44 - P2

    On Christmas Eve, a woman is trapped in her office building, held captive by a crazed security guard.
    I’m always impressed when a movie is able to keep a lack of locations interesting.  The lack of a budget usually means that the script had to have something compelling about it - a message, a clever story, something.  At the very least, it means that there’s a skilled director that feels they can do something with a weak story or script.  Somehow, despite working with mostly one location, this movie actually had too much budget.  We get a flipped car, we get some gore, and we get a few sequences that just showcase a budget, but the story never rises to the occasion.
    It’s a pretty straightforward captive female story.  The villain is prone to fits of rage, but manages to come off normal to other people.  There are a few other people scattered into the story to provide a bit of a body count (they kind of cheat with this, only showing one death, and just showing a dead body for the other.)
    There are two things that make this movie notable, and they both come close to the end, and neither is a real positive trait.  First, the heroine kills a dog.  It’s true that the movie portrays the dog as menacing and dangerous.  I don’t mind the dog as a threat, but I guess I would just like another way of dealing with the dog.  This ties into the other problem…
    The heroine kills the villain.  This isn’t a problem in itself, but the way it’s handled, it is.
    The heroine has incapacitated and handcuffed the villain to a car.  She chooses to light the guy - and the car - on fire.  She was no longer in danger, and she decides to kill him anyway.  This makes her slip out of a sympathetic character and into a jerk.
    After the heroine is captured, she is changed into a dress.  I don’t mind the idea of the villain re-dressing her.  But somehow, the dress doesn’t seem like his idea.  It seems like an idea that the producers had to add a touch of sex appeal to the movie.  Her dress accents her bust incredibly well, and the direction frames the shots so that they’re regularly on display.
    There’s also a very annoying set piece, where she hides in an elevator.  The villain drops a firehose onto the ceiling and turns it on.  This leads to water dripping in, and eventually filling the bottom of the elevator.  I have serious doubts about this.  Then the villain drops the dead body of another person onto the elevator, breaking the ceiling.  Also unlikely.  What makes this sequence even more annoying is that it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose, only to pad time.  No character development.  No real tension.  It calls attention to how silly the premise is.

43 - John Dies at the End

    A guy and his friend have a problem with psychic powers, trans-dimensional demons and bugs, and a possible end to the world.
    I can’t describe this movie, and I shouldn’t try to summarize it.  None of the descriptions I’ve seen have been anywhere near intelligible.  The movie is difficult to like, mostly because it’s easy to spend the first half of it wondering what’s happening.  There’s a recurring sense that something happened that you missed, and that something would explain everything.  I kept on looking up a summary just to make sure that I didn’t miss anything important.
    I’ll say this - the writing is entertaining.  Every scene is clever, unexpected, weird, and wild.  But there’s only so much that I can take of this sort of thing.  The constant weirdness is a problem, and I’ve encountered it in a few other movies before.  Even a staple like Brazil, which revels in weirdness, still has, at the core, a recognizable humanity in the romantic story.  I never feel like any of the characters are human in this movie.
    There’s a certain type of person that this movie is right for.  I know at least one person who would love it.  But the appeal is not broad, and I can imagine most people really disliking it.
    Personally, I respect it.  But I wouldn’t want to return to it.

42 - Ravenous

    During the Mexican-American War, a soldier is reassigned to a remote outpost.  There, he deals with a wendigo - a cannibal that gains in strength as it eats others.
    This is one of the rare horror movies that feels so completely classy, but I haven’t run into anyone who feels the same as I do.  The period elements are really wonderful.  The photography and locations are fantastic.  The music is really remarkable.  It captures a sense of the period, but uses a few modern flourishes that give a sense of wooziness to things.
    I don’t think I’ve ever seen another cannibal movie with a similar premise (the exception might be an episode of Fear Itself, called Skin And Bones) and setting the story in a period really makes things interesting.
    The acting is generally good, although the lead is one of the least interesting characters.  The villain is played by Robert Carlyle, who pulls off some wonderfully crazy stuff leading up to his initial attack.  Jeffrey Jones is charming, of course.
    I read up on the production, and watched a little interview with Jeffery Jones that was on the disc, and it sounds like it was a real mess.  One director was fired, another took over, there were budgetary issues, regular rewrites, and the studio included stuff that the director didn’t want used.  It’s remarkable, because I feel like it’s a really solid movie. 

