12 - Resident Evil: Retribution

    Alice is captured by Umbrella, and is put in another underground bunker.  This time, it's a bunker where the T-virus was tested and demonstrated in a variety of scenarios.
    I've found that I can't rely on other people to suggest if any of the Resident Evil movies are better than another.  (Except, I think the second one is pretty universally hated)  I've read people praising this one, saying they hate it, and of course, it's all meaningless.  These movies aren't especially great.  But I have this compulsion toward them.
    This one is still fun, but it's not up to the level of the last two, which I enjoyed much more.  This one seemed a little more forced.  In particular, it seemed like there was an effort to come up with a scenario that would allow the movie to use a collection of sets for action sequences.  This isn't terrible, and it's very satisfying.  I kind of wish the movie would have been a little less obvious about how that was done.  They take a brief sequence to explicitly explain what scenarios will be shown.
    There's one aspect of this movie that bothered me.  They brought Jill Valentine back, who still has some thing attached to her chest that forces her to do Umbrella's bidding.  What bothers me is that no one seems to make the effort to take this thing off.  Alice finally does near the end, but that's something she should have been trying to do since the start of their fight.
    There are also some very strong parallels to Aliens.  That doesn't bother me, it just seems a little awkward.

11 - Dracula

    Count Dracula moves to London from Transylvania, and starts trying to turn Mina into a vampire.  Professor Van Helsing is wise to how vampires work, and he leads the investigation into the Count.
    Despite the massive number of cultural references to this  movie, I've never actually seen this version before.  I've seen plenty of clips.  But nothing gave me a clear sense of what the movie is like.  I've actually seen Nosferatu (1922) several times, but I had no interest in this one.
    This is a remarkably strange movie.  It was modeled on a stage play, and sometimes, that shows.  Most of the performances are a bit over-the-top.  Lugosi is ok, but I don't think I like how silly it all seems.
    The direction isn't especially remarkable.  There are a few shots that have some interesting angles, but there are some very awkward choices.  In particular, there's at least one shot where a character is the only person talking, but he's looking away from the camera (this is probably in order to show someone else looking like they're about to bite him, but even so - it's some awkward blocking.)  The structure of the movie seems completely unpredictable.  The first few scenes - Renfeld arriving at Dracula's castle, the two of them interacting - both go by very quickly, and we never get much instruction on exactly what Dracula is.  That gets covered later.  It's hard to imagine what it would have been like seeing this movie without any idea of what the rules or characteristics of a vampire are.
    There were two lines that I really liked.  One is when Van Helsing exclaims "Dracula is in the house!"  The other is in this exchange-

MINA:  John, look!  The fog's lifting.  See how plain you can
see the stars.

HARKER:  Yes, millions of them.  I've never seen them so close.
Why, it looks as though you could reach out and touch them.
Would you like me to get your hat?  Why, what's the matter?

10 - Into the Woods

    A baker and his wife want to have a child, but their house is cursed by a witch.  In order to lift the curse, they have to go into the woods to gather some items to appease the witch.  Their story collides with the stories of Rapunzel, Jack & The Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella.  All of the characters have their own goals.  The second act deals with the giant's wife (whose husband Jack killed) coming down for revenge.
    This was the DVD release of what seems to be the original Broadway cast.  It's a stage musical, so it's not immersive in the same way that a film is.  The one directorial element that I found unusual is that the cameras are pretty mobile, but they only change up their angles on the horizontal side of things.  There isn't much of any vertical adjustment.  No angles looking down on the cast, or looking upward.  Even later in the show, when two characters are raised high on the stage, we still have them in a straight-on view.
    The performances are very good.  There were two recognizable faces in the cast.  The witch is played by Bernadette Peters, who I mostly just remember from her role in The Jerk.  The baker's wife is played by Joanna Gleason, who I remember for her part in Boogie Nights as Dirk Diggler's mother.  But I was still impressed with pretty much everyone.
    I do have some issues with the show, but less after reading more about it.  I thought that the first act was actually very solid.  It was satisfying, and it felt like it came to an appropriate close.  The second act seemed less useful.  But the more I've read about it, the second act covers all of the more serious ideas, and it moves the show from just being a fun light comedy to being slightly more dramatic, and a little darker.  And that makes a lot of sense for a musical based on fairy tales.
    Strangely, I liked the music, but I didn't find any of it memorable.  It's complex, and there is a fantastic handling of the lyrics, and specific themes.  But it's actually too complicated for it's own good.  Instead of having melodies that are easy to remember, we're left with brief ideas that keep getting used.  For a show as ambitious as this, I don't think there was a better way.

