Let me tell you about my personal Hell.

My version of Hell is an overcrowded amusement park where the only ride I am allowed to go on is one where I have to sit in a room packed solid with children and watch Catherine Breillat films.

Oh... and the only food to eat is whole raw onions, which I am forced to eat like apples.



I'm not sure what gave me the brilliant idea to give Catherine Breillat another go after the 'Romance' debacle. The amazing thing about Catherine Breillat's films is that they are about sexuality, feminism, and intimacy, but they actually make me want to become celibate.

I'm not squeamish. Not even a little bit. I'm part of a generation that grew up watching surgeries performed on cable television, but there was this one scene (that I'm not even going to describe for you) where I actually gagged. I've never ever once in my entire life gagged because of something I saw on TV or in a movie.

Congratulations, Catherine Breillat! I'm revoking your directing license.

It's been a while since I've reviewed any movies and I thought now was appropriate because I've recently watched two of the best movies I have ever seen.

La Dolce Vita- This was my first Fellini movie ever, and I am hooked. I can't wait to see some others like Nights of Cabiria and La Strada. This is seriously desert island movie fare... I could watch it over and over again and still find a thousand things to think about. The narrative and themes are so subtle and layered. It's just brilliant. And that opening scene... WOW! I mean... it's the entire theme of the movie given to you in one incredible visual. And the ending was perfect too. I watched this movie 3 times over one weekend: the first time it was broken up into pieces over the course of one day and then after I finished it I watched it straight through with the commentary and then the next day I watched it straight through again without the commentary. I don't think I've ever done that before. I can't say enough how much I really, really loved this movie.

Adaptation- This one sat on top of my TV for a while before I finally (very grudgingly) decided to watch it. I'm not sure why I had such a bad attitude about watching it, but it may have had something to do with Nicolas Cage. I'm not even sure why I decided that I disliked Nicolas Cage, because I don't think that I really do. Anyways, I'm so glad I finally watched it though because WHOA.... sooooo good. That Spike Jonze... he's onto something. This movie was just really clever storytelling... about storytelling and writing and inspiration. It was just so meta and modern. I really enjoyed it.




I hope you all aren't puking your guts out after reading my little cinematic circle jerk, but, seriously, if you haven't seen either of these you have to.

Now I'm going to go read something hateful to cleanse myself of all of this Pollyanna Isn't-The-World-Wonderful-ness. It makes me feel disgusting.

I don't really have anything interesting to say about this movie (other than that I really really liked it), but I wanted to post something because I'm sick and tired of seeing that stupid blinkie bullshit everytime I go to look at my Friends page.




And now for some disjointed and not very intelligent thoughts about The Life Aquatice with Steve Zissou:

I decided last night that one of the major reasons that Wes Anderson has been so successful is that his movies appeal to a generation of people who grew up watching film strips and building dioramas in shoeboxes for school.

Even though the part of Jane Winslett-Richardson was clearly intended for Gwyneth Paltrow I'm glad they ended up using someone else because sometimes (well... all of the time, actually) Gwyneth Paltrow annoys me.

Jeff Goldblum was a weird choice.

I would kill someone using only my teeth and bare hands to own a pair of Team Zissou Adidas.

Since I've chosen not to review all of the movies I watch, I think it's important that I keep a list for my own reference. Part of the fun of doing the MNMC was in looking back after the year was over at all of the movies I had watched.



My star rating sytem: * = me hatey
** = me no likey
*** = me likey
**** = me lovey



1. After Hours (12/19/05) ****
2. War of the Worlds (12/26/05) *
3. Palindromes (1/2/06)***1/2
4. Sex and Lucia (1/9/06) ***
5. Gingersnaps: The Beginning (1/16/06) **1/2
6. The Dreamers (1/23/06) ***
7. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (1/30/06) ****
8. The Magdalene Sisters (2/6/06) **1/2
9. 7 Up and 14 Up (2/13/06) ***1/2
10. La Dolce Vita (2/20/06) ****
11. Adaptation (2/27/06) ****
12. Before Sunrise (3/6/06) **1/2
13. La Strada (3/13/06) ****
14. Cabin Fever (3/20/06) **
15. LolliLove (3/27/06) **1/2
16. Happenstance (4/3/06) ****
17. Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (4/10/06) ***
18. Anatomy of Hell (4/17/2006) negative ***
19. La Petite Lili (4/24/2006) **1/2
20. The Squid and the Whale (5/1/2006) ***
21. Grey Gardens (5/8/2006) ****
22. Nights of Cabiria (5/15/2006) ** 1/2
23. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (5/22/2006) ***
24. City of God (5/29/2006) ****
25. Fever Pitch (the original British one) (6/5/2006) **1/2
26. L'Auberge Espagnole (6/12/2006) **1/2
27. All About My Mother (6/19/2006) **1/2
28. Between Your Legs (6/26/2006) ****
29. Friday the 13th (7/3/2006) *1/2
30. V for Vendetta (7/10/2006) ****
31. American Splendor (7/17/2006) ****
32. The Beat That My Heart Skipped (7/24/2006) ****
33. Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest (7/31/2006) ****
34. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (8/7/2006) ****
35. The Sea Inside (8/14/2006) ***
36. Little Miss Sunshine (8/21/2006) ****
37. Sitcom (8/28/2006) **
38. Chronicles of Narnia (9/4/2006) ***
39. The Dancer Upstairs (9/11/2006) ****

It looks like I'm off to a running start on MNMC in the new year... obviously not the official new year, but I always feel like the new year starts on the day after Christmas and that New Year's Eve is just a celebration of something that has already happened.


