The Irish Thug

Duck Soup
This movie had everything. Singing, dancing, comedy, romance, and even a gun fight. The Marx Brothers are a great team and mesh together well. Since they each have their own niche, they can go back and forth and keep everything fresh. A good example of where the collection is better than the sum of the parts.

Vertigo
Hitchcock never fails to disappoint. Vertigo was similar to A Beautiful Mind, in that, I was really getting into the story that surrounded the first half and was thrown when it shifted. Zooming in and pulling out is such an awesome effect. After going to look up how he actually did it, I realized that it was something I had discovered earlier and like. However seeing it again in Vertigo done with so much speed gave it much more of an effect.

Dawn of the Dead
Zombies are awesome. While they aren’t fast, there are lots of them and they are determined to eat you. Watching this made me sad of the current state of zombie movies. Today everyone is too focused on getting that shot where the guy’s head explodes looking just right. But when you watch this and Night of the Living Dead, you see more than just zombies. You see people being forced to interact with people they did not previously know and get what kind of person they are. Dawn of the Dead has a complete break from zombies for about 20 minutes where the 4 main characters just live their lives in the mall they have fortified themselves in. This is what we need to get back to.

Philadelphia
This movie was good. Tom and Denzel both have good performances throughout the movie. However, it didn’t grab as much as the other movies. It had all the pieces that make up a “good” movie. The homophobic lawyer, who already doesn’t like the client, takes the case because it’s right and shows the big time businessmen that they did wrong. It seem very formulaic to me and didn’t pull me into the court room like you do when you watch To Kill a Mockingbird.

Side Note: I did the math and since my start on the list in September, I am watching 1 movie from the list every 2.85 days. If I continue at this rate, I will be finished by the end of August 2015.

Batman (1989)
For the sake of full disclosure, this is only the fourth Batman movie I’ve seen all the way through. The others being Batman (1966), Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight. This was very different than the other two images of Batman that I have seen. Keaton produced an interesting picture of Bruce Wayne. Quite and collective for the most part, even seeming out of place at his own party. But let’s be honest, Nicholson stole the show. Playing the Joker who was ridiculous in all accounts and using all of the silly puns. This movie is one of the most colorful Tim Burton movies with out blatantly going colorful like the Edward Scissorhands suburb scenes. I was also intrigued by how exaggerated Gotham was, yet Wayne Manor was a regular English looking castle. I enjoyed it a lot, but I choose The Dark Knight.

L.A. Confidential
Kevin Spacey. Russell Crowe. Guy Pearce. James Cromwell. Kim Basinger. Danny DeVito. Seriously, how do you got all of those people into one movie? Just a classic representation of film noir(neo-noir if you want to split hairs). Very well done on all accounts. You start in one place where you think you know everything, but then you are moving along with the characters as you learn more about them as they learn more about the plot.

Some time around September I decide I was going to watch all the movies on the 1001 movies you must see before you die list. On the initial pass, I had seen around 113 of the movies. It was mostly modern films, but I had seen a good spattering of classics. Since then, I’ve been putting in work and pushing through the list. I’m currently at 166 (yes that is a lot of movies, but last semester was very easy). I decided to start reviewing some of the movies on the list as I watch them. I’m not going to review all of them, but if I really enjoy one or feel like talking about it, I’ll put it up. So without further ado, I will start with a double-review in a special Mockumentary Edition.

This is Spinal Tap
Amazing. I don’t know how it took me this long to see this movie, I should have seen it years ago. This is Spinal Tap mockumentary that follows the fake metal band Spinal Tap around on their second US tour. Featuring the classic “This one goes to 11” scene, this movie hits every joke right on the nose.

Man Bites Dog
Very Good. In this black comedy, the camera crew follows around a serial killer as he goes through his day. The entire thing is shot in black and white which gives it a much older feel. As you might have guessed, there are some fairly graphic scenes through out the movie. However, I found that the comedic presentation softened to blow that the audience would have felt if this had been a horror movie. That being said, rape scenes are always hard to watch. An American remake would probably do fairly well if one was made today. You might need to make some alterations to some of the random conversation between the crew and the main character. However, those are just minor changes of little consequence if you keep the same feel of the characters interactions. In general, I would be fine if they just did it again in English to help out the people who are too lazy to read subtitles.