a) Unstoppable
My wife was excited about this because she will watch pretty much any Denzel Washington/Tony Scott movie. This wasn't bad but Scott's washed out color scheme is getting so tiresome and the frantic camerawork seemed especially ridiculous for a movie that should've operated more on the basis of building tension and implied danger. I mean, even when they showed news footage within the movie, the news cameras were all swooping around with crazy Tony Scott cinematography, it was so goofy. Also I kept thinking of the "SNL" parody the whole time.

b) The Social Network
I like both Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher but the idea of them doing something together was always hard for me to get my head around, just seemed like two completely different and potentially incompatible sets of sensibilities. Add in Justin Timberlake and Trent Reznor and it's just a cornucopia of people I never thought I'd see involved in the same project. But I have to admit this all held together pretty well, although Sorkin's writing definitely dominated the tone and sometimes I did feel like Fincher's suffocating commitment a narrow color palette was kind of the wrong look for it all.

c) Red
This was not quite as fun as trailers made me think it would be, partly because they also led to expect an ensemble picture where it leaned a lot more heavily on Bruce Willis, who seems to quietly smirk in comedies now in lieu of actually being funny. It picked up a bit about a half hour in when Malkovich showed up, though, and had a good amount of really entertaining moments.

d) Devil
I liked this, it had some of the usual pitfalls of a Shyamalan movie in both the tone and the ending, but I liked how it was an outright horror flick with a good ominous atmosphere and some really gruesome, scary moments.

e) "Community," Season 1
This show has gotten so great so fast that it's kind of fun to go back just a year and a half ago to the first episodes and see how much it's changed. Lot of great commentary tracks and bonuses on the DVDs too.

f) No Direction Home: Bob Dylan
Generally I will watch any bio or doc or TV special about any musician and get something out of it, so Scorsese doing a flick about someone as inherently interesting as Dylan should be a no-brainer, but I dunno man, this has absolutely no life or spark to it, just feels very bland and going through the motions and makes even some pretty exciting and remarkable times seem dull.

g) "Black Books," Series 1
I don't know if Britcoms and me will ever really get along; even the stuff that has a big American cult like "The Office" or "Spaced" I have a limited appreciation for, and I kind of ventured into trying out this show since it seems well regarded and I've enjoyed some cast members in other things. But ugh, the overly wacky style of humor and the exaggerated acting and the cackling laugh track, it's all kind of garish and tacky in a way that somehow few U.S. sitcoms ever achieve. Also nice to see Tamsin Greig about 10 years younger than on "Episodes" looking pretty fine.

h) Ravenous
I'm really starting to become a stan for "Terriers" creator Ted Griffin as I delve further into his earlier work. Don't know how I'd never heard of this movie before but it's a pretty entertainingly dark and occasionally comic story of cannibalism, seems like the kind of thing that would go over much better if it came out today than it did 10 years ago.

i) "Mystery Science Theater 3000" - Manos: Hands Of Fate
I loved MST3K back in the day and was excited when they finally started releasing select episodes on DVD, but for some reason it never occurred to me until recently that I could put some on my Netflix queue. I decided to start with a Joel era ep and went for this one, which I'd always heard about but never seen, and man, that is one shitty movie.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 02, 2011 at 1:40 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.