No Chicago this week because the copy of the movie I borrowed from the library crapped out about two-thirds in. I hate when that happens. :|
Into the Wild (2007): This is one of the best movies I have seen at showing both the beauty and brutality of nature. It is about a college graduate in Georgia, Christopher McCandles (Emile Hirsch), who donates his life savings and destroys everything that connects him to society (social security card, ID, credit cards, etc.), and takes off on a journey to Alaska so that he can experience nature and live off the land. McCandles experiences both amazing highs and despairing lows as he first drives and then hitchhikes a path taking him from Georgia to Arizona to California to Mexico and to Alaska. I could never hope to describe accurately the sights he sees along the way -- some of the shots captured are Planet Earth-esque. It would make me want to give this a shot, myself, if I weren't so certain I would die within a week at most (without a crapload of planning, of course). But I don't think the movie really romanticizes McCandle's journey. It just shows what he would have seen: Many beautiful, thrilling sights in the midst of a tough, harsh lifestyle.
Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990): Haha, I never thought anything involved with Hamlet would make me laugh so much. This movie, based on Tom Stoppard's play (he wrote and directed this adaptation), centers on Hamlet's college buddies and childhood friends, Rosencratz and Guildenstern, as they are called to Elsinore Castle and subsequently try to make sense out of all the craziness there. Mere glimpses of some of the most famous scenes of Hamlet are viewed, because Rosencratz and Guildenstern are offstage when they happen, which almost makes they more absurd than they really are. While they try to decode Hamlet's behavior, Rosencratz and Guildenstern pass the time with word games, playings of Question and ponderings of their own existence. It might sound sort of boring, but Tim Roth and Gary Oldman are charismatic enough to make it entertaining the whole way through. It's especially funny seeing Oldman be so goofy because I am so used to watching him play frightening villains.
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1987): Needs moar David Bowie. :| As I wrote yesterday, this movie is just epically corny and silly. There are tons of bad jokes, the story is amazingly anvilicious and poor Wil Wheaton plays the most hilariously bad 12-year-old rebel I have ever seen. And there is a heaping helping of '80s weirdness throughout. It would probably make TC's head explode. (Think Space Mutiny levels of '80s.)
On the queue for this week: Shoot 'Em Up (2007), Carlito's Way (1993) and Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Total Movies: 74 (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)