41 - Psycho Beach Party

    A naive young girl hangs out with a bunch of beach guys, as a killer picks off a few people here and there.  Is it her bizarre split personality?
    I saw this years ago, and it left an impression.  It was one of the stranger movies I’ve seen, but I felt like something was missing, that I wasn’t able to fully appreciate it.  Now that I’m seeing it again… I still can tell that I don’t understand every reference or joke, but I still think it’s completely fascinating.  I don’t think there’s anything else like it.  It’s a campier version of John Waters.  It’s sillier, but also so drenched in sexuality… and not just one type.  The sexuality in the movie is fully fluid, almost like the humor in Strangers With Candy.  It’s kind of disorienting to viewers until they get used to it.
    There is a problem with the movie, and it’s a real shame.  The story actually gets in the way of the movie.  The writing is so clever, but the plot seems shoehorned in.  It’s not a bad plot, but… maybe it’s just that the story feels like it should be more straightforward.
    It’s great to see Lauren Ambrose in something else.  She’s one of the most likable characters in Can’t Hardly Wait, and she’s strangely adorable.
     This was originally a stage play, and I'd be curious to see how the material plays in that context.  The performances are wonderfully campy, and it might be more effective on stage.

40 - Honeymoon

    A newlywed couple takes their honeymoon in a secluded forest-lake area.  Something odd happens, and she starts acting strange.
    This has gotten a lot of good press, and it’s a little unusual.  I’m also impressed that it has a total cast of four people, and two of them have less than five minutes of screen time.  The writing is mostly strong, and the sense of intimacy between the leads is just right.  I found myself a little displeased with the direction that the story takes near the end, but it wasn’t enough to ruin the rest of the movie.  I’m not sure what I was expecting, just… there was more of a sci-fi twist than a horror one.
    A few answers are provided by the ending, but not enough to feel completely satisfying.  I’m not sure what information would have been more complete.
    It did reinforce an important screenwriting tool that I haven’t been able to completely grasp - the idea of giving the audience tiny clues, and forcing them to fill in all the blanks on their own.  It’s a delicate line, giving just enough information without giving too little.
     One of the biggest problems that I can see is that this could have been presented as an episode of the X-Files without much difficulty.

39 - Amityville 3 (Amityville 3D)

    A skeptic buys the Amityville house, and weird stuff starts happening to him and his family.
    This installment was shot in 3-D, and it shaped the entire movie.  There are odd shots tossed in throughout the picture, some of them blatant, like objects pointing at the screen and held there for a few extra moments.  The weirdest ones involve a fly that is clearly an effect.  The funniest one has a very slow-moving frisbee being thrown toward the camera.
    The story is slow and plodding, and seems even less focused than the other Amityville movies I’ve seen.  The house doesn’t seem exactly evil or anything, and the amount of action that takes place outside the house makes things even more aimless.  One of the points of a haunted house story is that the house itself is the villain.  In this movie, it seems like the house isn’t actually evil, it’s an evil fly.  Yes, an evil fly.
    The movie culminates in a fantastic sequence where the house falls down and blows up.  In the meantime, stuff is getting blown around, and people are jumping out of the way of couches and other furniture.  It’s all strangely hilarious, like it takes itself too seriously. 

38 - April Fool's Day

    A bunch of college students go to an island home for a weekend, during which someone seems to be stalking them.
    I can give this movie credit for one thing in particular - it’s a horror movie that no other horror movie would dare to be.  Most of what makes this movie notable is the ending, which I’ll spoil here.  The twist at the end is that no one died - the whole thing is an elaborate prank.
    This does make the whole movie into one of the most TV-friendly horror movies I’ve ever known, and that includes made-for-TV horror movies.  There isn’t much blood or gore, and the stuff that’s there isn’t intense.  There are a good number of goofy pranks, like a chair that tips the sitter backward.
    The real highlight is seeing Tom Wilson in a lighthearted role.

37 - Big Hero 6

    A young genius’s brother dies in a fire, leaving behind a medical assistant robot.  The robot is adapted to help the young genius investigate the story behind his brother’s death.
    As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more and more annoyed with Disney movies, and with the effect that Pixar animation has had on most animated features.  The character design has gotten really dull - especially the girls.  The animation has reached into an uncomfortable place.  Some of the characters look almost photo-realistic during certain sequences (particularly the villain).  This creates a problem of the movie feeling like it switches between cartoonish animation and a realistic approach.
    There are a few enjoyable bits, mostly with the voice acting for Baymax.  Aside from that, I didn’t have much of a sense of wonder from this.  I found most of the story kind of predictable, most of the humor pretty dull.  It wasn’t offensive, but it seemed like something was lacking.  I don’t know what it was.

