Movies for 2010

[valarltd]

1) City of Ember. Steampunky SF about kids escaping an underground city. Entertaining. Bill Murray is not aging well. (p)

2) Cats. Musical based on TS Eliot's Poetry. Plotless, but entertaining. (rewatch, hadn't seen it in years)

3) Hopalong Cassidy. Old TV episodes. (f,1)

4-5) Spartacus: Blood and Sand (5 hrs). Gory, vulgar and brainbreaky. (p)

6) Stardust. Lovely Neil Gaiman fantasy about a youth who promises to bring his love a star. Big name supporting cast, funny, touching and generally good. (p)

7) Northern Pursuit. A Mountie turns traitor to help save Canada from Nazi spies. Farfetched and entertaining (f2)

8) Dodge City. Big cheesy technicolor western. "But Matt! You can't do this too me. We were in the war together. We drove cattle together. We've ate slept, lived and died together!" //"And now we're going to be in jail together. You in there, me out here." (f3)

9) Beyond the Wall of Sleep. Lovecraftian film about the horrors that stalk a remote asylum. Not bad, kind of art-film feeling. (f2)

10) Reanimator. Based on Lovecraft's famous novella, updated and sexed up for the modern era. Same premise: brilliant young doctor wants to get rid of death. (f1)

11) Boondock Saints. Pair of Irish twins on a mission from God. This is violent and excessive and hilarious if your sense of humor lapses into ultraviolet. Willem Dafoe is amazing as Special Agent Smecker. (f1)

12) Boondock Saints 2: All Saints' Day. The boys are lured out by the murder of a priest. Funny as can be, intensely violent. And Special Agent Eunice Bloom steals the show.(f1)

13) Star Wars. Hadn't seen this in years. (f2)

14) The Empire Strikes Back. Part of a marathon (f2)

15) Return of the Jedi. End of the Marathon (f2)

16) Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Why did no one tell me how awesome this movie is? The aesthetic, the snark, the effects. Angelina Jolie as a one-eyed Navy commander. The only thing better would have been if she were a phallogyne and waltzed Polly right out from under Sky-Captain's nose. (f3, they talk but only about him)

17) Shrek 3. This was just plain fun. Prince Charming rounds up all the villains to take over Far Far Away, and Shrek goes to find Arthur to be king in his place. (p)

18) Alice in Wonderland. This is gorgeous. Dark and menacing in a way the original dreamlike Alice wasn't. Everyone turned in a splendid performance and the CGI didn't get in the way of acting. Christopher Lee as the voice of the Jabberwock! Squee! (p)

19) Wizards. The Bakshi animated film. I dunno what he was on, but I want some. The rotoscoping works better here than in Lord of the Rings. (f2)

20) X-Men Origins. Had avoided this because it was all Wolverine all the time. Not a bad flick and Gambit is a hottie. (Damn all the Wolverine/Gambit slash back in the day!) But it left more questions. Does Scott remember Logan? Does he remember being incarcerated and tortured? Did Xavier do one of his questionable mind-alterations? (f2)

21) Beowulf. This was an interesting take on the legend. The use of CGI over the actors was intriguing but I kept quoting the Short Form. (f3)

22) Virginia City. Confederate sympathizers are trying to get $5 million in gold out to aid the Cause and one Union spy has to stop them. Good little B western, with Errol Flynn being faux-Irish and heroic, Humphrey Bogart playing crypto-Mexican, and Randolph Scott in a rare bad-guy role. (f1, only one female character with lines)

23) In the Mouth of Madness. Lovecraftian nightmare in which a writer is used as a channel for unholy beings from beyond to enter our world. Spawned a couple of Horror Movie Survival Tips: If you see Sam Neil, give up, you're already dead. If David Warner is your doctor in ANY capacity, it's already too late. (f2)

24) Zombieland. Four people come together in the wreckage of humanity. This was hilarious. (p)

25) The Creeping Flesh. Peter Cushing & Chris Lee as Victorian half-brothers, one an anthropologist and one a doctor in charge of an asylum. Cushing tries developing an inoculation against evil. Violence ensues (f2)

26) Footsteps in the Dark. Socialite leads a double life as a mystery writer until he gets dragged into the real mystery. Funny in great places. "Hurry or we'll end in divorce court!" he tells his chauffer. "Us boss?" (f3)

27) V for Vendetta. Interesting dystopia piece in which an experimental subject gets his revenge on the theocratic government. Had to explain the prologue to Oli, but very good. (f2)

