Posts Tagged 'film'

Spending as much time thinking about movies as I do, it’s really hard to answer the inevitable, “What are your favorites?” question that most people ask when they find out I’m a film student.  Well, really they first ask, “What kind of movies do you make?” and I have to explain that I’m in theory, not production, but then they always ask for my favorite movies.

Anyway, now I have a handy Venn diagram (click to embiggen):

The green and blue circles could be much more full, but I tried to limit myself to films I’m particularly excited about.  The red circle, on the other hand, is 100% complete (unless I’m just forgetting something).  I only listed the years for those movies that share titles with other (inferior) films.

So I suppose you could call those ten movies in the center, which fit into all three circles, my Top Ten Favorite Movies.  Maybe I’ll write an entry (or series of entries) focusing on them sometime.

And yes, for a grad student in film, my tastes are pretty US-centric.  I do my best to expand my horizons, but my fascination with American culture is a part of who I am as a nerd and a scholar.

So yesterday, for whatever reason, I found myself in the mood to watch a cheesy cultish fantasy movie I’d never seen.  Something fun, where the appeal lies more in the visual splendor than the writing or acting.  After browsing the Netflix Instant options, I settled on Heavy Metal.  It’s a film I remember being keenly aware of as a child in the 80′s.  It was one of those rare animated films that I wasn’t allowed to see, which made it unbelievably enticing.  Not only that, but I’d seen enough posters and VHS boxes to know that it involved space ships, epic battles, alien creatures, and pretty ladies in skimpy scifi outfits.  In other words, it was just like my favorite movie at the time, Return of the Jedi, plus it was a cartoon, and it was forbidden.  Needless to say, at the age of eight, I was convinced that Heavy Metal had to be the greatest movie of all time.

And yet, even though it became easy for me to see R-rated films somewhere around the age of 13, I never saw Heavy Metal until yesterday.  Part of that might be the snags that apparently kept it from video release for several years, but separate from that, I feel like sometime in the decade or so after the film’s release, people completely stopped talking about it.  Even later on, when it was on video, and I was taking an interest in psychedelic culture and underground animation, recommendations for Heavy Metal were few and far between.  Now that I’ve finally watched it, I have some ideas as to why.

First of all, the animation itself hasn’t aged well (and I can’t imagine it looked that good to begin with).  Some of the design (much of it inspired by the comics, of course) is gorgeous, but even in those segments the motion is stiff and awkward.  It’s obvious which characters are meant to be hideous and which are meant to be beautiful (and more on them momentarily), but even the “beautiful” characters are frequently pretty ugly.  You can tell the filmmakers spent a lot of time looking at the work of Moebius and others, but they clearly lack either the ability or the inclination to produce anything close to that interesting.

The bigger problem, though, is the extraordinarily overt misogyny on display in this film.  I mean, obviously a 30-year-old psychedelic adventure film is bound to be male-centric, and I wasn’t expecting it to be otherwise.  Still, the volume and shamelessness of the sexism left me shocked.  Heavy Metal is a fantasy about men who get to do awesome, ass-kicking, groovy things, and some of those things they get to do happen to be women.  From the moment any adult female character appears on screen, you can start counting the seconds until she gets totally naked, and you probably won’t make it to ten (so yeah, South Park pretty much has this film’s number). One segment does offer a female protagonist, but she has no lines, alternates between little and no clothing, and is tortured and killed by the end.  No exception could better prove the rule.

This degree of misogyny in a film like this seems glaring in this post Whedon/R.D. Moore/Rowling world, because there’s so much more acknowledgment that just as many women are into scifi/fantasy as men, but I guess that still wasn’t regarded as the case at all in 1981.