36 - Bridgend

    A documentary about a rash of suicides in Bridgend, Wales.
    This was a strangely frustrating documentary to watch, for multiple reasons.  First, this is a peculiar story that has nothing of interest behind it.  We learn nothing about the motivations behind the suicides.  It’s an interesting problem, but this manages to make it into something barely watchable.  A suicide is discussed by the surviving parents.  They describe having to identify the body.  Then they talk about how bothered they are that they don’t understand why it happened.
    A lot of the people they talk to speculate about the reasons why their suicide rate is so high, but there never seems to be any consensus.  The one instance that seems to have an reason is when a daughter had committed suicide, and the father kills himself sometime afterward.
    There’s a tiny amount of time spent talking about how the health services delay treatment.
    I guess what bothers me is that my feelings about suicide are a bit different.  I tend to lean toward empathizing with the suicidal.  The result is that I feel like all of the parents we see are just unable to observe their kids carefully.
    There’s a good amount of talk about how “selfish” suicide is, which has always bothered me.  I’ve always felt like that observation is, in itself, a selfish position to take.
    Meh.  This felt surprisingly dull to me.

35 - Teen Witch

    A girl longs to be popular and win the affections of her heartthrob, and her discovery that she has magical powers allows her to achieve these goals.
    Hilarious.  It’s from 1989, but it feels like it’s from some alternate universe.  The hairstyles, the clothes, the humor… all of it just seems like someone wanted to take all the silliest elements of earlier 80s comedies, and amp them all up.  My favorite thing is the inclusion of some awkward white-guy hip-hop.
    This belongs in a category of 80s movies that attempted to court teenage girls, but somehow managed to make them come across sort of shallow.  The only movie I can think of right now would be Girls Just Want To Have Fun.
    The lead’s romantic interest in Brad seems to be shallower than shallow.  Brad never does anything nice or romantic.  He does sort of seduce her in an abandoned house eventually, but most of the time, he’s just shown with rippling muscles and perfect hair.  No personality.  It doesn’t seem to develop her character either.

34 - Rapture-Palooza

    After the rapture, a girl becomes the focus of the antichrist’s affections, spurring her and her boyfriend to hatch a scheme to imprison him.
    This seemed like a lighthearted comedy, but I found myself much more confused than I expected to be.  It’s actually a really fun premise, and there was a lot of effort put into world building.  Some of the jokes were pretty clever.  But… somehow, the movie fell flat.  There was something wrong with the performances, the direction, or the editing… something was working against the comedic elements, making this into a massive exercise in frustration.  I could see a lot of funny material, but it never came together right.
    There’s a lot of sleazy material in this, and that seems kind of strange.  It’s at odds with the fun tone that the rest of the movie has.
    Even with all of this, the movie held my attention very well.

33 - L.A. Story

     An unhappy LA weatherman is guided through a correction in his life by a signpost, as he leaves his relationship, his job, and strikes up a new romance.
     My favorite movie.  Over time, I've wondered how much that description still applies.  I still think this is a wonderfully paced movie.  It's layered in many different ways.  The writing is fantastic.  There's just enough oddity to make things curious.  The performances are all great.  Even some of the trivial bits, like the woman that Steve Martin eyes in the dressing room.
     I met Steve Martin a few years ago.  I told him that L.A. Story has been my favorite movie, and I got a picture with him.  I think he was pleased that I wasn't going to talk about The Jerk or something like that.
     There are weaknesses to this movie, but they're all issues that have to do with an audience that doesn't pay close attention.  The movie rewards multiple viewings, as the themes are easier to fit together.
     Even now, after probably dozens of viewings, I felt like I noticed a few new things.  The direction is really interesting.  There are these fast-cut sequences establishing new locations, and most of them are really nicely framed.  Then I also noticed a few hand-held shots that follow characters around in some really interesting ways.  This isn't the same as the round meal scene, which is fairly obvious, but scenes like Harris trying to talk Sara into staying.  The camera starts at one point, moves around with the characters, turns around, follows them up the stairs... it's well blocked.

