I really am a movie-holic. My netflix queue has grown to over 200 movies, some of which are movies that I've seen before but wish to see again, like Touch of Evil, Yojimbo or Being John Malkovich, some are movies that I've read about, like That Obscure Object of Desire or Love on a Diet.
In the most recent Vanity Fair, there is a pull-out sponsored by the Turner Classic Movies channel: 50 Greatest Films of All Time. About half are movies I would have chosen, another bunch are arguably some sort of classic (Dirty Harry, or Goldfinger, for instance), but I don't see how Die Hard is even in the top 500 movies. And for some inexplicable reason, Will Ferrell's Old School in included - Dreamworks must have ponied up a huge, huge wad of cash. Maybe Old School is fun to watch (I don't know, I haven't had the pleasure), but inclusion in 50 Greatest Film lists was not one of the producers goals. Perhaps it was just a cynical ploy by Vanity Fair to piss off the film nerds.
While we're on the subject, here are a few one sentence reviews of movies witness recently:
21 Grams. Slightly implausible, but decent drama.
Assassination of Richard Nixon - unrelentingly dour, which gets a bit much after a while. Apparently loosely based on a real fellow, Samuel Byck, who must have been such a pleasure to know. I couldn't sit through the entire film, skipped ahead a few scenes.
Troy - 2 stars, with special note of the unrealistic battle scenes. Ancient battles didn't have casualty rates in the hundreds of thousands, daily. The Trojan war lasted 9-10 years, and the Greek army was about 100,000 men at the beginning. Also, unless my reading of history is really off, I assume that most hand to hand combats lasted more than one sword stroke, unless your enemy was a total putz. Brad Pitt's pectoral muscles killed at least 500 soldiers in about 2 minutes of combat time. Not good.
Alexander - 1 star, even worse than Troy. Collin Farrell's bad hair-dye job kept distracting me from all the over-acting. The whole Alexander is bisexual media hype was over-played, there is only a hint of any man-love action, not enough to justify all the hand-wringing. And, the historic Alexander was bisexual anyway.
The Longest Yard /Deliverance inspired by a BIll Simmons column, had a mini Burt Reynolds marathon. Both of these movies (which, surprisingly, I had not seen before) exceeded expectations.
Sex and Lucia
Much better than expected. 3.5 stars. Convoluted, expanding plot of a suicidal novelist and his girlfriend, Lucia (Paz Vega). A Spanish magic-realist plot. Minus .5 a star for the film stock being so washed out. I don't know if it was intended, or just poor mastering/conversion to DVD, but it was distracting.