9 - The Trouble with Harry

    In a tiny town, the recently-deceased body of a man named Harry lay in a meadow.  A variety of townsfolk run across the body, and most of them think they are somehow responsible for his death.  While they aren't worried about the person, they are interested in hiding the body.
    This is an unusual movie for Hitchcock.  It has a sense of dark humor that he liked, but other than that, there's no tension, and the direction isn't especially noteworthy.  In fact, it reminds me a little of Neil Simon's work.  It's amusing, but it rarely reaches the point at which the audience would laugh out loud.
    I suppose that the kind of lazy pacing is part of the point.  The humor is mostly focused on how blasé the characters are about the dead body, even as they are romantically entangled with one another.  It doesn't work as a comedy exactly.  It works as something else.  Almost like a homage to 50s Americana.  Except… that this came out in 1955.
    There are some interesting things that happen in the script.  There are a lot of sexual references sprinkled in, which seems out of place for the time period.  It's kind of refreshing, but the approach to it seems ham-handed nowadays.
    There's a chance that I will return to this movie eventually, and like it more.  In the meantime, it seems a bit slow for Hitchcock.  And while the performances are enjoyable, they don't sell the comedic angle in the way I'd like.

8 - The Dark Knight Rises

    Terrorist Bane arrives in Gotham, and holds the city hostage.  Batman has to come out of retirement, escape from a faraway prison, and disable a bomb to save the city.
    It's amazing that I held out this long before watching the Blu-ray.  It came out in early December!
    Honestly, it's a step down.  It's still a whole lot of fun, and Nolan knows how to direct the hell out of whatever he's working on.  But there are still these annoying mistakes that bother me.  In addition to the ones I noticed the first time (notably, the distance between the city and the bomb, as well as the time left on the clock) I also noticed the continuity problem, where the stock exchange opens in the morning, Bane arrives, and does his thing.  There's a chase through the city.  By the end of a sequence that is supposed to be about 10 minutes in movie-time, it's suddenly nighttime.
    And I have an issue with the character of Foley.  It's great to have a character who is unintentionally sabotaging the heroes.  But I still feel like he didn't earn his heroic death.  I guess I'd rather that a character like that dies aware that he's caused a certain number of problems.  Instead, he only comes out and fights because he knows he has a lot of support.

7 - The Host

    Dumping toxic chemicals into the Han river in Korea results in a strange monster, which rampages the surrounding area.  A family that owns a snack shop rallies to save their youngest, a girl, who has been taken by the monster.  Meanwhile, the government tries to figure out how to deal with the monster.
    I had heard about this movie several times, but it really never reached the point where I was willing to put the effort into watching it.  Now that I've seen it, it's good to have more knowledge of it, but it's hard to say that I really liked it that much.
    It's actually a good story.  It has a certain amount of horror, a certain amount of humor, and it works on some more serious levels.  Plus, we don't get many monster movies anymore.  But the weakness is that it doesn't transcend cultures that well.  I can tell that if I were aware of what life in Korea was like, I'd appreciate those levels much more.  I also suspect that the dubbed version of this may have been hamming things up more than it should have.
    It's also just shy of being two hours long.  Again, this is likely a cultural issue, but I think it could have been tightened up a little.
    It seems more surprising that I don't have stronger feelings about this movie.

6 - Rope

    A pair of students (I assume in college) murder a classmate, and hide the body in a chest.  They host a party in their apartment, serving dinner from atop the chest.
    This is a noteworthy movie, because Hitchcock shot it in a series of long takes.  The Wiki article has a table of the length and time codes for each shot.  This is fascinating, since it's actually 10 shots.  The length varies between 10 minutes and about 4:37 for the shortest one.  The edits are disguised by moving the camera into a static frame - usually blacked out by someone's back.  The first couple of these are done masterfully.  Then I started to notice them.
    But the story is told in real-time.  This brings up some of the other wonderful things about this one.  I love that not all of the dialogue is important.  Among the dialogue that moves things forward, there are plenty of lighthearted bits, as well as some completely irrelevant bits.  In particular, I really love when two characters join the party at the same time.  We get the two of them talking to two people who were already there.  There are two conversations happening at the same time, and it adds a level of realism that you almost never see in any movie.
    I had seen this movie when I was younger - probably in high school, possibly in college.  And I remember thinking that it was kind of slow, even if it was technically interesting.  At this point in time, it's much better than I remember.  Things move along, there are plenty of interesting subtexts, and the direction is satisfying.
    This was released in 1948, and Hitchcock had made considerable strides since Saboteur and Shadow of a Doubt.  Edits are smoother, the script is tighter, and it still retains his interests.