32 - Shaun of the Dead

     Frustrated Shaun and his slacker friend deal with a zombie outbreak by holing up in their favorite pub.
     I've seen this many times, and it hasn't aged as well as Hot Fuzz.  I think that Hot Fuzz is more compact, and the pacing is a bit better, but there's still a certain amount of heart to Shaun.  What pleases me most about it is how well it fits thematically with Fuzz and The World's End.  Even more remarkable is how well it fits with Pegg's role in Run, Fatboy, Run.
     The key difference in the character is that Shaun doesn't seem to be choosing to avoid taking action.  He's avoiding action in order to keep his friend.  It's more about the bad influence that a stunted friend can have.
      There are two complaints that I have from this viewing.  First, Shaun's girlfriend, Liz, doesn't seem like as much of a character.  On the other hand, she does have an arc; she does move toward being supportive of Shaun, which is an effective development.  The second complaint is that I would love to see more of the counterpart group.  This is one of the strangest gags in the movie, but I can't help but wish they had explored the idea - or at least given more information about what happens to that group.

31 - The Ref

     A thief takes a bickering couple hostage on Christmas Eve.
     I saw this a long time ago, and I remembered it mostly as a three-person show.  Now, it reminds me a little of an effort to cash in on Home Alone by making a touching, offbeat Christmas story.
     It's an ensemble cast, and most of the characters are defined in narrow ways.  No single performance stands out as being especially good or bad.  It's broadly good, but not noteworthy or memorable at all.
     I found myself thinking of Mixed Nuts, which probably is written about as well, but was saved by some strong performances.

30 - Don't Go To Sleep

     A family moves into a new house, where the ghost of their daughter begins menacing them through the surviving daughter.
     This was a made-for-TV movie from 1982.  I saw it originally during some broadcast in the 80s, and I remembered specific sequences.  I saw it with one of my sisters, who also remembered it.
     It was a memorable movie.  Under a modern eye, it doesn't stand up quite as well, but there are a few interesting ideas that the movie presents.
     First, the negative.  I'm going to ignore issues of dialogue or acting, or budget, since these things were made quickly and cheaply.  They also needed to adhere to standards that aren't as flexible as theatrical movies.  The only problem is that the structure of the story isn't quite right.  The action starts off pretty well, but it has a problem with the flow slowing down closer to the 2/3rds point.  There's also a terrible long sequence of exposition that serves almost like a closing explanation.
     But there's also some really great ideas in this.  There are images that are wonderfully memorable, and are directed just the right way.  The shots that stuck in my mind have a pizza cutter being run up a stairwell, and cutting a phone cord.  There's a kid being scared into falling off a roof.  Strangely, I don't remember one of the best shots - a girl screaming as her bed is on fire.  Combine these with a memorable creepy last shot, and everything is in place.
     I believe that with a bit of work, this could become a much more solid horror movie.  As a made-for-TV project, it's effective, just not as brilliant as it could be.

29 - Road House

     A legendary bouncer is recruited to help clean up a town's rowdy bar.  He fights local corruption.
     This is one of the strangest, silliest action movies I've seen.  Let's start with the first couple words of my summary.  "A legendary bouncer."  Huh?  Is this the sort of thing that immediately makes me suspicious.  The main character is approached by a businessman, who somehow knows the bouncer by reputation.  This makes no sense to me.
     A lot of the movie tries to do a few things for Patrick Swayze.  He's simultaneously trying to be sexy for women, and an action star for men.  Both of these things combine to make a very ambiguous movie.  Swayze gets oiled up to do some tai chi, as his farmer friend watches.  He has an awkward sex scene with the female lead.
     The strangest thing is the inclusion of a line.  Swayze is in a fight with some henchman.  They're fighting on the bank of a pond.  The henchman says the line "I fucked guys like you in prison!"  Swayze has no response to this line.  He ignores it and continues fighting.  The obvious response is "You fucked guys?"
     The villain in the movie is an evil businessman who seems to thrive on collecting protection money.  That story isn't all that interesting, and it seems almost tangential to the main story.  Rather, it seems like the movie starts off with one story, which is abandoned in favor of a less interesting story.  Even if this story seems less interesting than the one we started with, the handling is ludicrous.  The villain blows up two buildings, a business and a private property.  Both of these are done as first smaller explosions, leading up to the entire building exploding.  The villain also has a henchman of his drive a monster truck through a car dealership, crushing several cars as well as breaking walls.
     The police are strangely absent from almost the entire movie.  They appear at the end, but they never seem to care about massive property damage.

     As much as this sounds like I hate it, that isn't the case.  I can't say that I like it either.  It's amusing, but it's not quite up to being a camp classic.

