#123 Dog Day Afternoon: Wyoming's not a country

1975. dir, Sidney Lumet, starring Al Pacino, John Cazale, Chris Sarandon, Charles Durning.

Seen it before? No.

Hola, amigos. How's it hangin'? I know it's been a long time since I last rapped at ya but we're moving, and there was a flood, and we've been too freakin busy to watch any movies lately. In fact i can see by the scoreboard that our projected finish date has slipped into 2011 - Oh shit! - so here's this.

Based on a true story. Sonny (Michael) and Sal (Fredo) decide to rob a bank. (oh, and a third guy, but he chickens out at the beginning, and we never see him again.) Since they are amateurs and don't really know what they're doing, what should have been a quick in-and-out turns into a multi-hour hostage situation. Oh yeah and the reason they are robbing the bank is to pay for Sonny's wife's sex change operation.

Good movie. Now I somehow have to find time to watch Spartacus so it might be awhile.

Position on the list: 166
The real guy: Died in 2006.

#122 Cinema Paradiso: The soldier stood up, took his chair, and went away

1988. dir. Giuseppe Tornatore, starring Philippe Noiret, Marco Leonardi, Salvatore Cascio, Jacques Perrin. Italian with subtitles.

Seen it before? No.

@#$% 177 minute director's cut... burn in hell, Giuseppe Tornatore... (checks imdb, he's still alive) never mind.

Position on the list 84

#113 Bridge on the River Kwai - All that work for nothing

#113 Bridge on the River Kwai: Be happy in your work
1957. dir David Lean, starring William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa.

Seen it before? No.

Why oh why are most of these movies war movies? I know I've complained before and let me tell you I am not going to stop until we've seen the last one! American prisoners in WWII are commissioned to build a bridge on the River Kwai. What I didn't understand was how the Japanese army officers got the American soldiers to build their bridge without major physical contact...it seems to me there was a certain sense of civility, respect even, to how prisoners were treated by their captors...or was that just the beauty of the movie? Don't get me wrong, the lead officer refused to let his commanding officers work like the rest of the soldiers and therefore got punished by being placed in a box with barely any food for days on end. I mean, when you watch this movie you'll see just how much time and planning went into creating this bridge. It was crazy!

Favorite part - when the two guys at the beginning of the movie are creating grave markers in an attempt to get placed in the infirmary.

See it again? Sure
Own it? Meh
What has piqued my curiosity - the real life relationship of Commander Saito and the lieutenant/colonel.
Cool fact - Sessue Hayakawa made a script for himself that was only his character's (Saito)lines to create authentic reactions! How cool!!!

#112 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - You have to understand...

2004. dir. Michel Gondry, starring Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo, Kirsten Dunst, Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson.

Seen it before? Bits and pieces

I am not a stay up late to watch a new movie kind of girl...and so, I will watch this movie, in its entirety after we move! =) 6-15-2010

#111 Psycho - Here's where I say....

1960. dir. Alfred Hitchcock, starring Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Martin Balsam.

SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT You're going to have to wait for me to re-watch this...and not just in segments...and not just the first ten minutes before my brain turns off for the night...SOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRY! 6-15-2010

#110 Amores Perros - I know what you're thinking, how can she forget about THIS movie?

#110 Amores Perros: If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans
2000. dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, starring Emilio Echevarría, Gael García Bernal, Goya Toledo, Álvaro Guerrero, Vanessa Bauche. Spanish with subtitles.

Seen it before? No.

Sam's been pretty good about writing his posts but I haven't...aside from being terribly busy packing we've had an out of town guest and gone on vacation too...for this movie my excuse is that I was at a loss for words about what to think about this movie. It was confusing for sure but it was truly disgusting in the Michael Vick way so I am going to tell you now, do NOT watch this movie if you are a member of PETA or don't like animal violence (of any kind)...it is truly disturbing!

As Sam wrote there are three stories that intersect due to a violent car wreck. The dog fighting plot is the first set of tales. A boy wants his douche bag brother's wife and earns his money by bringing his brothers' dog to the dog fights. It is a brutal, brutal dog, to be sure...in fact, the third plot has a hit man/bum collecting stray dogs and the brutal dog from the beginning does not repay the mans' kindness by way of his dogs. Meanwhile the second plot is about a man who has an affair with a model...he's not that great looking so I don't get it...but she has a dog and it gets stuck under the floorboards because the condo they are living in is cheaply built...

To say I hated this movie would be wrong. I didn't hate it...I didn't love it either. I wouldn't watch it again and it truly did disturb me to no end. I get how they can say this is Mexico's Pulp Fiction I really do. I did stay up for it hoping it would get better and it just didn't. Sam mentioned this is from the guy who did Babel...that was another movie I was indifferent too but that's another blog post.