I was reminded of some of Amanda Marcotte’s writing, particularly on the subjects of Playboy Magazine and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.  Basically, both essays make the point that there was a time when women could be openly excluded from any sort of culture of cool.  Hugh Hefner presents himself as a symbol of sophistication, and Kerouac and Cassidy are presented as avatars of rebellion against the mainstream, but all three men proceed from an unquestioned assumption that women exist solely to look hot, fuck them, and make them feel good.  This same assumption is at the core of Heavy Metal, which makes it a much harder film to enjoy these days.  Realizing this, I’m actually glad that people stopped discussing and recommending it, because I probably would have looked at those people a little differently afterward.

Popeye Doyle bought the house on Archer Avenue in the winter of his 35th year. Over the next decade, he and his wife, Morticia Addams, had three children: Derek Zoolander, Emma Woodhouse, and Anthony Adams.  And then they separated.  Morticia falls in love with Roger Murtaugh.  Meanwhile, Anthony is in love with Emma, who’s married to Peter Venkman but having an affair with Derek’s rival Hansel.

Back when the Dude had a radio show, he was inadvertently responsible for a massacre at a restaurant.  One of the victims was Mindy, which caused Mork to lose his mind and think he was a medieval knight.  Fortunately, with the help of Mr. Noodle’s brother Mr. Noodle, Mork finds love with Ellen James, and the Dude finds the Holy Grail.

All Philip Marlowe wants to do is run a nightclub, but things start going awry after the infamous child murderer Hans Beckert is arrested there.  Jerry Durrance shows up with Marlowe’s old flame, Joan of Arc.  Meanwhile, the Invisible Man and Cesare the Somnambulist team up to give him trouble, and Kasper Gutman wants to buy the place out from under him.

My favorite film of 2009 was about a kid who travels to an island on which the components of his psyche are represented by Tony Soprano, Claire Fisher, Eli Sunday, Idi Amin, Sally Ragdoll, and Colonel Frank Fitts.

The truth of the matter is that Donnie Darko and the Joker have been in love all along, much to the chagrin of Mia Thermopolis and Jen Lindley.

But the important question is, who really shot Major Reisman?  Everyone thinks it was Scottie Ferguson, but George Washington McLintock seems to know something he’s not telling.

Okay, so here we are in late January.  The Golden Globes have happened already, and the Oscar nominees are announced in a week.  We’re heading into the heart of awards season.  Therefore, I’ve decided I should go ahead and warn you: I have no intention of blogging about any of it.

(and no, I don’t just say that because for the past couple of weeks I’ve had trouble finding time to blog at all)

Now don’t get me wrong- I’ll probably watch the Oscars.  I might even, if I feel like it, post an entry afterward, but it will be about who wore the best clothes and how the hosts did and where the dead people montage fell on the touching/cheesy spectrum (and does Vic Chesnutt get a spot?  Because he was really memorable in Sling Blade), because these are the reasons why one watches the Oscars.  What I’m not going to do is pretend that the Oscars is an experience that has anything to do with film.

If the Academy chose the most popular films every year, there wouldn’t be much of a point to watching, but at least there would be a discernible purpose (even if it was a questionable one, like legitimizing lowest-common-denominator entertainment with a meaningless statue).  On the other hand, if the films that won tended to be those that are widely regarded as the best by critics, the Oscars would gain a lot more respect amongst people like me, but we’d have to tune in to the Sundance Channel or wherever to watch the damn show, because it sure wouldn’t be on network TV.

But the Oscar dinosaur doesn’t do either of those things.  Instead, it becomes more predictable each year, giving the big prizes to films that contain enough elements from some sort of Master Best Picture Checklist:

• Is it the epic story of an underdog?
• Is it a reasonably good effort by someone we should have honored years ago when they were doing their best work?
• Does it involve disability or perhaps disease?
• Does it make big cultural problems like racism or poverty seem solvable through individual goodwill and effort?
• Is it about the holocaust?

If you can answer yes to at least three of these questions, and you also have Weinstein or Warners throwing cash around in your name, you’re on the way to a Best Picture Oscar.

