Casablanca
Citizen Kane,
Death Proof
Deer Hunter
Die Hard 2,
Die Hard 4,
No Country For Old Men,
Pest,
Ratatouillie
Robocop 1
Robocop 2
Robocop 3
Tron
Young Frankenstein
the bold titles are on deck
the struck titles have been viewed…here goes
Citizen Kane - WOW. Everyone says Citizen Kane is a classic, and I never could truly understand until I saw it with my own eyes. Charles Foster Kane’s rise to power story holds a power and epic quality not unlike Scarface or There Will Be Blood, but OG. Kane is the original Tony Montana. I preferred Orwell as a younger man, charismatic and funny. Once he started losing his hair and becoming a twisted, miserable plutocrat, his charm was lost on me. All in all…it’s earned its place in my top 10…A-
Death Proof - an acceptable film. In keeping with the grindhouse tradition…broads, action, and blood… being that I knew what to expect going into it, this one didn’t show me much else. not bad, though…B
Die Hard 2 - same deal as with Death Proof…walked into it knowing what to expect…I didn’t really expect it to be anything more than the transition from Die Hard to With a Vengeance…terrorists, guns, money, and john mcclain…been there, done that, bought the blood-soaked t shirt…B-
Ratatouillie - Pixar, you did it again! These guys never cease to keep it fresh, doling out a new, relatively original movie every year. Having seen WALL E a day or so after I saw Rat, I was doubly impressed. If you haven’t already, let me be the first to tell you to hit that shiz up. my aunt, for some unfathomable reason, thought WALL E fell short due to it’s “lack of dialogue”. To which I reply, “so this adorable, hilarious, futuristic, topical MASTERPIECE is no good in your opinion because a couple of robots didn’t TALK TO EACH OTHER?” get real…RAT = B+ WALL E = A-
Robocop 3 - i unknowingly did the archetypal action movie hat trick this week…robo 3, however, had a pretty cool inclusion…otomo…
asian robocop…otomo is everything robocop isnt…he’s more cybernetic than the metal-clad murphy. AND HES ASIAN! he looks and acts like a normal human, and (arguably the most badass thing a robot can do) he SMOKES! He also had the power to cleave a metal post in half with his (undoubtedly) robotically enhanced katana. other than that…eric from billy madison can be found scuttling around the screen throughout…B-
keep checkin back…im moving back up to school in a week and i may or may not have internet when i get there, but rest assured ill be watching and taking notes so that you, lone tumblr viewer, can benefit
12 Monkeys, 2001, 13th Warrior, 25th Hour, 1984, 3:10 to Yuma (old), 3:10 to Yuma (new), About Schmidt, Alien 3, Alls Quiet on the Western Front, Alphaville, Amadeus, American Gangster, American Graffitti, Amityville Horror, A Mighty Wind, Apocalypse Now, Bad Boys 1, Bad Boys 2, Bee Movie, Belly, Big Sleep, Bill and Ted 1, Bill and Ted 2, Black Hawk Down, Blade Runner, Blood Diamond, Blues Brothers, Blues Brothers 2000, Bodyguard, Bourne Ultimatum, Boyz N The Hood, Brazil, Breakin, Breakin 2 : Electric Boogaloo, Bridge on the River Kwai, Bright Lights Big City, Bullet, Bullitt, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Casablanca, Charlie Wilson’s War, Chinatown, Cinderella Man, Citizen Kane, Clockstoppers, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Cloverfield, Commando, Conan, Constant Gardener, Count of Monte Cristo, Cool Hand Luke, Darjeeling Ltd., Dark City, Dawn of the Dead (orig.), Day of the Dead, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Dead Poet’s Society, Dead Presidents, Death Proof, Death Race 2000, Deer Hunter, Delicatessen, Deliverance, Desperado, Die Hard 2, Die Hard 4, Dirty Dancing, Dirty Dozen, District 13, Dog Day Afternoon, Dracula 2000, Dracula 3000, Dr. Strangelove, Dune, Eastern Promises, Elephant Man, Every Which Way But Loose, Exorcist, Fahrenheit 451, Fletch, Frankenstein, Freaks, Freddy 1-X, French Connection, Futurama : Bender’s Big Score, Gandhi, The Game, Ghost, Good Bad and the Ugly, Good Shepherd, Good Will Hunting, The Great Train Robbery, The