28 - Return to Sleepaway Camp

     Camp Manabe is haunted by a mysterious slasher who is picking off various campers and staff.
     I watched this years ago, and I remembered liking it.  This time through, I was a little more aware of how much they just love the original movies.  They try to recapture some of the same half-written half-improvised feel of some of the cheap horror movies of the 80s.  The characters are ridiculously cruel to each other.
     The biggest dividing point is what seems to be the main character, Alan.  He's a slob, he's whiny, cruel, but he also has a soft side, in that he just wants to be liked.  But he doesn't know how to be a nice person.  Some people seem to view him as completely unsympathetic, other people seem to view him as a misunderstood soul.  They're both right.  I think he's actually the most interesting element of the movie.  This is also why the movie doesn't work right.  Alan is the primary focus for the first two acts.  Then he mostly disappears during the third.  By shifting the focus from him, it suddenly feels like the movie lost direction.
      This is still a smarter movie, and more successfully tongue-in-cheek than the second and third Sleepaway Camp movies.

27 - Phantom of the Paradise

     A composer/songwriter is betrayed by a music mogul, and begins haunting his new theater in an effort to get revenge.
     This was hard to summarize, because the story is a strange blending of Faust and Phantom of the Opera.  This story is also filtered through a strange sensibility, reminding me of Warhol and David Bowie.
     I'm having a hard time articulating any thoughts about it.  It's a strange movie.  It's really strange.  There's a male diva (is there another word for that?) named Beef.  He spends much of his screen time topless.  He delivers his lines in a gay stereotype.
     The movie is directed by Brian De Palma, two years before Carrie, and a year after Sisters.  He uses some split-screen work, but his direction isn't the focus... the strange opulence of the set design, the pacing of the dialogue.  It all makes a more fantastical experience than you would expect.  I haven't seen anything like it before, and even the most immediately comparable things like Rocky Horror aren't quite like this.  This seems a little more nightmarish, almost maddening in a weird way.

26 - Off The Charts: The Song-Poem Story

     A documentary about the song-poem industry.  Musicians solicit lyrical submissions to craft songs from - for a fee.
     I used to have this on DVD, but I lent it to someone and never got it back.
     While I love the subject matter, and I think there's some fantastic material in this, I realized that this isn't a very well-crafted documentary.  In particular, the focus seems to be lost by the end of it.  The last 10 minutes or so just follows a guy who had submitted some song-poems as he attempts to do a live performance.  It's interesting, but it isn't really on topic.
     I would like to have some more figures from seeing this.  I know that many of the songs people submit are religious in nature, but the song-poems I've found cover some very interesting ground.  There are political songs, religious ones, but there are others that reflect just a specific interest, or an event that inspired the person.  One of my favorites is The Moon Men, which is a rambling coverage of the original moon landing.  It praises the astronauts, but it also adds a big dose of specific information, about them having to remain in isolation afterward.  It's a spectacularly strange performance, with the singer moving up and down the scale, but without a real end point to any phrases.
      I would also like to see more of an exploration of the meaning of the industry.  I like it.  It's exciting to hear your lyrics brought to music, and there's something generous about using your musical talents to put something like this together, even if it's for money.

25 - The Internship

     A pair of salesmen manage to land an internship at Google, where their lack of technical knowledge somehow turns into a positive thing.
     We watched this specifically because my wife just landed an internship at Google.  I had heard some bad things about this, but it wasn't quite as bad as I expected.  It was modestly entertaining.  There were some good bits.  There were plenty of predictable bits.  But the only element that actually fell flat was one of the central premise elements.  The internship structure seemed needlessly mean and competitive.
     Intern groups do not compete with each other.  There's no prize of winning a job either.  Having the story reflect these ideas actually makes Google look like a pretty terrible place to intern.
     This flaw is a problem, but it's easier if you distance this version of Google from the actual place.
      The one other thing that didn't work for me is seeing Owen Wilson as a romantic character.

24 - Twins

     The perfect result of a genetic experiment discovers that he has a twin brother, and he leaves his island home to find him.
     Back in 1988, this was a big hit.  I saw it when I was pretty young, and I enjoyed it then.  This, and Kindergarten Cop, are the only really good Schwarzenegger comedies.  However, I find that this isn't quite as good as I remember, but mostly because the cast is unbalanced.  While Schwarzenegger gets some really nice gags, he doesn't have much performing to do.  I found that DeVito is the real highlight.  He sells every delivery.  He manages to make some otherwise unfunny dialogue into some very funny material.  His character has a stronger arc, which is a little strange, since Schwarzenegger doesn't have much to learn.
      The most interesting thing about this movie is that it's a great example of how comedies have changed between the mid-80s and modern times.  The jokes a little less forceful.  The pacing is less manic.  This isn't to say that it's a subtle movie, far from it.  But so much of the humor comes from the performances, and so much less comes from the dialogue.
      There is one substantial plot hole that bothers me.
     When the brothers go to find their mother, she doesn't identify herself, and only gives some information about the artists commune she lives on.  After they leave, she tells others that these people were real estate developers, posing as her children.  This makes no sense.  Does lying about her identity prevent real estate developers from wanting to buy the property?  Even if we suppose that the purpose is just to prevent them from trying to get her to sell, wouldn't they want to find whomever owns the property?
      It remains a charming movie, but it makes me more convinced that I should find more of DeVito's work.