And while I’m ranting, let’s talk about institutional homophobia.  I don’t know what the age breakdown of the Academy voters is like, but I hope they’re kind of old, because that’s the best possible explanation I can come up with.  In the past 20 years, there hasn’t been a single Best Picture winner which featured a sympathetic queer character in a major role, despite nominations for The Crying Game, Four Weddings and a Funeral, As Good As It Gets, The Hours, Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Little Miss Sunshine, and Milk.  I’m not saying all of those films should have won (or that they’re all fantastic portrayals of LGTBQ characters), but certainly one of them ought to have won at some point.*  Furthermore, in that same span of time there have been two Best Picture winners that feature self-loathing queer murderers, and one that used unsympathetic gay characters to represent the growing decadence of 13th-Century British royalty.**

Within this unfortunate context, one wonders if the Academy voter sees the many actors awarded for playing queer (Tom Hanks, Hilary Swank, Sean Penn, etc.) as categorically similar to those awarded for portraying the psychologically unbalanced or mentally disabled (thus accounting for Hanks’ early ’90′s twofer).  Of course, the Academy also loves it when beautiful women are deglamorized to show their “dedication” to a part, so the very best thing you can do to win, as Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron will tell you, is to play a mentally unstable queer woman who’s uglier than you (and playing a real person always helps too).

Anyway, I apologize if this entry is particularly long and disjointed, but I’ll get back to my point: I refuse to blog about the Oscars (or the Golden Globes, which are so much more pointless that I haven’t bothered addressing them here).  I will, however, try to blog more in general.

– — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – –

*Specifically, Brokeback Mountain should have beat Crash, at the very least.  I mean, I thought Milk was far superior to Slumdog Millionaire, but at least Slumdog has fans.  I don’t know anyone, critic or layperson, who got anything out of Crash.  Seriously, Crash?  That one single shot in Brokeback Mountain where Heath Ledger stands up angrily in front of a sky full of fireworks has more cinematic interest in it than the entirety of Crash.

**A special prize to the first reader who names all three of these films.

10. Star Trek

When I was a kid, I loved the classic Star Trek, and this movie reminded me why.  It’s big, colorful, fast-paced and reasonably smart—although I wish the movie was just a little bit smarter.  Zachary Quinto is a fantastic Spock, and Chris Pine is a reasonably okay Kirk (there’s really no fair way to judge anyone who’s not Shatner in that role).  Karl Urban is absolutely phenomenal as Bones (always my favorite character), and if he’d had more to do, the film would probably be higher on this list.

9. The Princess and the Frog

There’s a full review coming, so I won’t say too much here.  In short, I was pleasantly surprised by how good this is.  The animation is gorgeous, the music is occasionally very good, and the politics are as good as could reasonably be expected.  I’ll definitely watch this again sometime, which is more than I can say for Avatar.

8. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I’ve always loved scifi/fantasy stories that background the adventure in favor of believable characterization and drama.  Largely for that reason, this is my favorite by far of the Harry Potter series.  It’s a movie about good wizards battling bad wizards, sure, but more than that it’s a movie about being a teenager, and it captures the joy and confusion of that age perfectly.  All that, plus a fantastic turn by Jim Broadbent.

7. Up

Ed Asner is the gift that keeps on giving.  He’s been the go-to crusty old man for about 30 years, and he’s still alive and continuing to perfect the role.  In Up, he’s holds his own, voice-wise, with a cute little fat kid and probably the funniest canine character ever put on screen.  Of course, this being Pixar, there are also mindblowing visuals and an outside-the-box story.  There’s also a real emotional core to the film, particularly in that opening montage that makes everyone (everyone!) cry.

6. Drag Me to Hell

After the disaster that was Spider-Man 3, Sam Raimi returned to his horror/comedy roots and proved he’s still got it in him.  This might be my favorite horror film of the past decade (the only other contender is 2008’s Let the Right One In, a film so different it’s hard to compare).  Drag Me to Hell is scary, suspenseful, occasionally disgusting, and frequently hilarious.  In other words, it’s everything a horror movie ought to be.  A moment of Satanic sunlight in a dark decade of reprehensible Torture Porn.