Graduate, Hamburger Hill, Harry Potter 5, Harvey, Heavy Metal, High Noon, Hills Have Eyes 2, History of Violence, Hotel Rwanda, House of 1,000 Corpses, Illusionist, Italian Job(orig.), Jackass 2, Jackie Brown, Jason 1-X, Jaws 1, Jaws 2, Jaws 3, Judgment at Nuremberg, Juno, Last Crusade (Indiana Jones), Lawnmower Man, Last King of Scotland, Letters from Iwo Jima, Logan’s Run, Lost in Translation, Lucky # Slevin, Mad Max, Magnolia, Maltese Falcon, Memento, Menace II Society, Mesmerist, Million Dollar Baby, National Lampoon Senior Trip, Natural Born Killers, No Country For Old Men, North By Northwest, Nosferatu, Ocean’s Eleven (orig.), Oldboy, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, One Point O, Orphanage, Patton, People V. Larry Flint, Pest, Platoon, Point Break, Predator 1, Predator 2, Raging Bull, Raiders of the Lost Ark (Indiana Jones), Ratatouillie, Rear Window, Red River, Resident Evil : Extinction, Rio Bravo, Robocop 1, Robocop 2, Robocop 3, Roman Holiday, Royal Tenenbaums, Rocky I, Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV, Rocky V, Rocky Balboa, Sarah Marshall, Saving Private Ryan, Scarface, Serpico, Seven Samurai, Shane, Shrek The Third, Silent Movie, Silver Streak, Slapshot, Sleeper, Smokey and the Bandit, Soylent Green, Spinal Tap, Spun, St. Elmo’s Fire, Strange Days, Superman 1, Superman 2, Superman 3, Taxi, Taxi Driver, Temple of Doom (Indiana Jones), They Live, The Thing, THX-1138, Tombstone, Top Gun, Tron, Unforgiven, Videodrome, The Wall, Wall Street, Walk Hard, Waiting for Guffman, War, Warriors, Yellow Submarine, Yojimbo, Young Frankenstein
the following movies are off the list: Predator, Natl Lampoon Senior Trip, Day the Earth Stood Still, Alien 3, Bad Boys
I’m falling behind on my movies, but I am trying to squeeze one or two in in a day…one in the morning one at night
…
Predator - one of the few truly great Arnold movies. Jesse Ventura is a sexual Tyrannasaurus, Carl Weathers mans the minigun, Predator bleeds green and all is right with the world. ( B+)
Natl Lampoon Senior Trip - didn’t realize how old this one was (95)…it had its moments, if you set aside the fact that 17 year old kids are smoking weed and partying in a senator’s hotel room, among other absurd things. nice work by one of the kids in the hall (his name escapes me at the moment) and the neighbor dad from honey i shrunk the kids (B-)
Day the Earth Stood Still - ahh..what a refreshing change of pace. I saw The Happening with my sister last weekend and while the movie was pretty absurd, I was glad to see a relatively pure use of camera instead of b-lining for special effects and computer work like the trend has tragically become. Day the Earth Stood Still dives back into a time before CGI, in a world I’d almost forgotten existed. Klaatu didnt need tenticles or a third eye or anything extravagant, he was a humanoid and he played a believable alien. A progressive film for it’s time, DtESS is a welcomed return to a simpler time for anyone weary of the cinematic present(A-)
Alien 3 (spoilers) - disappointing. Okay…the dog alien was pretty cool, but i feel like it was a step backward from Aliens (where there were a shitload of aliens)…gimme a planet of xenomorphs! give me MORE Ridley Scott! (C)
Bad Boys - pretty good. smith and lawrence are a pretty dynamite combo, almost surprisingly so. The story was a little thin, and i definitely detected a shooting sequence that i conciously had to stop and say “this is pretty gratuitous”, but all in all not a bad flick. Tea Leoni really does it for me, too (B)
see ya next time
a few new removals from the list
Alien 3, Predator 1, Temple of Doom (Indiana Jones),
for now, some brief reviews…brief because im le tired
There Will Be Blood
historic/period film
~2.5 hours
Director : Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano
Set in the midwest at the turn of the 21st century, Blood follows the life of oil prospector Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) and his son HW Plainview as they scour the countryside building oil derricks and drilling for oil.