23 - Mortified Nation

     A documentary about organized cringe readings, where people read from their teenage journals.
      This was one of my favorites from last year, and it's still a great watch.  It doesn't function the way most documentaries do, since it doesn't have an arc, or any real narrative design.  Regardless, nearly everything in it is entertaining, and it raises a lot of questions about how unique our teenage experiences are.
     All of the participants have done something unique, even as their feelings weren't all that unique.  One woman, early in the movie, has a remarkable amount of sexuality incorporated in her diary.  One woman is fixated on a guy in her class, and draws pages of her fantasies of getting married to him.  Neither of these thoughts are that unique, but they have been manifested in a unique way.
      The most unusual cases are a woman whose mother started a cleaning business, and another woman whose mother was abusive.

     It's easy to wonder if my own younger writings would fit into this mold.  It's easy to assume that I must have been embarrassing enough to warrant a cringe reading.  I can't tell.  I threw out all of my old writing.  This would be material that goes back to at least fourth and fifth grade.  I kept writing through around 8th grade.  All of that stuff is gone.
     And yet, I'm glad.  My experiences weren't that special, and I can't imagine anything that funny being in there.

22 - Crank

     Injected with a drug cocktail that will kill him, a hitman stays alive through natural and unnatural adrenaline rushes as he hunts down the man responsible for his impending death.
     I think this is the third time I've seen this, and I still enjoy it, but on a few different levels now.
     I found the direction to be a little more unbalanced than I remember.  There are some fantastically unique ideas in the movie, but there are a few structural issues that don't age well.
     A few direction choices that I enjoy: first, I like the use of split-screen for phone calls.  It's a common tool, but the way that the screen keeps bumping over with every line really keeps things interesting.  The other thing that I noticed was that there were at least two instances where Statham would be on a phone call with someone, and the other person would be hidden in the frame.  This is hard to explain without a visual, but...
 - Statham is on the telephone with his doctor.  He's walking through the back end in a mall.  He's walking down a narrow hallway.  If you look at the right side of the hallway, you can see his doctor on the phone, talking to him.  It's placed on a wall.  Really peculiar, and it doesn't make any real sense, but it's truly unique.
 - Statham is on the phone with... the young guy, whose name I can't remember.  He's driving.  If you look at his side mirror, you'll see the other guy on the phone.

     The thing that I didn't like this time through was that the structure needed a little more of a rise in action.  One of the things that makes this movie work is how ridiculous the situation gets.  There are absurd things, like Statham riding a police motorcycle wearing a hospital gown.  He plows through an indoor mall for no real reason.  He has sex in public, in front of a cheering audience.  These are hilarious, and they make the movie work.  But the problem is that they aren't arranged the way I'd like them to be.  In particular, he plows through the mall way too early in the movie.  Right after the public sex scene, he runs off to have a brief fight in a warehouse, which isn't all that exciting.  The escape from that warehouse fight is pretty fun, but it's nowhere near as fun as things that came earlier.  There's a bit of downtime when he finally talks to his doctor.  Then his big finish fight seems anticlimactic compared to the wild ride that was happening earlier.
     There's one thing that really saves this movie.  It feels cheap.  The effects work is clearly cheap.  Things don't move right, but it helps.  It makes this feel like a cartoon.
     I realized that Statham's character isn't especially likable, but it doesn't seem to matter.  So what if he violently kills people?  It's all a cartoon anyway.

