I should be in bed but I can’t sleep. Since amazingly enough I stayed home and did laundry instead of seeing a movie last night, August is done. I saw 33 movies in the theater in August, for a total of 175 so far this year, in the theater.
August 2010
Cropsey
Get Low
Middle Men
The Other Guys
Inglourious Basterds (5th? 6th? I don’t remember)
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (first time ever)
India of K-Town
Stonewall Uprising
Twelve
Cairo Time
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
The Expendables
Natural Born Killers (previously seen on video)
Taxi Driver (previously seen on video)
Inception (IMAX) (4th)
The Girl Who Played With Fire (3rd)
Middle Men (2nd)
Bunny and the Bull
The Concert
Bomber
Pulp Fiction (saw original release and several times since)
His Girl Friday (previously seen on TV)
Behind the Burly Q
Vision
Neshoba
Anton Chekhov’s The Duel
Farewell
Soul Kitchen
Around A Small Mountain
Making Plans For Lena
Avatar 3D (5th)
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child
Lebanon
I enjoyed most of what I saw, yes, even Twelve, which I liked much more than most of the critics. It was wonderful seeing older films again, from Taxi Driver to Pulp Fiction, to recent favorites such as Basterds and Avatar. Natural Born Killers was much more fascinating to me this time than it was the first time I saw it. I didn’t like it the first time. I liked it a lot this time. It was so much fun seeing His Girl Friday on the big screen, since I’d only seen it on television decades ago. I found out I don’t particularly like Abbott and Costello. I didn’t think they were funny at all. It was part of the Quentin Tarantino retrospective and I can see why he liked it as a kid, and a bit how it influenced him, but I didn’t see it as a kid and have no nostalgia for it. I found it kinda sad, actually, putting those great monsters into a comedy.
My favorite brand new movies (new playing Chicago, though several have been out in Europe for months, or since last year) were Farewell (I hope it’s eligible for Oscars), Neshoba (which was devastating), Stonewall Uprising (informative and powerful), Soul Kitchen (tons of fun with great music, I want to see it many, many times), Scott Pilgrim, Bunny and the Bull (totally goofy and surreal), Get Low and Middle Men.
My least favorite new movies were The Concert (I thought it was so stupid, but it had great music), Bomber (I thought it was both stupid and infuriating, and wanted to slap the writer/director) and The Expendables (not even my dear Jason could save it for me). I guess I’m a heathen, because I didn’t think much of the two French movies (Mountain and Lena) but the scenery was gorgeous and the acting by everyone was very good. Lebanon made no sense whatsoever, but it was intense. The entire movie is set inside a tank, except for the very beginning and very end. You only see the outside though the scopes that the gunner and driver use to see out. I would think that anyone in the military, let alone anyone who’s been on a tank crew, would be so embarrassed by these undisciplined and flaky soldiers. Still, the acting was good, it’s effectively claustrophobic and very, very intense.
I thought The Radiant Child was quite good. I knew absolutely nothing about Jean-Michel Basquiat before seeing the movie other than just vaguely knowing his name, and I had never seen any of his artwork. No, I never saw the Julian Schnabel film, though I’ve seen all his other movies. I found that I do not understand Basquiat’s art at all, but the man was absolutely fascinating and adorable and his death was a great loss. Cropsey was creepy and interesting. The Duel had great scenery and acting and was strangely funny. It was my first exposure to Anton Chekov and I found the experience surprisingly enjoyable. Did I mention I’m an uncultured heathen? You’re looking at a Kansas farm girl. The most culture I got growing up was Green Acres.
The only films that were free screenings were Cairo Time (with a lovely Patricia Clarkson, a grown-up relationship, and an interesting glimpse of Cairo, it’s a movie for adults who want movies geared toward them, so of course they’re not going to see it until it hits DVD) and Soul Kitchen, but I liked that one so much I’ll pay to see it again when it opens.
I met the directors of the very fun and spicy Behind the Burly Q about the history of burlesque in America (Leslie Zemeckis, Robert’s wife), Neshoba, which is a documentary about 3 murdered civil rights workers in 1964 Mississippi and the fight to bring one of the many men responsible who had gotten away with it to justice, (Micki Dickoff, who almost seemed worried about me because I was in tears at the end and was sitting in the front row) and the interesting but badly edited India of K-Town which is hard to describe without being overly negative (Beverly Price, who didn’t have enough footage to work with, plus she had to deal with a mind-bogglingly inarticulate lead character).
Most disappointing: Vision, but not because it’s not a good movie. It’s a very good movie, an excellent movie and the reality-based parts seemed fairly accurate although I’m not a Hildegard von Bingen expert. It’s just that the movie focused more on her religious visions and not as much on her amazing music, not to mention all the other great things she did. Most of it is there in the movie, touched on, but it’s mostly all just pushed aside by the religious claptrap. I know, disappointed that a movie, about a nun, called “Vision,” is mostly concerned with a nun’s [del]ocular migranes[/del] visions. Imagine that! I’m way off base, I realize that, but I can’t help that it bothered me that if you didn’t know that SHE wrote so much of the great music heard in the movie, you wouldn’t know that she wrote ANY of the great music heard in the movie. I can only remember one or two references to her “songs” very offhand, and a scene from a play she wrote. No scenes of her actually creating music. Dammit. It was a very good movie, make no mistake, but I do hope at some point someone makes a “secular” but accurate biopic of her life focusing more on her accomplishments in the real world.
September starts with Vengeance and Chicago Heights at the Gene Siskel film center after work. There are a lot of good movies coming up this month.
Ok, goodnight.