A movie a day

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i like terminator 2, and last action movie. the 90s rocked for action movies.

Mysterious skin (2004): I finally had the chance to watch this movie. I've been trying to watch this movie since I found out about it, researching Joseph Gordon-Levitt's career. The waiting was completely worth-it. The movie is based on a novel of the same name by Scott Heim. I did not read the book, but after watching the movie I want to. The plot is about two boys sexually abused by their baseball coach and how this event affect their lives. The movie is harsh, well directed, very well acted, honest. It was better than I could ever expect.

It's funny, but I also watched this movie in YouTube. You can find it there. I will search eXistenZ.

Add another to today's tally. I'm kicking ass lately.

4 Sept 2011: Terror By Night (1946)

Basil Rathbone played Sherlock Holmes in 14 movies and he's great in all of them, even though he stopped giving a sh*t after about the seventh or eighth. Terror By Night is number 13. In it, Holmes is hired to protect a priceless jewel on a train journey, and of course someone is murdered and the jewel is stolen. It's one of the better films in the series. It's got a good mystery with plenty of red herrings and a pretty brilliant ending. It knows when to be serious and when to be funny.

This movie has a great moment that I didn't even notice until a critic pointed it out. After the murder and theft, Holmes reveals that he swapped the jewel for a phony earlier. What I didn't notice is that he swaps it right in front of the camera. (8:30 in the YouTube link below.) Touché, movie. Not a bad way to spend 58 minutes. Yes, 58 minutes. What are you going to do for the next 58 minutes? Look at LOLcats? Have some dignity and watch this movie instead. You'll feel better about yourself.

(YouTube link)
(Internet Archive link)

Three! Three movies in one day! Ah ah ah!



4 Sept 2011: Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943)

Of the fourteen Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone, there are only three that I had not seen before embarking on this silly mission to watch at least one movie every day: Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943), The House of Fear (1945), and Pursuit to Algiers (1945). Now I'm taking care of that problem. This one is squarely in the middle, not one of the best installments but not one of the worst. Just decent. It's funny that even in 1943, movies were commenting on the tendency of villains to tell the heroes their plans before trying to kill them. Holmes says, "These egomaniacs are always so much more chatty when they feel they have the upper hand."

Three in a day! That'a a lot! I was half of my day dealing with a water problem and the other half dealing with my Aspie daughter who did not want to practice for her math exam (the exam is tomorrow) and spent half of the day just trying not to study. Now its gonna be 10 pm and she is still studying. This is the most self-deseuctive behavior I've ver seen. Sigh. I was only able to watch one movie because I started yesterday.

I will watch eXistenZ, but I pass with the Sherlock Holmes movies. I never really liked the character.

^ I respect anyone who has an actual life and manages to watch even a single movie per week, let alone one per day. That's the thing, though. I've got nothing going on. I'm unemployed, living with my parents, I have no kids and no friends. My day consists of minor tasks like trash disposal, filling ice trays, fetching the mail, and walking dogs. I'm doing this "movie a day" thing because I got sick of feeling like I'm wasting every day by screwing around online and doing nothing of any importance. I may just be watching old trashy movies now, but at least it's something. As for the movies I post here, I'm not trying to get others to watch along with me, just keeping a list so I don't fall behind.

Hi Jory. Sorry. I did not mean to bother you. I was just bitching a little because my day was miserable. My husband was complaining last night about how crappy our day was. We actually wanted to watch more movies yesterday, but it was not possible. We DO love movies. We have DVDs at home we have not had the chance to watch, downloaded movies pending, I have movies pending in my Youtube account, and a list of movies I want to watch. I thought it was a good idea to exchange movies because that's what I do with my friends who love cinema. They comment about the movies they watched, and if they liked them I watched them too. By the way, I was watching eXistenZ and I did not like it. But that's fine. That way I know your taste for movies and I know what you like and what not, and if we have similar tastes. I also find funny posting movies here, because I try to comment on FB all the movies I watch, but sometimes I dont, because I write notes so elaborate that they take too much time, and sometimes I do not have the time to write them. And I only post about the movies I like, not about the movies I dont.