5 - Brave

    A young Scottish princess doesn't want to pick a suitor, and gets a witch to hex her mother.  After realizing that the hex isn't a great idea, she works to undo the spell, and reunite her father's clan with the other ones.
    It's hard for me to explain how I feel about Pixar movies.  I've seen Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., WALL-E, and now Brave.  And with every one of them, I've felt like they're entertaining, but they aren't right.  There's something nakedly manipulative about them.  I suppose that every movie is an exercise in manipulation, but these bother me.  Like the emotional scenes haven't been earned.
    To be fair, Brave didn't bother me as much as WALL-E did.  There was something that really bugged me about WALL-E, and it's been long enough that I can't remember what it was.  Brave seemed to be a little strange.  We're obviously supposed to identify with the princess, but I mostly found her annoying.  I didn't identify with her mother either.  In fact, it seemed like everyone in the movie was a caricature of some broad ideas that they used to make a movie.
    At least it didn't offend me.  I guess I'm just puzzled about why people think Pixar movies are so incredibly perfect.

4 - How to Marry a Millionaire

    A trio of gold-digging women rent out a luxury apartment for a year, in hopes of landing a millionaire husband each.  They have a variety of adventures in finding rich men, romance, and love.
    Another Marilyn picture.  This one is noteworthy, since it also has Betty Grable, and Lauren Bacall.  It's… fun.  But it's not as funny as it should be.  A lot of the humor hasn't aged well, and it might just be an issue of none of the women being especially clever in their handling of the material.  The men aren't especially great either.  Most of them are too simplistic, even the ones we're supposed to care about.
    There are some interesting elements of the production though.  It opens with an orchestra playing an overture for the movie.  I was surprised at how interesting I found this.  It's neat to see the techniques that the cello players would use.  There are annoying color shifts as the shots fade from one shot to another.  I don't usually mind this, but I've felt like it's something that could be fixed with some color correction.
    The one gag that I liked involved Marilyn not recognizing that a man she sees exiting the apartment isn't someone she should be greeting.
    Despite not being especially funny, it's nice to see Marilyn wearing glasses. 

3 - Shadow of a Doubt

    An uncle comes home to visit his sister and stay with her family.  He's got a pair of men following him.  He's keeping a secret, and his niece suspects what it is.
    Again, I had no knowledge of this movie prior to seeing it.
    This is actually an improvement on Saboteur, but it still isn't quite finished.  It should have been trimmed down slightly, or at least re-paced during the first third of it.  There's a small amount of overly-dramatic music for sequences that would be better served by something a little more minimal, and less broadly orchestral.
    But the story itself is very enjoyable.  We figure things out at roughly the same pace as Young Charlie.  This keeps the story in this state of unpredictability.  While I had suspicions about the direction the story could go, I was never very positive about it.
    And the writing is handled very nicely.  We see Uncle Charlie behave in vaguely suspicious ways, but his behavior only gets darker as things move on.
    There are a few technical issues that are interesting.  There is some sort of a line running down the middle of the picture.  It comes and goes, but it's surprisingly visible.  There's also the aspect ratio - 1.37:1.  This is very close to a full-frame picture.  I'm not sure why Hitchcock would go with that.  It wasn't a very claustrophobic movie.
    I think my appreciation for this one will probably grow.  In the meantime, I look forward to reaching Vertigo.

2.1 - Keyhole

    I started watching this movie from Netflix, and I managed to make it 20 minutes.
    I couldn't be sure if it was supposed to be taken seriously, or if it was an effort to make an Ed Wood-esque pile of nonsense.
    To be entirely fair, there was a plot, of sorts.  It was entirely surreal, which is the point.  The cast is fascinating as well.  Jason Patric stars.  We've got one of the guys from Kids in the Hall.  The set is wonderfully creepy.  But everything is a bizarre melange of edits, and most of the actions don't make any sense.
    After reading a few reviews of it, I decided that I couldn't handle sitting through another hour and ten minutes of this.  I'd rather have something a little more firm, and less impressionistic.