#121 Fargo: That guy's dead, and I don't mean of old age

1996. dir. Joel Coen, starring Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stormare.

Seen it before? Heck yah.

aw, hon, ya got Arby's all o'er me.

Position on the list: 117

#120 Stalag 17: Maybe he just wanted to steal our wire cutters

1953. dir. Billy Wilder, starring William Holden, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger, Robert Strauss, Harvey Lembeck.

Seen it before? No.

Feels like we've seen this one before... we just saw Bridge On The River Kwai, which also featured William Holden in a POW camp. Well now he's in Germany in black and white, instead of Japan and in color, and his fellow inmates think he's a spy. I really can't blame them, as the first thing we see him do is bet cigarettes that the two guys trying to escape will fail. I mean, right or wrong, that's a dick move. He quickly becomes the barracks pariah due to his negative attitude and suspicions about his loyalty.

It's a pretty serious story, which makes all the slapstick goofiness seem out of place. The show stealers here are the big hairy guy who loves Betty Grable, and Sgt. Schultz, who is basically the character from Hogan's Heroes. In fact the makers of this movie sued the makers of the show for stealing their idea.

Position on the list: 212
Hey! It's that guy! OK, this is a weird one, but apparently Ross Bagdasarian, a.k.a. Dave Seville, the Chipmunks guy, plays a soldier.

#119 Se7en: We are not what was intended

1995. dir. David Fincher, starring Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin Spacey.

Seen it before? No.

I had some problems with this movie. Spoilers ahoy...

Brad Pitt is The Young Hot-shot Detective, and Morgan Freeman is The Grizzled, World-Weary Veteran Detective Who Has One Week Until Retirement. They are trying to track down The Evil Genius Serial Killer Who's Always One Step Ahead, who is murdering people according to the Seven Deadly Sins. Pride, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth. I think the movie would have been funnier if it was the Seven Dwarfs instead...

His scheme sort of makes sense, I guess. The gluttony guy is big and fat, and he kills him by making him eat too much. The greed guy was a rich lawyer, and he kills him by forcing him to cut off a pound of his own flesh. The sloth guy was... uh, a pedophile? Wait. What does that have to do with sloth? And why does he kill Gwyneth Paltrow? What was her "sin"? I think the screenwriter just got lazy.

OK, this part bothered me. Morgan Freeman starts picking up on the literary allusions in the killings: Chaucer, Milton, Dante, etc. So he types up a list of books that he thinks the killer was reading, and hands it to a crooked FBI guy, who looks up who checked out those books from the library. This somehow leads the detectives directly to the apartment of the killer. I have at least three problems with this. One, the books he checked out were common, well-known classics. Any English major would be familiar with all of them. Morgan Freeman's character was too... which leads to problem #2, it's all based on his guesses as to what he would be reading, not any actual evidence. Problem #3 - we see the killer's apartment, and it's full of books. Wouldn't he have bought the books, instead of checking them out from the library? He has the money for it.

One more question. The killer's plan relied on having a married detective chasing him. One thing I've learned from The Wire is that a lot of homicide detectives are alcoholic loners. Just like Morgan Freeman in this movie! How did he know his case would get a married detective assigned to it? How did he know exactly how long it would take them to do the fingerprint analysis and trace the next victim, when fingerprint analysis can take up to 3 days? They got there exactly a year to the day after he started taking pictures, right? Why was the killer soaked in blood when he came into the police department? From killing Gwyneth Paltrow, right? But then he had to pack up the head in a box and give it to the guy to deliver, so wouldn't the guy get freaked out by the killer covered in blood and go to the cops with it?

EDIT: I forgot to talk about the dumbest scene in the whole movie. So the two detectives show up at the killer's apartment, and he's not home. After snooping around for awhile, they leave, and the killer is standing in the hallway, and gets into a shootout with them! They chase him into the alley, and at one point he gets the drop on Brad Pitt and is about to kill him, but Morgan Freeman scares him off and he escapes.

So many questions. Why was he trying to kill the detectives in the first place? Wouldn't that ruin his plan? He needed Brad Pitt to be alive so he could execute the "wrath/envy" murders. He's also taking a huge risk of getting caught. How was he so sure that he could escape from two police detectives? Why didn't the detectives call for backup, or chase him? It seems like they wanted an action set-piece in the second act, but couldn't think of a way to have it make sense, but they went ahead with it anyway. I hate that shit.

Position on the list: 26
What city is this, anyway? I think it's New York because a population sign says 8 million people, and Gwenyth Paltrow talks about having lived "upstate", but it's never explicitly stated.

#118 Kill Bill Vol. 1: I have vermin to kill

2003. dir. Quentin Tarantino, starring Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Sonny Chiba, Vivica A. Fox.

Seen it before? Yes.

Annnnd we're back. i'll write something later.

Position on the list: 134