21 - Tropic Thunder

     A troubled film production's director decides to get the most authentic performances out of his cast by dumping them in the jungle and forcing them to fight their way through the scenario.  They run afoul of a real drug operation.
      Every time I see this, I forget about how pleasing it is.  Everyone seems to be having a good time.  The script is remarkable, able to shift between high and low humor smoothly.  Occasionally, it's easy to forget what sort of movie you're watching.
     This time through, I found myself focusing more on Robert Downey, Jr.  As much as I love watching Ben Stiller, and as much as the rest of the cast is amazing, I was much more captivated by Downey's way of playing more than one character at once.  This is probably because I've gotten much more fascinated with how he plays Iron Man.
      I also felt like Tom Cruise was used more than I remembered.  His performance is exactly as I remember, but I had two thoughts.  First, his hands seem almost gorilla-like.  They're big and hairy, but most importantly, they seem disproportionately large.  Second, Tom Cruise doesn't get to play jerks that often.  I kind of like it.  I wish he would do this more often.  I might like him more.
      The one spot that I think is a weakness is that Steve Coogan doesn't get used as much as I'd like.  I love Hamlet 2, and I think he's an unsung comedic genius.

20 - The Town That Dreaded Sundown

     Returning to Texarkana, the town is again gripped by a similar series of murders, mirroring the ones that happened in the original The Town That Dreaded Sundown.
     I can't remember if it was last year or the prior year that I watched the original.  It's fairly strange, with a weird mismatch of humor, horror, and styles.  But it was memorable, at least for two things.  First, the long, tense murder scenes (with the exception of the trombone thing) and second, the ambiguous ending, in which the killer gets away, and we never find out who it was.
     This movie eliminates those notable characteristics, and replaces the whole thing with a pretty standard slasher, which is simultaneously dull and over-energetically edited.  Yes, that's contradictory, but somehow, it's true.
      The original was less focused on characters, and instead provided a broad view of the town.  In this version, the town is the focus for the opening credits, but nothing else.  After that, the focus is entirely on a female lead, only because she survives the first attack by the new killer.
     The photography is strange.  There's a lot of soft lenses, giving a sense of haze to the movie.  I don't know if this is intentional, or just that someone thought it looked cool.
     We get a reveal at the midpoint that there are actually two killers working together.  Personally, I would have held this reveal for the end, but it doesn't seem to matter.  At the end, the killers are unmasked and defeated (yeah, sorry about spoilers, but it's hard to care with this movie) which effectively derails the whole thing.
      Why capitalize on the original movie?  It's got a small cult following, but it doesn't seem like it calls out for a sequel or remake.  This story adds nothing of interest to the original movie.  In fact, it seems like it cheapens it.

19 - Hot Fuzz

     An exceptional police officer is reassigned to a small village, where he finds the accident rate is unusually high.
      I showed this to Eric.  It's hard to believe that I wasn't as wildly enthusiastic about this movie as I am now.  Over time, I've come to feel like it's much more polished and well-written than Shaun of the Dead.  I still haven't seen The World's End for a second viewing though.  The one thing that is a legitimate complaint about Hot Fuzz is that it's long.  It feels long.  But I can't point to anything that should be cut.  Everything in the movie is a setup and a payoff.  The editing is tight.  Even the scenes that play a little more slowly are perfectly appropriate.

18 - Triangle

     Their boat wrecked, a group of people take refuge on a large liner, which seems to be empty.  They are stuck in a time loop.
      Man, I love this movie.  I think I've seen it at least five or six times now, and I really love it.  I've tried to persuade just about everyone I can think of to watch this.
     This is one of these exceptionally rare time-travel stories that works really well.  Each time we go through the loop, we understand the main character and how her motivation has changed.  It makes the whole movie feel like a natural progression, and it doesn't feel nearly as forced as Time Crimes.
     If I have any complaints, I think there are two of them.  One of them is a shot that involves a gun being thrown, and somehow this knocks a person over.  It seems comical, and it takes some of the tension out of the situation.  The other one is the recurring Aeolus logo on a drum head.  It's an obvious way of tying together what happens on the ship to what happens on land, but I can't tell what the significance of it is.
      It's a beautifully dark and well-crafted story.  This should have gotten far more exposure.

17 - The Onion Movie

     The Onion, a legitimate news source, has been acquired by a larger parent company, which plans to use the nightly news to advertise their other properties.  Their head news anchor is unhappy with this.
    This movie functions mostly as an extended skit format, especially earlier in the movie.  What helps make this movie rise above being a collection of youtube-ready gags is that there are a number of callbacks that happen, and the number of those rise as the movie progresses.  The ending is surprising in how satisfying it is to see Melissa Cherry show up, to have Cockpuncher arrive, and even the Peruvian appear.
     I've been a little puzzled about why this movie hasn't been more successful.  I've seen it a few times, and it's easily more skillfully assembled than something like Kentucky Fried Movie, which has achieved a cult classic status.