Question, wouldnt you like to learn something on your own? Maybe that would be something useful to do with your time. My Aspie husband was unemployed for a while when we just moved in together, and he had nothing to do, so he started studying. Turned out the programs he studied (he is a computer programmer) helped him find a job. Today it is pretty easy to learn things over the Internet. I learned to write HTML using a manual I downloaded for free, and now I am learning Python (a programming language) the same way. I even learned how to give deep tissue massage in Youtube! And knowledge is never wasted. That is something you will always have, and that will be useful for you. That's just a thought. Have a nice day!

^ Didn't bother me at all. As for studying something, the only things I'm actually interested in are reading books and watching movies. The only work that could get me is as a critic, and I have no interest in that. And I don't want anything to do with computers or technology. I need simplicity. I actually liked working in a retail store, stacking boxes and unloading them. I turned down an assistant manager offer because I didn't want my job being any more complicated than it was. And I don't care about the low pay because I don't need a lot of money.

Here's today's haul. This is becoming less "a movie a day" and more "several movies a day." This beats looking at Cracked or TVtropes all day.

La Jetée (1962)

A half-hour short film from France which was later remade as the excellent 12 Monkeys. A World War III survivor is sent back in time to the pre-war days and makes a shocking discovery about a childhood memory. It's told in a series of still pictures. It's very slow and very weird and very artsy fartsy but it works. La Jetée (English: The Jetty) has what might be my favorite twist ending in any film.

Videodrome (1983)

A television producer stumbles upon a signal that causes the viewer to develop a brain tumor and hallucinate. Try watching this with a parent behind you. There's a giant dildo and scenes of torture within the first five minutes. It's utterly bizarre and it manages to say something without being preachy and pretentious. Like I said when I posted about eXistenZ, David Cronenberg is a master at peeling back layers of reality and perception. (Ilka, don't watch this movie if you didn't like eXistenZ. )

The Speckled Band (1931)

A young woman's sister is murdered and she hires Sherlock Holmes to solve the case before she's next. It must have sucked to be a Holmes fan before 1939, when Basil Rathbone came along and showed everyone how it's done. All of the pre-1939 Holmes films that I've seen have been dull and unsatisfying, and The Speckled Band is no different. It doesn't help that the available prints are in terrible condition. This movie looks like crap, half the dialogue is inaudible, and it's been cut down to 50 minutes from its original 90. It's a curiosity for hardcore Holmes fans like me, and nothing more.

(edited for typos)

Actually I do like David Cronenber. I enjoyed M. Butterly, Crash, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, and looking forward to A Dangerous Method. But I am not liking eXistenZ. But I am still watching it. It is very hard for me to stop watching a film, no matter how much I dislike it. I've only left a movie theater once: Mouse Trap. It was just too stupid. I couldnt get it.

Super (2010): Rain Wilson is Frank, a man whose existence has been pretty much misserable until he met Sarah (Liv Tyler), a recovering drug addict, an married her. Frank is happy until Sarah falls back into drugs and dumps him for Jacques (Kevin Bacon), a drug dealer. Trying to get his wife back and give some meaning to his life, Frank becomes Crimson Red, a powerless super hero. Libby (Ellen Page), a lunatic from a comic store bored sick, convince him to make her his side kick, Boltie, and together they fight Jacques to get Sarah back. This movie is like a bad acid trip (doesnt make much sense), but it makes you laugh and unexpectedly has some "not that cliche-ish" message.

The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

Smoking, drinking, and burlesque shows in an animated Disney movie. Scandalous! I'm surprised they haven't hired Lucasfilm to digitally replace the booze, cigarettes, and scantily clad mouse ladies with walkie talkies. Basil of Baker Street, a mouse version of Sherlock Holmes living under his house, investigates the kidnapping of a toymaker. Holmes films have an unfortunate tendency to be boring, but The Great Mouse Detective perfectly captures the liveliness of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. They were adventures, after all, not dull crime procedurals. This movie is 75 minutes of pure awesomeness. Don't get drunk and call Professor Ratigan a rat, or he'll sic a giant cat on you. (It's on YouTube, but don't tell Disney. They'll sue you and come to your house and kick your dog.)