5. Moon

Wedged into this year of big, noisy, frequently dumb scifi movies comes this weird little cerebral piece, like a lost film from 1974, to show us what the genre is capable of.  The writing is unapologetically complex, the effects are excellent but never distracting, and Sam Rockwell blows it out of the water in an insanely demanding role.

4. Humpday

Lynn Shelton’s film deals with some heavy issues without ever feeling even slightly bogged down: gender, sexuality, friendship, art, the social divide between bohemian and bourgeoisie.  Josh Leonard, Mark Duplass, and Alicia Delmore all do a great job building their characters and their relationships with each other through extraordinarily believable (apparently improvised) dialogue.  This is also one of the best portrayals of awkwardness I’ve ever seen outside of any version of The Office, but unlike that show, it never makes you wince and turn away.

3. Fantastic Mr. Fox

Every inch a Wes Anderson movie, despite its cast of woodland creatures.  George Clooney does that thing he’s so good at, his cleverness and charm perfectly embodied in fox form.  Anderson regulars like Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray find their dapper inner animals as well.  Meryl Streep’s vocal performance is strangely lackluster (which is particularly disappointing after she totally nailed the Julia Child role) but passable.  The puppets and sets are beautiful, the animation is lovingly old school, and the plot has some depth to it while still appealing to children (or at least the ones I saw it with).

2. Inglourious Basterds

Big, sprawling, occasionally messy, but beautiful to behold.  A hell of a lot of talking, punctuated with people getting killed with guns and knives, baseball bats and bare hands.  A love letter to war movies, but also a film with something to say about war.  I get annoyed with film nerds who write negative reviews of Tarantino films that can be summed up as, “I get every one of your obscure cinematic references (behold as I list them) and therefore I hate you and your films.”  If Tarantino’s esoteric allusions were a problem, it would be the people who don’t get them that hate the films, which doesn’t seem to be the case.  I get maybe about half of them myself, but I just like watching what he builds out of such disparate pieces.

1. Where the Wild Things Are

I’m extremely impatient to see this film again.  It’s so unlike anything else I’m used to that I have a hard time trusting my opinion of it based on one viewing.  These are the things I do know:  It captures the spirit of the book perfectly.  The creatures are wonderfully constructed and beautifully acted.  It’s unlike anything else I’ve ever seen (including Spike Jonze’s other films, which I always found overrated).  Parts of it almost made me cry, but it left me feeling genuinely uplifted.  This was a movie I never would have thought (prior to seeing the trailers) could possibly be good, and yet it was basically perfect.  This movie makes me want to have kids, just so I can one day show it to them.

What is there left that hasn’t been said about Avatar? First of all, yes, it’s gorgeous to look at. James Cameron really puts the emphasis on immersing you in a weirdly beautiful world of fluorescent trees, glowing dandelion pods, and flying dragons.  The big blue people are beautiful (and yes, sexy) as well, moving through the jungle with preternatural grace.  The fight scenes are big, but they’re not poorly edited and impossible to follow as in the style of so many action movies these days.

Second, to agree with the second point everyone else has raised, the story is mindnumbingly predictable post-colonial white guilt claptrap.  The dialogue is almost George Lucas bad, and everything that’s going to happen is telegraphed ages in advance (sure, let’s spend a whole scene describing some great heroic act that only happens every few generations- you don’t suppose the hero will do that very thing before the end of the movie, do you?).  I agree with the comparisons to Ferngully and Dune and Dances with Wolves (although I admit I’ve never watched Dances with Wolves, I’ve pretty much got the idea). The one comparison that sprang to mind which I haven’t heard anyone else make is to The Dark Crystal, in which the creators got so wrapped up in building a beautiful and internally consistent world from scratch that they didn’t leave any time for building an equally interesting and unique story.

