially if you're a gamer. The weirdest thing to me is seeing people who, in the "real" world, you would never give a second glance to, be treated like rock stars in this tiny, closed-off world of classic gaming. It is actually kind of sad to hear guys like Walter Day of Twin Galaxies talk about how they want to bring classic gaming to the mainstream, because the mainstream really does not pay them any mind whatsoever. Steve Wiebe gets a nice news story when he breaks the Donkey Kong world record, but that is about it.
Hollywood Ending (2002): A sub-par Woody Allen movie, but I love Woody Allen, so I enjoyed this. The main problems with this are that the story turns out a bit too neatly and there could be more done with the twist that comes partway into the movie; however, there are a lot of witty lines and situations, Woody is great as always and I also liked Tea Leoni's character a lot. Debra Messing's character is also amusing, although she did not seem entirely comfortable during the first few minutes of the movie. Maybe that's just me though.
The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999): Matt Damon manages to be both bland and incredibly creepy in this (and I mean that as a compliment). His Ripley is obsessive, envious and dangerously possessive. There is also a lot of homoerotic tension, but it does not really come off as sexual in any way -- I've read a few reviews that describe that tension as more of a narcissistic thing, where Ripley sees who he wants to be in the men he gets close to. Very strange stuff, haha. I like how the sort of lifestyle Ripley goes for -- a rich man living a life of nothingness in Europe -- is the sort of life that fits someone as soulless as he is.
Persepolis (2007): Haha, I had no idea what this was about before I checked it out from the library. Fear my perfect research skillz. I liked it quite a bit, though; it's a good coming of age story, and I am no Iranian scholar (understatement of the millennium), so it is interesting to get a small glimpse of a culture and history with which I am mostly unfamiliar. The movie's humor is surprisingly strong, too; the movie does have its somber moments, of course, but there are plenty of legit laughs in it, as well. Any fan of animated movies should see this.
Futurama: Bender's Game (2008): Disappointing. It's funny, the characters are still great and it looks fantastic, but the story is terrible. Seriously, it is one step above a Family Guy story. When I first heard new Futurama content would be released, I was so excited, and I stayed excited after watching Bender's Big Score. It isn't amazing, but at least the story is solid and is capable of keeping interest. With The Beast With a Billion Backs and this movie, though, it's just the jokes that are keeping me interested, and that is not Futurama. I'm trying hard not to sound too negative, but it's difficult because the series is so great. (EDIT: Just so I don't sound overly negative, I want to say I laughed my ass off at the Morks sequence. It's so random and silly, but it's hilarious.)
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986): Maybe the most heartwarming movie Woody Allen is capable of making. Interestingly enough, I did not care about the title character much (even though there is nothing at all wrong with Mia Farrow's performance), but her sisters (played by Barbara Hershey and Oscar winner Dianne Wiest) kept my attention whenever they appeared onscreen. I think I mainly connected with their aimlessness and their desire to find something in life they actually want to do, haha. Michael Caine (who also won an Oscar for this) is fantastic, as well. He's excellent at presenting a good, sympathetic man who is trying to understand himself and who is doing maybe the first bad thing he has done in his life (cheating on his wife). And, of course, Woody is a riot playing another variation on his classic hyperactive, hypochondriac worrywart intellectual character. I beseech you all to hop on the train and watch Woody Allen's movies -- guy gets a bad rap for having a bizarre personal life, but he knows how to make movies.
On the queue for this week: Nashville (1975), The Searchers (1956), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985).
Movie Count: 143 (Live Free or 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, Zodiac, 2 Days in Paris, His Girl Friday, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Blow-Up, La Vie en Rose, It Happened One Night, Mean Streets, Venus Beauty Institute, Dirty Pretty Things, A Very Long Engagement, Westworld, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, Little Children, Sense and Sensibility, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, The Ladykillers, The Player, The King of Kong, Hollywood Ending, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Persepolis, Futurama: Bender's Game, Hannah and Her Sisters)