Sherlock Holmes and the Sign of Four (1983)

I've now seen four adaptations of this story: a 1932 film starring Arthur Wontner, a 1968 TV episode starring Peter Cushing, a 1987 TV film starring Jeremy Brett, and now this 1983 version starring Peter O'Toole. This isn't even the half of it – there are also films from 1913, 1923, 1974, two others (! !) from 1983, and another one from 2001. Why are some Holmes stories filmed dozens of times while others are never adapted? Not that the story matters when the film is this poorly made. If The Great Mouse Detective is a good example of how to do an animated Sherlock Holmes film, this movie is a good example of how not to do it. The animation is cheap and the actors sound half asleep.

Pursuit to Algiers (1945)

I like it when the characters in a mediocre film look just as bored as I am when I'm watching it:



It's not all that bad. At one point a character says, "You are a good loser, Mr. Holmes." That pretty well sums up the Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone. Even the bad ones are decent. It's funny how a brilliant ending can make the whole thing feel worthwhile.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher (2011): Based on a true history, this movie tells the history of Scotland Yard's Detective Whicher (Padddy Considine), who is assigned to rural Wiltshire to investigate the murder of three-year-old Saville Kent, snatched from his bed at night and killed. Since there are not signs of forced entrance, the family is the primary suspect. The movie is true to the investigative work back then (1860). The only problem is the director fails to intrigue us and entice us in helping solve the mistery. Alexandra Roach is convincing as Constance Kent, and Peter Capaldi is also good ad Samuel Kent. Both deliver good work, nothing remarkable, as the movie itself.

Total Recall 2070 (1999)
Two-part pilot episode: "Machine Dreams"

This show should have been called Blade Runner 2070 because it has a lot more in common with that movie than Total Recall. Police in the future track down a gang of murderous androids. (It's not very consistent with Blade Runner, though. The androids in that movie were physically identical to humans, but in 2070 they have metal skeletons, white blood, and no genitalia.) I watched this on YouTube and the sound was so horribly out of sync that, coupled with the horrible acting, it made the whole thing feel like a bad Godzilla film. I recognized the lead actor from my mother's favorite soap opera, and he was one of the better actors here. One plot twist, in which a character is revealed to be an android, was pointless since it was obvious from his very first scene.

How bad is the writing? Someone actually says "don't you die on me!" within the first ten minutes. (He says it five times in a row.) The whole thing feels like a soap opera, with gratuitous sex scenes and the characters constantly angry with each other for no reason other than to create phony drama. The effects are surprisingly good for a TV show from 1999, but the acting and writing are useless. On the list of Philip K. Dick adaptations, 2070 (or at least this particular episode) belongs at the bottom with Paycheck, Next, and The Adjustment Bureau. To be fair, there's one really nice moment. After an android commits suicide, one character says "he didn't have to go like that," to which the main character replies: "Yeah, he did. He thought it would make him more human."

Submarine (2010): Oliver Tate is the regular adolescent struggling with being popular and deeply in love with Jordana, a school mate who does not even know he exists. Until he develops a plan: help Jordana bully a school mate so she will notice him. She does. And then uses him for a little revenge against her ex-boyfriend. When asked by the angry ex-boyfriend to call Jordana a slut or else, the usually coward Oliver refuses. He gets beaten, but Jordana gets impressed. Then the love story begins. But there is another issue: Oliver's parents are emotionally distant, and now an ex-boyfriend of his mother moved next door, and she seems to still have feelings for him. Oliver tries hard to save their father's marriage while trying to keep alive his own relationship with Jordana.

Submarine is sweet, tender, sad, and pretty real. Makes you remember your own adolescence, with all its pain and awkwardness. The cast is great: Noah Taylor, Sally Hawkins, Paddy Considine... but it is Craig Roberts (Oliver Tate) who steals the show, and every scene. Loved the use of the music to stress Oliver's feelings. Great soundtrack.

By the way, I was not able to find any reference that Oliver Tate is an Aspie, but I could bet he is. At least he behaves like one.