28) Standing Still. I am too old to understand this movie. A bunch of 25 year olds come together as two of them get married and wackiness ensues. (p)

29) The Wicker Man. 1973. My annual reminder that religion and desperation don't mix. The best bit--barring "Gently Johnny" which was cut from this version--is at the end where Inspector Howie tells Lord Summerisle that next year, it will be him. Also, splendid use of the Sacred Fool. rewatch (p)

30) Star Trek. 2009. This was only semi-entertaining. Nimoy turned in an excellent performance, but the kids were interesting mainly for the ways they resembled the originals. Not a rewatcher. (f1)

31) How I got Lost. Post-9/11, two friends try to get their feet back in a new and changed world. I am STILL too old for indy art pictures! (f2)

32) Sherlock Holmes. They didn't even make me work for it. This was a delicious romp, moderately steampunkish (some invention, not enough attitude). (f2)

33) Runaway. Fearing his father is about to start abusing the boy, young man takes his brother when he runs away and tries to make a new life for them. Excellent. Some of Stanford's best work. (f2)

34) Call of Cthulhu. Lovely little silent done in the style of the 1920s, even to the use of sparkly fabric for water. Very true to the story. (f1)

35) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I hadn't seen this. Indy vs. the Russians this time, in a script so familiar (or maybe so badly timed) we were predicting the punchlines three beats before they came. But oh my. I do love Marion. I always have. She is the awesome, always. And Dr. Spalko was perfect for the movie, hitting every Russian woman stereotype ever. (f2. I don't think shouting at her once counts as a conversation)

36) The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. A betting man makes a Deal with the Devil. (f1)

37) The Paul Lynde Halloween Special. Oh my dear. SO 70s. Paul takes his housekeeper Margaret (Hamilton) to visit her sister Billie (Hayes) on Halloween. You can already see where it's going. Included in this bacchanal are Lynde as a sheik seducing Florence Henderson with a bad Valentino impression, a trucker segment that is painfully 70s and a live performance by KISS. (p)

38) It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown/It's Magic, Charlie Brown. (p)

39) Van Helsing. A decent little Monster Mash of a movie. Either bad cinematography or my monitor is really going bad, but I could barely see this movie, since it was all so DARK. (p)

40) Silent Hill. A mysterious mining town holds the secret of an adopted girl's past. Her mother takes her there to help her. Very creepy, very cool. I love the cop. (p, completely. All but 2 of the characters are women)

41) Kiki's Delivery Service. Little witch leaves home at 13 and lives in the big city. Animated. Very cute. (p)

42) The Experiment. Based on the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971. A group of men are randomly divided into prisoners and guards. The original 2 week experiment terminated after six days. The movie is brilliant. Forest Whittaker is SCARY. (f,1. Like Dawn patrol, no women)

43)HellRaiser. I had never actually seen this. A man is brought back from the land of the cenobites, a people who live on the outer edges of experience. Gory, but not too bad, comparatively. Not enough sex. (p)

44) Repo: The Genetic Opera. The Zydrate comes in a little glass vial... Excellent dystopian opera, about a world where organ transplants are financed like cars, and default means a visit from the Repo Man. Anthony Stuart Head is brilliant as always, and Sarah Brightman is fabulous, but the Gravedigger steals the show. (p)

45) Calamity Jane. A lesbian classic musical starring Doris Day. Doris is Calamity, rough and tough and hard edged, until she meets a pretty actress. There's a het subplot, but it's really all about the girls. (p)

46) From Hell. Stylish Jack the Ripper thriller, with Johnny Depp and Robbie Coltrane. Plot is farfetched and weird. The women are awesome, given lives and agency beyond their deaths. Susan Lynch and Heather Graham turn in excellent performances. Jason Fleming (Mr Hyde of LXG) steals the show in his own quiet way. (p)


47) Something Wicked This Way Comes. 1980s Disney horror flick with Jason Robards and Jonathan Pryce. I saw this ages ago, remembered almost nothing of it. So, I saw it again, as I should have before I wrote Alive on the Inside. It is EXCELLENT, even retaining some of Bradbury's poetic style. Pryce is seriously hot. (f, 2 The women don't talk to each other)

48) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 1. Kudos. This was a well-paced, adventurous film. Better than the book. And I always knew my Obi was a Weasley. Turns out he's Bill. (p, if you count an interrogation)

49) Santa Clause 3: Escape Clause. Tepid third movie. Entertaining but suffers a lack of Bernard, as David Krumholz had passed puberty. (p)