I think Annalee Newitz is right that this film has a serious problem in its (metaphorical but inarguable) depiction of race, and I further think that SEK is right that we should go ahead and call that problem what it is: racism.  Cameron sets out with clear intentions of respecting indigenous people, but you can’t just fall into the same old “noble naked savages with feathers in their braided hair communing with horses and being one with the Earth Mother” trope and act like that’s okay.  It’s not okay, and we need to move past it.

I did think it was kind of interesting how Cameron finds a reasonably believable pseudo-scientific justification for the whole “connection to all living things” idea by giving the aliens a cluster of tendrils (like a biological USB port) that they can connect to plants and animals to communicate psychically with them.  Usually, when science fiction features psychic powers, there’s a big suspension-of-disbelief pill to swallow in the idea of dualism (that our minds exist outside our brains), since real science has repeatedly found that it just doesn’t hold up, as much as we might like it to.  By creating a physical, nervous connection between two discrete beings, Cameron gets around that problem.  Of course, when it’s all in the service of creating an imaginary race that’s even more like we want American Indians to be than American Indians actually are, it’s hard to really appreciate this innovation.

I also have to say that I’m really, really sick of the “military asshole” archetype embodied here by Colonel Miles Quaritch.  Wasn’t this exact same guy in District 9 too?  The problem with a character like this (aside from the fact that he’s obnoxious for every moment he’s on screen) is that it embodies everything that’s wrong with militarism in one cartoonishly villainous character, and then the audience waits in great anticipation for the scene where he gets his, and then he does, and everyone cheers “Hooray, we’ve defeated militarism!”  I’m sorry, Hollywood screenwriters and action movie fans, but you can’t kill a noxious ideology by putting arrows through some asshole’s chest.  For that matter, you can’t rid the world of greed by packing Giovanni Ribisi into a spaceship and sending him away, but whatever.

In closing, I’ll say this: If you have any interest at all, even a little bit, in ever seeing Avatar, SEE IT IN THE THEATRE.  The spectacle is all it has going for it, and it will be totally pointless on a TV (no matter how big, flat, and HD).

The new trailer for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is out, and it’s an improvement over the teaser, but I still can’t say I’m excited.  Regardless, I thought it would be fun to look back at some previous non-animated Alices.

5. Alice (1989)

This is far from Jan Svankmajer’s best film, but it stands out as an inarguably unique take on the Wonderland story.  Rather than an expansive landscape, Wonderland is depicted as a labyrinthine house of tiny rooms and cramped passageways (not unlike the Hell of Svankmajer’s Faust).  The White Rabbit has been stuffed and mounted, and the Mad Hatter and March Hare trade heads rather than seats.  When Alice shrinks, she transforms from a real little girl into an animated china doll.  In short, this adaptation is purposely as creepy as possible in every way.  It’s neither faithful nor child-friendly, but it’s definitely worth a watch.

4. Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy (1976)

What can you say about a 1970’s hardcore porn version of Alice in Wonderland?  To begin with, it’s a musical, which makes for a truly strange generic blend.  Like a lot of vintage porn, the hardcore sequences are the least interesting bits (containing very little that could actually be called sexy), whereas the pun-filled dialogue, the scanty costumes, and the full and flowing 1970’s hair (on their heads and everywhere else) are consistently amusing.  This was produced by Bill Osco, who was also responsible for the classic Flesh Gordon.

3. Alice in Wonderland (1966)

This British production (originally broadcast on the BBC) views Carroll’s story through the lens of mid-20^th Century Art Cinema.  Think “Alice at Marienbad.”  There was no script—the actors just improvised around the text of the novel.  There are also no animal costumes—each creature is just a person, except for the Cheshire Cat, who’s just a cat.  In watching the Tea Party scene, the conclusion seems inescapable that costumes were out of the question once they’d spent the entire budget on drugs.  Also check out the Frog Footman, who’s easily the funniest character in the film.

2. Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass (1985)

Irwin Allen produced this big budget star-studded musical TV miniseries spectacular in the grand 1980’s tradition.  Natalie Gregory stands out as a rare age-appropriate Alice, and handles the dialogue exceptionally for such a tiny child.  There are a few too many winks to the cast’s other work to regard it as a faithful adaptation (Telly Salivas as a bald Cheshire Cat exclaims, “Meow, Baby!”), but it’s mostly a lot of fun, and the length allows for the inclusion of characters who make it into few adaptations, such as the Horse, the Goat, and the Newspaper-suited Man on the train.  No other incarnation of the caterpillar has ever been as likable as Sammy Davis, Jr., who does a tap number to Father William.  There are also some surprisingly frightening scenes, such as the encounters with the Jabberwocky and the truly disturbing bit where Carol Channing turns into a sheep.

1. Great Performances: Alice in Wonderland (1983)

The 1982 Broadway production of Alice was adapted for PBS, and it’s really something special.  The costumes and sets are taken directly from the Tenniel drawings, so much so that they’re largely black and white with crosshatching.  Alice is played by twentysomething Kate Burton, whose theatrical acting style doesn’t stand up to the camera’s scrutiny.  Fortunately, she’s balanced out by legends like Colleen Dewhurst, Maureen Stapleton, and Donald O’Connor.  I saw this as a small child, and was terrified by the Cheshire Cat’s bald, claw-sharpening human form.  As an adult, my favorite scene is the tea party, in which avant garde theatre legend Andre Gregory and a strikingly handsome young Zeljko Ivanek play the Mad Hatter and the March Hare as a bitchy gay couple.

Although The Royal Tenenbaums (despite the evocative surname) is not a Christmas movie, it does prominently feature one Christmas song. Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time is Here,” originally from A Charlie Brown Christmas, serves as Margot Tenenbaum’s personal theme music. It’s first heard as she’s leaving her husband’s house early in the film, and recurs when she’s having ice cream with Royal toward the end. This choice of accompaniment always worked for me instinctively, but I never gave much thought as to why until recently.

The Peanuts (particularly Charlie Brown himself) and the Tenenbaums (particularly Margot and her brother/love interest Richie) embody a similar sort of restrained melancholy.  Despite Charlie Brown’s occasional “RATS!” and Richie’s impulsive suicide attempt, these are not characters who generally express their discontent in melodramatic terms.  Rather, their moods hang over them like an overcast sky.  When asked how her brother’s doing, Margot says, “I don’t know.  I can’t tell.”  In discussing the Holiday season, Charlie Brown laments, “Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy.  I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”  When rejected husband Raleigh asks if she still loves him, Margot replies, “I do, kind of.  I can’t explain it right now.”

In the visual media, exceptional portrayals of depression are rare, because it tends to involve a lot of being still, quiet and inexpressive.  Tony Soprano comes close, but the focus is always on his physicality: trouble breathing, panic attacks.  George Bailey is a man at his wit’s end, but his desperation is portrayed as situational, and expressed overtly through yelling at his family and planning to jump off a bridge.  For those of us who’ve really dealt with depression in our lives, however, nothing could ring more true than a perfectly calm person, dry-eyed and steady-voiced, staring out at a field of snow and saying, “I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”

My favorite new blog, 300 Reviews, recently featured an excellent 300 word review of Zack Snyder’s 300 by Brian Oliu.  Also, a colleague of mine recently wrote a 2046-word paper about Wong Kar-Wai’s 2046.  Thus inspired, I thought it would be interesting to see how many films I could write about if I limit myself by titular number.

Once (John Carney, 2006)
Sweet.

Year One (Harold Ramis, 2009)
Nope.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946)
Sexy, classic.

Two Weeks Notice (Marc Lawrence, 2002)
Don’t bother.

Three Amigos (John Landis, 1986)
Dumb but funny.

Three Kings (David O. Russell, 1999)
Smart. Widely underrated.

Threesome (Andrew Fleming, 1994)
‘90s sexuality crisis.

Fantastic Four (Tim Story, 2005)
Couldn’t sit through it.