I had my reservations about this one at first, ill have to admit. When I first saw television ads for it I saw not a film, but a job. a 2.5 hour shift during which I would have to bend my ear and eye to make sense of a thick and prickly plot.
but I went against my initial judgments and watched this one anyway. and i couldnt be happier that I did.
slow to start, Blood doesnt really break out the magic until about 30 minutes in, when major events start to unfold and Daniel really starts to sink his teeth into his business. What I did not expect, however, was a sordid series of events that unfold to reveal Plainview’s soul, blacker than the oil he so desperately covets.
few movies leave me literally saying “wow” aloud, and in the last half hour of Blood, I was literally leaning forward, shaking my head and repeating the word “wow” in utter astonishment. If you can stick with it, Blood is one you should NOT miss.
my one complaint for the movie was the soundtrack, which boasted a super ominous score at moments that seemed fairly inocuous. This caused me to foreshadow and read into scenes more than I probably should have, bending the sensory information I was absorbing to fit the string-heavy, at-times frightening orchestration.
All in all, There Will Be Blood gets a resounding A-….definitely see it if you havent already
Saw 4 - super gnarly. I didn’t think they could top themselves with this one, but they did. I’m a sucker for super gross gruesome slasher flicks, so Saw is always a treat in my eyes. I hear tell there are going to be seven in total, so I got a few more good years, assuming they dont take a nosedive.
B+…awesome, if its your thing
Aliens - Sigourney’s freakin out cuz she keeps dreamin about the Aliens. She takes a pack of marines to check out an incident. oh hey little girl. holy shit, there are like 100 aliens here, and we can’t kill them fast enough. fuck up the queen with the svc, sigourney…peace queen (roll credits)
B-…cool, but Im not breaking my back to see it again
Temple of Doom… did anybody notice that the club in the beginning of the movie is the Club Obi Wan?? This is the first Indy movie I’ve seen start-to-finish, and I was pretty impressed, but part of this impression was bittersweet…with crystal skull coming out this weekend, I thought about Lucas’ turn away from sets and special effects and taking digital shortcuts, ruining his legacies. I thought of episodes 1 2 and 3 and then i thought “what if he fucks up crystal skull?”…not too pumped to see it as a result unfortunately…but anyway…Temple is basically Han Solo with a whip, leather jacket, and fedora leading a dumb blonde princess leia and a small retarted asian chewbacca around india, cleaning up their messes whn they activate a trap or draw the attention of nefarious foes. i hope the other two are better
C+ … meh…not bad
stay tuned for more soon!
So here it is. It took me a long time but i’ve compiled the incomplete list of movies that I am to watch this summer. Its a long one, and a long road ahead by extension, but I WILL CONQUER IT. I have a few friends with rather extensive DVD libraries and a sweet mom and pop video store down the road from my apartment, so unless I need to special order some more obscure films or start a netflix account, these movies shouldnt be hard to accumulate
the bold entries are on deck, meaning i have them and will watch them soon
struck items have been viewed. expect reviews on them smartly
12 Monkeys, 2001, 13th Warrior, 25th Hour, 1984, 3:10 to Yuma (old), 3:10 to Yuma (new), About Schmidt, Aliens, Alien 3, Alls Quiet on the Western Front, Alphaville, Amadeus, American Gangster, American Graffitti, Amityville Horror, A Mighty Wind, Apocalypse Now, Bad Boys 1, Bad Boys 2, Bee Movie, Belly, Big Sleep, Bill and Ted 1, Bill and Ted 2, Black Hawk Down, Blade Runner, Blood Diamond, Blues Brothers, Blues Brothers 2000, Bodyguard, Bourne Ultimatum, Boyz N The Hood, Brazil, Breakin, Breakin 2 : Electric Boogaloo, Bridge on the River Kwai, Bright Lights, Big City, Bullet, Bullitt, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Casablanca, Charlie Wilson’s War, Chinatown, Cinderella Man, Citizen Kane, Clockstoppers, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Cloverfield, Commando, Conan, Constant Gardener, Count of Monte Cristo, Cool Hand Luke, Darjeeling Ltd., Dark City, Dawn of the Dead (orig.), Day of the Dead, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Dead Poet’s Society, Dead Presidents, Death Proof, Death Race 2000, Deer Hunter, Delicatessen, Deliverance, Desperado, Die