Notes 10/4-10/10

Monday 10/4:

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

The Social Network

Tuesday 10/5:

Daddy Longlegs

Mao's Last Dancer

Let Me In

You may have noticed that I changed a couple of ratings earlier this week from zero to half. I noticed that I was a little heavy on zero star ratings after seeing that I had more of them than any other rating so far. Now this is probably due to the fact that I don't have a lot of time to update consistently (right now I am approximately fifty movies behind), and shitty movies are just a lot easier, and a lot more fun to write about than good ones, and so I imagine the remaining fifty will probably balance everything out in bell-curve fashion, but nevertheless I realize I got a little carried away after sitting through a horrible double feature. While the films in question, Legend of the Guardians and You Again are completely miserable films in every way, I'm not sure they're on the level of the worst I've ever seen, or even the worst of this year. It's not necessarily that they had redeeming qualities... I actually can't think of any for either film. You Again actually did have about two funny lines, but that's not the point. The point is that they just weren't that difficult to sit through. They were more like steady pokes in the side, rather than a full on punch in the stomach like Brooklyn's Finest or Sex and the City 2. In other words, the experience of watching them was less awful than it could have been. I groaned, squirmed in my seat, took out my phone and yelled at the screen a lot less in these than I have in other films this year, and that does count for something, because that's ultimately what I base my opinion on... my experience while watching the movie. People always argue with me that a movie is good because it has a good story; a guy that I work with has been arguing with me for weeks that John Wayne was better than Clint Eastwood because Wayne's films had morals. Well, a movie can have a great story, observation, theme, message, moral, whatever, but if it isn't presented in a way that is at all entertaining, why do I give a shit? I don't think that people connected with The Hurt Locker so much last year simply because it had a good story. No, it was because that film was just pure, heart-pounding, visceral experience. Or at least that's what did it for me. And that's essentially what I look for in a movie, and what I try to relate when writing about them: my impression of what it's like to watch each movie. To analyze story and themes, or provide a bunch of non-essential details would probably just be boring to read, which is probably the reason that I am fifty movies behind. Most of them were pretty good, and it's pretty difficult to come up with something interesting or worthwhile to say about a good movie that hasn't already been said. But I'll get around to them. Sometime.

Also, feel free to leave comments or email me or something, especially if you disagree with any of my opinions. I think the Twitter and Facebook information is on the sidebar somewhere. I'd be happy to argue with you, and it's also much more motivating to update this thing if I know somebody is reading it, and an argument is more fun than getting a text-message from a friend asking why I haven't posted anything in two weeks.

Weirdest Google search that landed somebody in Denzel, WA this week: people from Canada, Germany, Belgium, India, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, three different areas of Australia, and the Isle of Man searching for pictures from Cats and Dogs 2. Thanks for all your eight-second visits, International Pet-Spy Film Connoisseurs.