24 Hour Party People: A Good One #156

I love this story of Tony Wilson and Factory Records. I love how it starts out all muted and colorless like some people might think the music of Joy Division might sound, and then halfway through it becomes bright and garish like the music of the Happy Mondays, and I don't care if you don't. Get your own blog and give your own biased opinion. I watched it on DVD because the selection on Netflix still sucks. Here's a trailer:

The Tree Of Life: Terrible Movies #234

In theory, there should be absolutely no reason why I should dislike this gorgeously shot poem by Terrence Malick, well, except for all the reasons I'm going to list below. Spinning a spider's web thin plot about something that has to do with a family and DDT while forgoing substantial familial interaction for the images of a flock of starlings taking flight over a scenic downtown vista or a hand sensuously stroking the rough surface of a rock; it's all very lovely but ultimately has the depth of a three hour commercial for some pop starlet's perfume or the newest shade of latex interior paint. The cast acts their little hearts out plaintively, whispering a script that could very well have been jotted down on several cocktail napkins and sounding suspiciously similar to drugstore greeting card sentiments while opera plays on the soundtrack and artfully filmed scenes of shadowplay on stucco occurs. Who are these people, and why should I care? The Tree Of Life has a Kubrick-y NatGeo feel; like it's an overlong video travel brochure for people who want to visit volcanoes, doorways in the desert, San Francisco, or the surface of the Sun. There's tons of very earnest and important film-making; with stunt butterflies, dinosaurs, closeups of soap bubbles, Pottery Barn-esque set design and art direction, and lots and lots and lots of symbolic vaginas. Someone is definitely going to win a well deserved Academy Award for cinematography, so watch it with the sound down. I watched it on DVD from the Redbox because there still isn't crap to watch on Netflix. Here's a trailer:

The Godfather: A Good One #155

It was good.

The Thin Man: A Good One #154

I have a tradition of watching the only three Xmas movies in existence. They are the 1938 version of a A Xmas Carol, The Thin Man, and Die Hard. That's it, and I refuse to believe there any other ones. So I watched The Thin Man for the 9 millionth time because it's awesome, and I laughed like I always do, and I wrote out my letter to Santa wishing that he would make me as droll, sophisticated and drunk as William Powell.  I'm already extremely droll, I have many bottles of alcohol, so I just need to be sophisticated. I'll be checking my stocking. We'll see how that pans out. I watched The Thin Man on DVD and everyone should, but no one should risk their lives by trying to drink as many martinis as William Powell does. Here's a clip:

Wild Guitar: Terrible Movies #233

Two clumsy people meet nice in a cafe, then everyone says Spearfish for some reason in this 'rock' and 'roll' movie where a naive bumpkin makes it big in the music industry. Someone else does the Twist because that passed for entertainment in the mid-20th century, then someone else plays unconvincing music on an unconvincing guitar in front of unconvincing fans who unconvincingly rush the stage in unconvincing enthusiasm because it's in the script. There's also a movie poster promoting the film EEGAH, lots of brylcreem, moist cigars, a hint of payola, a bothersome pompadour, ice skating, and 90 minutes of a pitiful Ricky Nelson imitation. I watched Wild Guitar on Youtube. Here's a trailer:

Hercules And The Tyrants Of Babylon: Terrible Movies #232⅛

Hercules throws a Volkswagen sized boulder at a guy on a horse. This knocks the guy off the horse, but the horse doesn't seem to mind that much. That's as far into the film I got before falling asleep. You can't make me watch the rest. Here's a trailer which conveniently has exactly the scene I was talking about. I slept while I assume it did that stuff that every Hercules movie ever does on Youtube.

The Yesterday Machine: Terrible Movies #232

The Yesterday Machine opens with a majorette twirling a baton in this Hitler-based time travel movie and you be hard-pressed to find a movie that wouldn't be made a tiny bit better by the inclusion of baton-twirling. Don't you think watching Maria Falconetti twirl a baton in The Passion Of Joan Of Arc would've lived that film up a bit? No? OK, then. Anyway, throughout The Yesterday Machine I kept begging for more baton-twirling because everything else in the movie was terrible. Every time I saw that nagging majorette and her 35 year old high school boyfriend with the receding hairline I thought to myself, "Hey girl, shut the hell up and twirl that baton because this script sucks", well, except when the boyfriend got shot by Civil War soldiers. That sort of put a damper on things, but I had hope that when her bullet-riddled body wasn't found it surely means her plucky baton-twirling self would reappear sometime. I don't want to give anything away, but she does, and it sucks. There's also scotch-drinking hospital staff, wooden acting, iffy lip-syncing, a guy on horseback who yells "Witchcraft!", a Nazi scientist who gives a very lengthy monologue on relativity, and very little baton-twirling. I watched it on Youtube and you probably shouldn't. Sorry, but there doesn't seem to be a trailer.