Four Christmases (Seth Gordon, 2008)
Oh dear god, no.

Four Rooms (Rodriguez et al, 1995)
Uneven. Worth watching once.

Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)
Nicholson in his prime: Amazing.

The Five Obstructions (Leth/von Trier, 2003)
Fascinating cinematic exercise. Disappointing ending.

The Fifth Element (Luc Besson, 1997)
Fun, sexy, shiny and shallow.

Six Degrees of Separation (Fred Schepisi, 1993)
Underrated film, but the play’s better.

The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan, 1999)
Okay then. A decade later? Unwatchable.

Seven (David Fincher, 1995)
Beautifully crafted, but wallows in human misery.

The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
Spectacular. Overcomes the very clichés it birthed.

8 Mile (Curtis Hanson, 2002)
For a misogynist’s vanity project, better than expected.

8 Women (François Ozon, 2002)
Campy French musical. Unsure what the point was.

District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009)
Allegory hampered by action, or action hampered by allegory?

9 (Shane Acker, 2009)
Poppet saves the world. Honestly, I didn’t see it.

The Ninth Gate (Roman Polanski, 1999)
Would be better if Satan ever showed his face.

10 (Blake Edwards, 1979)
Moore stalks married Derek. Seems less like harmless fun now.

The Ten (David Wain, 2006)
These people are usually funny, but sadly not this time.

Ocean’s Eleven (Lewis Milestone, 1960)
Less a movie than a fabulous drunken party with some roleplaying.

Ocean’s Eleven (Steven Soderbergh. 2001)
The best recent caper movie. Well cast. Tightly written. Props, Soderbergh.

12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957)
Classic. As riveting as twelve guys in one room could possibly be.

12 Monkeys (Terry Gilliam, 1995)
Better than average Gilliam weirdness. Writing only a little clunky. Not bad.

Apollo 13 (Ron Howard, 1995)
Your basic Howard fact based drama. That is, well executed but lacking vision.

21 (Robert Luketic, 2008)
I can’t get past that the kids are supposed to be Asian. Way to wear your racism on you sleeve, Hollywood.

The other day I watched the sequel to Edward Scissorhands.  You know, the one where Edward goes to Hollywood and makes weird movies?  He dates Carrie Bradshaw, but she dumps him because of his weird lifestyle, so he gets together with Alabama Whitman, who’s much more accepting.  He persuades Rollin Hand to come out of retirement and be his star, alongside Peter Venkman, Principal Rooney, Drusilla, and Vinnie Delpino.

Another of my favorite movies to watch repeatedly is the follow-up to Stripes, where John and Russell team up with Elwood Blues and Cyborg from the Superfriends to fight ghosts.  They hire Iona as their secretary, although she’s past her punk rock phase at that point.  Then Ellen Ripley and Bob McKenzie get possessed by demons, and all hell breaks loose.

On the subject of 80′s movies, did you see the one where Lenny Briscoe and Emily Gilmore take Ferris Bueller’s sister to a Catskills resort, and she falls in love with a ghost?

Some of my other favorites:

Frank Serpico goes undercover in a mafia family, but he becomes the Don after Terry Molloy dies, which almost ruins his marriage to Annie Hall.  The only person he can really trust is Boo Radley.

The Starman is on a bowling team with Dan Conner and Mr. Pink.  When Santa Claus and Lester Bangs hire him to deliver a ransom, he soon finds himself on the run from Satan.  Fortunately, he gets some help along the way from Amber Waves, but she may have her own plans for him.

Han Solo and James Bond go on a quest for the Holy Grail, with the help of Gimli the Dwarf.  The stormtroopers get there first, but everything works out for the best when General Veers picks the wrong cup and turns into a skeleton.

Ted Theodore Logan gets recruited by Othello to learn the truth about the world.  Natalie helps him out of pity, but Ralphie Cifaretto betrays them all.  Ted must use his time traveling powers to face off against the omnipotent Elrond of Rivendell.

So what are some of your favorites?