2 - Haywire

    A female secret agent finds that there's a conspiracy to frame her for killing someone, and she does what she can to overcome other agents in an effort to clear her name.
    I saw this last year, and this time, I showed it to Cathy.  This time, I saw it on Blu-ray, which was a very nice looking transfer.  The picture has some interesting tints, leaning toward the blue and green end of the spectrum.  I also noticed that most light sources were slightly over-exposed.  This is actually a unique look, and I liked seeing this type of photography.
    I love the action in this movie, since it feels both nicely choreographed, but also very natural.  The fights all feel very brutal.
    The pacing of the movie is pretty slow.  It's only an hour and a half, but after an opening that moves pretty quick, there are a lot of longer, more lingering shots.  I had noticed this, but I didn't assign any particular importance to it.  Cathy pointed it out, and after thinking about it, this may have been an effort to push the realistic angle a little more.  There's a bit more downtime, and more time is spent trying to figure out what other people are going to do.
    There's still another thing that Cathy mentioned that I can't defend.  There's a lack of character development.  There are a few moments that you could take as development, but there seems to be a lack of work done in this area.  Of course, I rarely notice this in action movies, (although I've been enjoying that aspect of the more recent Bond movies) but when you combine the lingering shots with a lack of character development… it probably annoys some people.
    This would explain some of the problems that I've seen people have with this one.
    Still, I found this one really satisfying.

1 - Saboteur

    A factory worker is blamed for some sabotage that messes up his plant.  He goes on the lam to find the person he believes is responsible.  On the way, he has a variety of adventures, and uncovers a vast conspiracy against the US.
    This is the first disc in the 15-disc Hitchcock Blu-ray box set I've gotten.  I haven't seen most of the movies in the set, but I've decided I might as well watch them all in order.  Not knowing anything in particular about Saboteur, I really was flying blind.  I had no spoilers directing me.
    It's an interesting movie, but I'd be pressed to say that it was really great.  The tension isn't handled the way I would expect.  In some scenes, it ramps up, in others, it seems like it just disappeared.  And then there are strange script/plot issues that I found really distracting.  Notably, I think a few plot points were just skipped over.  Like, how is it that the police suddenly are on his side at the end?  There are a few reasons I could think of, but none of them were addressed.  There's a ship that he prevents the sabotage of, but we later see a ship that seems to be seriously damaged.  After some research, I saw that it isn't the same ship.
    This is an example of Hitchcock's work at this point.  He did some good direction, and there are some great shots.  But there are more instances where editing is confusing, and where poor decisions were made.
    I did find the script interesting.  There seems to be a quiet effort to keep the nature, or goal, of the opposing organization ill-defined.  Then the movie seems to be packed with characters who want to help out, or who give the lead the benefit of doubt.  (Which is peculiar, since she doesn't make much of an effort to convince anyone of his innocence.)
    I found the climax to be a disappointment though.  The villain climbs the Statue of Liberty, and there's some struggling on the torch.  This sequence is obviously filmed on a set, and there are some nice effects shots.  But the sound is conspicuously absent.  Only the spoken lines are heard.  There's no sounds of wind, there's no music.  It's very strange, and I found this really made the ending anti-climactic.

The Best and Worst of 2012 Viewing

    I'm having a hard time thinking of the best thing that I saw this year.  But I can easily think of the worst thing.

Worst movie because it just wasn't good
    Pool Party didn't bother me in an insidious way.  It bothered me because it was a completely unrewarding viewing experience.  I felt dumber watching it.  It was annoying.  It was not funny.  It was just competent enough to sit through.  I remember feeling a little sickly while I was watching it, and I couldn't be sure if it was because of the movie, or if I had eaten something that didn't sit well.