Hard 2, Die Hard 4, Dirty Dancing, Dirty Dozen, District 13, Dog Day Afternoon, Dracula 2000, Dracula 3000, Dr. Strangelove, Dune, Eastern Promises, Elephant Man, Every Which Way But Loose, Exorcist, Fahrenheit 451, Fletch, Frankenstein, Freaks, Freddy 1-X, French Connection, Futurama : Bender’s Big Score, Gandhi, The Game, Ghost, Good Bad and the Ugly, Good Shepherd, Good Will Hunting, The Great Train Robbery, The Graduate, Hamburger Hill, Harry Potter 5, Harvey, Heavy Metal, High Noon, Hills Have Eyes 2, History of Violence, Hotel Rwanda, House of 1,000 Corpses, Illusionist, Italian Job(orig.), Jackass 2, Jackie Brown, Jason 1-X, Jaws 1, Jaws 2, Jaws 3, Judgment at Nuremberg, Juno, Last Crusade (Indiana Jones), Lawnmower Man, Last King of Scotland, Letters from Iwo Jima, Logan’s Run, Lost in Translation, Lucky # Slevin, Mad Max, Magnolia, Maltese Falcon, Memento, Menace II Society, Mesmerist, Million Dollar Baby, National Lampoon Senior Trip, Natural Born Killers, No Country For Old Men, North By Northwest, Nosferatu, Ocean’s Eleven (orig.), Oldboy, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, One Point O, Orphanage, Patton, People V. Larry Flint, Pest, Platoon, Point Break, Predator 1, Predator 2, Raging Bull, Raiders of the Lost Ark (Indiana Jones), Ratatouillie, Rear Window, Red River, Resident Evil : Extinction, Rio Bravo, Robocop 1, Robocop 2, Robocop 3, Roman Holiday, Royal Tenenbaums, Rocky I, Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV, Rocky V, Rocky Balboa, Sarah Marshall, Saving Private Ryan, Saw 4, Scarface, Serpico, Seven Samurai, Shane, Shrek The Third, Silent Movie, Silver Streak, Slapshot, Sleeper, Smokey and the Bandit, Soylent Green, Spinal Tap, Spun, St. Elmo’s Fire, Strange Days, Superman 1, Superman 2, Superman 3, Taxi, Taxi Driver, Temple of Doom (Indiana Jones), They Live, There Will Be Blood, The Thing, THX-1138, Tombstone, Top Gun, Tron, Unforgiven, Videodrome, The Wall, Wall Street, Walk Hard, Waiting for Guffman, War, Warriors, Yellow Submarine, Yojimbo, Young Frankenstein
A few courtesies :
I KNOW some of these movies are standards that everyone and their mother has seen. Sadly, such is not the case for me. Please refrain from posting things like “I cant believe you haven’t seen this” or “How can you not have seen that”.. I KNOW. thats the purpose of this summer
Some of these movies (resident evil extinction, for example) are bound to be stinkers. You may know whether or not some of these movies are good. You may be of the opinion that certain movies are “da greatest”… whether or not a movie is good is irrelevant to me. I just need to watch them to experience them, and then impart my review upon willing eyes. Please don’t post your own reviews of movies before I’ve watched them. If you would like to compare notes or give your two cents AFTER the review has been posted : BY ALL MEANS, but dont be that guy and try to spoil it for me
this is gonna be a long and hopefully entertaining summer…keep checking back regularly for new reviews and updates
COMING SOON : Saw 4, Aliens, There Will Be Blood
-S
hello, friends and aimless internet drifters…
if you know me, you know that i enjoy and at time hold an encyclopedic knowledge of movies. If you don’t know me, well…at least you now know that i’m somewhat of a movie buff. I’ve been watching movies since before I even knew what the pretty colors and sounds meant (I have distant memories of watching “look who’s talking” as a boy.
while my movie knowledge is healthy, it often misses the mark. I used to relish the oppurtunity to dish out an obscure reference or spout a few lines of dialogue, but from time to time I am knocked down a peg when i find myself unable to pinpoint the source of a reference thrown at me. I feel a bolstering of my cinematic repertoire is needed to stay ahead of this proverbial curb. and as luck would have it. I have a boatload of nights and weekends this summer to spend in my favorite armchair watching an endless stream of movies.
But I felt that wouldnt be enough. To just watch these movies would be beneficial for me, but i really need to flex nuts on this one. And thus, the other day it hit me. a Blog. A tumblr, to be specific. I’ll watch these 200+ movies over the course of the next three months and document my progress, including throwing in reviews of varying sizes depending on the depth and captivation of the particular movie. I’ve watched about three thus far, and will post a review on each of them in time.
for now, the list…
enjoy the ride