After Hours - This movie was fucking great! Why haven't we all heard of this movie?! It's a Martin Scorcese film from the mid-80s about a boring data entry clerk (played by Griffin Dunne) who ends up stuck wandering the streets of Soho for the night desperately trying to get home. All kinds of crazy shit happens to him and it's just so funny and frantic. Really, really excellent. I'm so glad the first movie I watched this year was so damn good. And try to tell me the beginning scenes of Griffin Dunne at work and in his apartment weren't totally ripped off by David Fincher in Fight Club.


War of the Worlds - If you haven't seen this movie, and you are planning to, you should probably stop reading now unless you want the entire thing ruined for you. This movie irritated me... for several reasons. First of all, because I fucking hate Tom Cruise this year. And, secondly because every major character in this movie makes the stupidest fucking decisions and then pays zero consequences for those decisions. Robbie should have died because he's a fucking idiot, little Dakota Fanning should have died because all she did was cry and attract attention to them thoughout the entire movie, and Tom Cruise should have died for consistently making the stupidest decisions ever: "Hey Everybody! I know the tripod monster thingys seem to be trying to exterminate the human race, but I think we should join up with a crowd of as many people as possible so that we can draw as much attention to ourselves as possible. Oh... I also think we should go to Boston because that is where your mother is... even though the aforementioned monsters seem to be attacking cities because they are full of people." Brilliant.

The Twilight Samurai - I read somewhere that samurai movies in Japan are like Western movies here. I think this is a good comparison. I don't really have any other samurai movies to compare this one to, but I would think based on the samurai/western comparison that this one would be considered a bit more on the sentimental/romantic side. I don't know... I didn't dislike this movie, but it just didn't excite me very much. It's about a petty samurai who is widowed when his wife dies of consumption leaving him to care for his two young daughters. He seems to have lost interest in the whole samurai lifestyle (i.e. fighting), but when a childhood friend returns after being granted a divorce from her violent husband he is asked to kill a man who disobeys a clan order to commit suicide... by doing this his status would be raised sufficiently that he could marry the childhood friend. His relationship with his daughters is very sweet, and even though I didn't love the movie I would still recommend it to someone who was interested in seeing a Japanese samurai film.

**************************************

And so... here we are a year later and a year older. Am I wiser? Probably not. I started this endeavor by watching Viggo Mortenson have sex in a waterfall and ended with a little Japanese mediocrity. In between I've watched some pretty good movies. I'm calling the MNMC a success. I feel like a better (and more knowledgeable) person just for having stuck with it... although sticking with a resolution to watch a new movie every week isn't quite the same as a resolution to cure one African baby of malaria each week, but I'm not really know for my ability to stick with things so I'll take any victory no matter how small it is.

Monday Night Movie Club started for a couple of reasons: 1. I thought it would be fun and 2. I had started noticing just how many movies that were out there that I had never seen. Most of them were movies that I always intended to see and, yet, I always ended up watching the same ones over and over.

It's pretty sweet that I stuck to it and recorded it here because I can look back over the year and say "Look at this... This, at least, I have accomplished in the past year."

Here are a couple of lists I have compiled as a sort of review... I think of it as an awards show of sorts:


Movies that are now on my All-time Favorites List
Shaun of the Dead
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Swimming Pool
Lost In Translation

Movies that Should Probably Never Have Been Made:
Romance
The Terminal

Favorite Actress: Scarlett Johannson... I think she is so gorgeous.

Favorite Actor: Jake Gyllenhaal... I was never on the Jake Gyllenhaal bandwagon before this year, but goddamit he's killing me now.

Best French Actress: Ludivine Sagnier

French Actress and/or Character Who Should Die A Painful Death:
Caroline Ducey as Marie in Romance... I have never hated a movie character more than I hate her.



And so concludes my first year of ridiculous movie reviewing... I know that I'm going to continue in my endeavors to watch a new movie every week, but I'm undecided as to whether or not i'm going to review them here. Maybe I'll just keep a list of them for my own reference with a simple 1-5 star rating system.

I'll make this quick and dirty.


Me and You and Everyone We Know- I loved this movie... I mean I really loved this movie. I think you and everyone you know should see it... that was clever wasn't it? There are so many great parts in this movie, but I think my favorite was when Christine and Richard walk down the street together after they first meet and they go through their entire relationship as they walk together. It's so sweet. And it totally sets up the next scene of them together we he totally rejects her and it feels so horrible.