Worst movie because it insulted me
    The Amazing Spider-Man seriously bothered me.  I've read a lot of praise for the movie, but I felt like it wasn't treating me right.  For someone who is a serious fan of Spider-Man (like, I'm usually reading some of the comics most times.  I have a copy of Essential Amazing Spider-Man vol 11 next to the bed right now, and I'm reading Web of Spider-Man on the iPad when conditions are right.)  I'm really familiar with what makes Peter Parker work.  This movie would probably be a good movie if it didn't carry the Spider-Man name.  Parker isn't a hero in this movie.  He's a selfish jerk.  He's not nerdy.  And he isn't the same, fairly confident character he grew into.  He's a smug tool, who isn't very bright.  Not to mention that the rest of the movie is kind of a mess.  The Lizard lost all of his appeal as a villain.  Every time I think of the kid dangling in the car, and the talk about his mask, it makes me want to throw up a little.  Of course, the movie is much more competently shot than Pool Party was, but I'd want to sit through both of them about the same amount.

Why the hell am I watching this?
    The Summer of The Massacre is barely a movie.  It's a handful of friends making a horror movie, without any sense of plot or tension.  There's one girl who's attractive, and the opening chase is pretty funny.  The most memorable part of the movie is the opening crawl, which is packed with errors and awkward sentence construction.
    But the rest of the movie is nearly unwatchable.  It's shaky-cam of people running around the woods.  Endless chase scenes.

     I can't label a movie as being the best thing I saw this year.  But I can label a few pleasant surprises that really worked.

The Innkeepers
     The story is strong, the writing is great.  The direction is wonderful.  In fact, I think this belongs on a double bill with The Shining.  Maybe I'll do that next November.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
    I didn't expect to like this as much as I did, but the drama is great.  It's tense, and part of it comes from not having a sense of how far Bette Davis will go.

Blood on Satan's Claw
    I need to rematch this one eventually.  It's not structured perfectly, but there's something great about the atmosphere.  Maybe I'll rewatch The Wicker Man as well.

YellowBrickRoad
    I was pleased with this when I first saw it, but it's stuck with me.  I keep thinking about wanting to see it again.  It doesn't seem to be out on Blu-ray, but even so, the sense of madness was great.

The Year in Review

    Whenever I tell people that I'm tracking everything I'm watching, they seem to be puzzled by it.  I've found it to be a fantastic tool.
    First of all, I watch a lot of movies, and it's nice to know when I'm not sure if I've seen something before.
    Second, I get a better sense of exactly what I'm watching.  I have it broken down by genre, if it's the first time I've seen it, and what decade it came from.  These give me much more insight into my viewing habits, which, if I want to broaden my knowledge of movies, is invaluable information.

    Because I knew that I was tracking this information, I was much more likely to push myself to watch new movies rather than repeating old ones.  I was especially less likely to watch the same movie more than once in the year.  (This didn't work perfectly.  I still watched The Avengers three times.)
    From 186 movies I watched this year, this is how they break down.
    First viewing - 119
    40s - 2
    50s - 4
    60s - 5
    70s - 15
    80s - 21
    90s - 24
    00s - 64
    10s - 51
    Action - 49
    Anthology - 5
    Comedy - 48
    Documentary - 4
    Drama - 27
    Horror - 79
    Musical - 1
    Romance - 6
    Sci-Fi - 12
    Superheros - 10
    Zombies - 6
    (Note that some movies fall into multiple genres).
    There were seven instances of repeated viewings.  These were The Bourne Identity, Crank, Mission: Impossible 3, The Avengers (2x) The Innkeepers, and The Prestige.

    For comparison purposes - in 2011, I watched 151 movies, 89 of which were first viewings.  I watch three movies twice.
    This means
                  Total Viewed        Repeat percentage        First Time Percentage
    2011        151                       1.98%                           58.94%
    2012        186                      3.76%                            63.97%

    My Evaluation of This Data
    Despite making a more concerted effort to watch more movies for the first time, I only went up about five percentage points.  Of course, the sample size was bigger.  But I also almost doubled my percentage of repeated viewings.

    Some Goals for 2013
    I'd like to vary my habits a little.  I watch a lot of horror, but I enjoy that too much to give up.
    A few things stand out.  Only one musical seems kind of a bad precedent.
    Let's make a few targets.

    Documentary - 8
    Musical - 7
    Sci-Fi - 18
    20s - 2
    30s - 3
    40s - 5
    50s - 5
    60 - 6
    70s - 18

    And then, the rest of the decades I don't care too much about.

    I have a lot of movies sitting around that I should watch.  I just got the 15-disc Hitchcock Blu-ray set.  I still have the Three Colors Trilogy sitting around.  It might be more difficult to find enough pictures from earlier decades, but this gives me something to shoot for.