Happy Valentine's Day to everyone. A few words of advice to everyone on this wonderful day: If the Love Shack's a rockin', don't come a-knockin'. *shot*
Anyway, Saturday means movies, and I have plenty to deliver!
Zelig (1983): Usually I want to stick to movies I haven't seen before, but I couldn't resist going back to my favorite Woody Allen movie and seeing if it held up. And it totally does. Basically it's a mockumentary about a man, Leonard Zelig (Allen), who has a psychological disorder that allows him to match his appearance and mannerisms to anyone around him. It's a hilarious movie done in the style of old newsreels. The movie really takes advantage of its setting -- there are tons of "cameos" by famous figures of the era (Charles Lindbergh, Charlie Chaplin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, etc.). Even more surreal are the parts where famous writers and academics (such as Susan Sontag and Bruno Bettelheim) offer their thoughts on Zelig's story. I don't know if it's still my favorite Woody Allen movie, but it's certainly still up there.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972): Pretty good, but definitely uneven. It's essentially a series of skits about topics in the book the movie is adapting. These skits vary highly in quality -- I enjoyed the third skit (Woody Allen is a strangely funny Italian), the fifth skit (the surrealness of Regis Philbin trying to guess a man's sexual perversion cannot be beat) and the final skit (the classic "body is a control center" type of deal, and yes, they are working on exactly what you are thinking about). The sixth skit (a strange type of Frankenstein story) is half funny and half not, while I was indifferent about the first one (a court jester tries to bed a queen) and the fourth one (a man tries on women's clothes while visiting a friend's home), and was just weirded out by the second one (a man falls in love with a sheep). Fans like me will enjoy it, but I don't think it's aged particularly well.
Stardust Memories (1980): Very strange movie about a filmmaker who has lost the will to create. I appreciated the way the movie uses the visuals to reflect the state of mind of the main character, comedy director Sandy Bates (Woody Allen). It leads to some good, surreal moments I enjoyed, although occasionally I wanted to reach through the screen and shake the Bates character, since it's frustrating to see someone who has a gift not actually use it for anything. From what I read, this was a polarizing movie when it was first released, but I liked it.
Barry Lyndon (1975): This is sort of a tough movie to figure out (I could definitely see why it split so many people upon release). It's Stanley Kubrick, so it's of course technically spectacular, but the way the story unfolds is just so strange. Many people write that the movie views the characters in a cold, indifferent way -- I'd go as far to say the tone is one of outright loathing. Many of the characters are unscrupulous a-holes; the way the movie approaches their development, it's as if there's a feeling that they don't really deserve normal plot development. (Hell, the narrator actively spoils plot twists and gives away the end of Barry Lyndon's life well before the movie finishes.) It's certainly a unique way to critique the lifestyle of these people.
Be Kind Rewind (2008): I enjoyed it for what it is -- a fun, whimsical movie. This is one of those movies where, after production is wrapped up, you hear 1,000 stories about how much fun the actors and crew had making it. The story is OK, but the best part is watching the characters put together their cheap "Swedes" of famous movies. (The 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rush Hour 2 and Robocop Swedes had me laughing a lot.) Mos Def and Jack Black make a pretty good team, even if Black gets a bit irritating at times (par for the course with him).
On the queue for this week: Radio Days (1987), Deconstructing Harry (1997) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Total Movies: 30 (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)