The Village- I can't figure out why everyone hated this movie so much. I'm no huge fan of M. Night Shyamalan (for some reason whenever I say his name I just can't resist calling him M. Night Shamalamadingdong... I am perhaps an idiot), but I didn't think this movie sucked at all. I didn't like The Sixth Sense and completely fucking hated Pay It Forward*, but I did like Signs because I thought it was realistic... well as realistic as a movie about an alien invasion could be... because the main characters in the movie weren't trying to save the world. They were just trying to save themselves. Anyways, I thought this movie was good because it was creepy and visually it was very interesting. I thought the twist was interesting and not too totally gimmicky... which is what I think twists usually end up being if the director tries too hard.

The Phantom of the Opera- I hate musical theater. I have no idea why I thought it was a good idea to watch this movie. I hated it, of course.

EDIT: tremens just pointed out to me that M. Night Shyamalan didn't even direct or write this movie. I'm an idiot... a confused idiot. Why have I thought for all of these years that he did?

I've done kind of a craptastic job of watching movies the past 3 or 4 weeks, but I've been kind of stressed out. I definitely did not get my money's worth on Netflix for the month of October.

Here are my very quick and not very great reviews:

The Nightmare Before Christmas - I love the holidays... all of them, really, but especially Christmas. I also love Tim Burton. So it stands to reason that I would really love this movie. Unfortunately, I didn't. Probably because it was a musical... I think it's time to face facts, kids: I pretty much hate all musical theater. I think i'm going to stop trying and/or pretending to like it.

Donnie Darko- I liked this one. Sometimes I like to be confused by a movie because it means that my mind races for a couple of weeks after watching the movie trying to think through and analyze everything. I think I really get off on that. It's like brain exercise. And we all know that exercise is good because it gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people don't kill their husbands.

I'll leave it to you to figure out how I managed to work a Legally Blonde quote into a review of Donnie Darko. I'll give you a hint: some people call it talent.

Jarhead- I think we all know by now how I felt about this one. However, I didn't just spend the entire movie drooling over Jake Gyllenhaal. I thought the director did a really great job of adapting this book as a movie. I think it was a tall order because the book was so intensely personal (being a memoir and all). I wasn't ever irritated the way I usually am when I watch a movie that has been adapted from a book that I love. My only complaint (and it's a small one) is that they could have done a better job tying in the back story about Swoff's family and especially his father. In the book it was a big deal and they barely addressed it (if at all) in the movie.

Raising Arizona- this has been languishing on top of my tv while i've been preoccupied with my House DVDs for the past couple of weeks. Even I'm surprised that I had never seen Raising Arizona. I love the Coen Brothers and I really liked this movie. It's not my favorite out of their movies. Holly Hunter was great, but I think my favorite Holly Hunter movie is that one where she is the crazy cheerleader mother who tries to have one of the other cheerleaders killed.

In the movie, Nathan Arizona calls the FBI the Federal BI and i've decided that I'm going to call it that too... for no reason in particular.

Les Trois Couleurs: Bleu- Several people recommended this movie (or really the whole trilogy) to me when I was on the French movie watching kick several months ago. I haven't been having much luck lately with the French movies... the most recent being Romance which was totally shit. I really enjoyed the cinematography of the movie, and, without having to think too much, it communicated a lot and I didn't finish the movie feeling like I didn't get it or anything. The film was never too oblique. I just think that it has the potential to be really analyzed and I wasn't in the mood to properly do that last night.

My favorite part of the movie was probably the music... and the pretty blue crystal chandelier thing. I wish I could find one of those.

I am such a slacker about this.

Blow Dry- I really like Alan Rickman, but I thought this movie was pretty lame. There were some mildly funny parts, but I never laughed out loud which is odd because I am a very easy laugh. And, as gorgeous as he is, Josh Hartnett should never be allowed to speak in a fake British accent. I was embarassed for him.

Goodbye, Lenin!- I thought this was a great movie. Very interesting to see what life in East Germany was like around the time of the Berlin Wall coming down. The main guy in the movie is adorable. I want to make him pancakes.

Babette's Feast- My God... what a snoozefest! I don't even have anything else to say about this one.

I Heart Huckabees- I feel like this was existentialism for the mentally challenged. I don't know... I didn't hate it... I just didn't love it. Jason Schwartzman was hilarious as usual and I actually really liked Marky Mark in the movie and I usually hate him on principle. It definitely had some very funny scenes. My favorite scene is the one where Jason Schwartzman and Marky Mark show up at the African doorman's house and stay for dinner. Overall I'd say that I liked a lot of the dialogue and the scenes in this one, but I didn't love the overall movie.

Romance- This movie was awful. So much so that it actually makes me irate to think about. I don't even know where to begin. I seriously wanted to punch the director of this movie in the face after I was done watching it. My favorite scene (and, of course, I use that very sarcastically) was when the main character (a schoolteacher who seems to be going through some kind of sexual identity crisis because her boyfriend doesn't want to have sex with her) has yet another meaningless sexual encounter with a stranger wherein she spends the entire time analyzing and endlessly talking about everything she is doing and feeling, she says something like,"But I don't like to talk about things." When that happened I actually had to turn the movie off before I started screaming "Then why don't you shut the fuck up for 5 goddamn seconds!" And I love that they never address why her boyfriend won't have sex with her as though it's just completely normal that he wouldn't. Sometimes I really hate the French.