16 - Good People

    A blue-collar couple finds a stash of stolen money.  They decide to keep it, dealing with the police, drug dealers, etc.
     When I first started watching this, I didn't know what to expect.  I saw that James Franco is in it, and I've been pretty pleased with most of his career.  It's a surprisingly dull movie, and the biggest mystery about it is why Franco was involved in it.
     It's not a big-budget production.  This wasn't a big payday for him.  It's not well-written.  This wasn't something where the story or writing was so interesting that he couldn't stay away.  The story isn't unique.  It's been done before, and it's been done far better.  (Notably with Shallow Grave)
     The only thing that seems like it may have been interesting to Franco is that it's a character unlike most of the ones he's played.  He's a blue-collar contractor.  He's not especially funny or charismatic.  It's different, but not remarkable.
     About 3/4 of the movie is really dull.  The last act gets a little fun near the end, as the couple lays a trap for their opposition.
     There's one element that bothered me quite a bit.  At the beginning, the couple is on the verge of losing the house they're living in.  At the same time, they're completely fixated on having a baby.  The stolen money allows them to continue living in this house.  Then, going into the big finish, it's revealed that they actually own another house.  It's a big one that he was intending to fix up.  So here we have two big problems.  They're paying for two houses for no good reason.  Second, they're consumed with the idea of having a baby that they won't be able to afford.  These aren't things that make me like the couple.

15 - Living in Oblivion

     An independent film production struggles with all sorts of problems.
         I’ve seen this several times, and it gets better every time.  This time, it wasn’t just the performances, although I’ve been completely amazed by Catherine Keener’s performance.  Her work is some of the trickiest stuff I’ve seen.  She’s playing a character who is an actress.  Her character isn’t a bad actress, but just needs the right motivation to get the best performance.  As she goes through take after take of a single scene, her performance starts off acceptable, then gets worse with successive takes.  It’s exceptional to see this level of nuance, and the very slight changes she uses to create a smooth flow from quality to garbage without feeling forced at all.
      I'm also completely impressed with the script.  I found myself wondering about how the different layers of reality would be explained.  There are lots of wonderful little setups that happen, and it pays well to keep a good focus on everything that happens.
     My favorite moment is still the fantasy of the crew member who thinks about getting a hamburger at a diner.

14 - Revenge of the Nerds

     Picked on by jocks and sorority girls, freshman nerds at Adams College beat their opposition.
     I don't know how many times I've seen this movie. I owned it on VHS.  I watched it on TV.  I've had it on DVD for a long time.
     I recently read a fantastically long analysis of the movie, which raised a lot of interesting questions about the moral.  Some of these points were already well known and are suspiciously regarded - like the quasi-rape scene on the "moon."  Others require a little more thought, like the relationship of the football coach to the players, and that the coach might actually be responsible for bullying his players into everything they do.
     I did learn something new from watching this.  A well-crafted movie can overcome all sorts of plot problems through sheer force.  After the pigs are let loose in the nerd party, everyone rushes outside where they are taunted by the Alpha Betas.  I realized that they never address what happens to the pigs.  They simply disappear once they are no longer needed.  But it's easy to forget this sort of thing once we are distracted by the ridiculousness of the jock's display.
     Another thing... Michelle Meyrink is remarkable.  She has ten credits on IMDB, and somehow, I think she managed to encapsulate the nerd-girl fantasies of just about every geeky guy out there.

13 - Maniac

    A disturbed mannequin restorer stalks and kills a variety of victims.
    This is a remake of the 1980 cheap horror classic, which I was impressed with when I saw it back in 2011.  While the remake is able to improve on a few aspects of the original, mostly some effects work and a variety of technical aspects, it also suffers from having a well-known actor in the leading role.
    While Elijah Wood gives a solid performance, and by most standards does a good job, it’s nowhere near as captivating as the original movie.  The performance winds up being exactly the sort of performance you expect, nothing more or less.  With the original, the performance was unexpected.
    There’s a clearer story this time through.  There’s a primary love interest, and there’s more tension raised.  But somehow, the movie feels like it runs slower than the original did.
    The most interesting aspect of the movie is the way it’s primarily shot from a first-person perspective… but it doesn’t keep that as a rule.  The perspective changes occasionally, but I’m not sure if it’s only done for logistical purposes.  The perspective doesn’t accomplish anything that makes me like the movie more.  If anything, it may have been effective every now and then, but it tends to give the lead less real acting to do, which pulls some of the potential out of the story.