RED

This movie was awesome. It's like Ocean's 11, right down to the soundtrack, except with spies instead of thieves. Well, retired spies. And, regrettably, without Brad Pitt. But Bruce Willis is a pretty good replacement. I can't believe Demi Moore didn't want to be married to him anymore. Ashton Kutcher just doesn't compare.

Wanna get pancakes?

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

I put this movie in my netflix queue quite a while ago. It looked weird, and weird is good. But I didn't realize until I finally sat down to watch it that it has what could have been the perfect storm of hotness: Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Jude Law AND Colin Farrell. I mean, none of them are in my top five, but they're all awfully pretty. And I thought surely there would be some sort of synergy going on.

This movie was a crazy trip. Not as much of the hotness as I pictured, since the four hotties never shared the screen, and hotness was really not of paramount importance in their roles. And maybe Hud was right in saying that this movie is probably best enjoyed with large quantities of alcohol and weed.

Dr. Parnassus and his small band of sidekicks run a traveling sideshow featuring a magic mirror. Whoever enters the mirror goes on a journey into the imagination. Throw in a deal with the devil on a deadline, and you've got yourself some weird, wild stuff.

Salt

Finally, a movie Hud and I could both enjoy. Of course it wasn't as great as Inception (which I still need to blog about . . . I'm just not quite ready yet) but it was good enough. Action--maybe far-fetched, but fun; plot twists, not all of which I saw coming; lots of gunfire, to appease Hud; and though there were a few lines that kind of sucked, the entire movie wasn't full of them.

It's not my favorite Angelina Jolie movie (that would be Mr. and Mrs. Smith), but she's been in quite a few stinkers, so this is one of her better ones. Fun! You should try it. With popcorn.

WhiteOut

WhiteOut is what happens when Hud sends me to the Redbox and I try to find something we'll both like. I unintentionally end up with the eighth worst movie of 2009.

In my defense, the Redbox description didn't sound so bad. It described a "shocking mystery" (good, right?) with Kate Beckinsale "racing to solve it" (fast-paced, right?) OK, so I'd never heard of the movie, but that doesn't automatically have to mean it would be horrible.

Unfortunately, this movie is not just a murder mystery. It's a slasher film. Who would have ever thought to set a slasher film in Antarctica?

I just don't care for slasher flicks. Scream was OK, I guess, but that's the only one I'll admit to liking. So, not only do I dislike the genre, but the predictability of this one was just abysmal. The dialogue was so clichéd that Hud and I could quote nearly every line before we heard it. I even guessed what the Russians were smuggling long before it was revealed. (Hours before? Seemed like days.)

Man. Stay away from this one.

Maya Deren: Experimental Films

What? I don't get it.

This is a bizarre series of short films: Meshes of the Afternoon, At Land, A Study in Choreography for Camera, Ritual in Transfigured Time, Meditation on Violence, and The Very Eye of Night. Most of them were filmed in the 1940s (the last one in the 50s). They're all in black & white, and there is no speaking in any of the six films; half are silent, the other half are set to music.

I feel like I have nothing intelligent to say about these films. Most of them concentrated on the beauty of dance-like movements, but I couldn't discern much in the way of plot or anything that might make sense.

The most interesting one was the first, Meshes of the Afternoon. It also came closest to having a plot, but I'm still not quite sure what happened. Dreams? Hallucinations? Death? All three?

I just thought Godard's films were inexplicable.

The Pope of Greenwich Village

Meh. This movie is kind of in that no man's land between a great movie (which I can rave about) and a sucky one (which I can rip on). I can't remember where I heard of it--was it mentioned in that Reel Culture book? I know it wasn't listed as one of the 50 greatest, but it may have come up in that book anyway.

So. I don't have strong feelings about this movie. I probably wouldn't watch it again. Not many quotable quotes, unless you count "Charlie, they took my thumb!" and when am I ever going to get to use that one? No one especially hot in this movie, although Daryl Hannah was looking pretty trim in her 80s aerobics instructor way, and Mickey Rourke wasn't too bad at that age--but it's ruined by the knowledge of how scary-looking he is now (see The Expendables. Or don't, actually. I'll just show you a picture of what he looked like in that one.)

He certainly hasn't aged like Sean Connery

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I've been waiting to see this movie for so long . . . about twenty-eight years, I'd guess. I would have gone to the theater weeks ago, except Hud was doing this weird passive-aggressive thing where he didn't want me to go see the movie without him, but he really didn't want to go see the movie. So I finally went by myself on the way home from work yesterday.

Side note: why do people pity me for going to see a movie by myself? I ran into Hud's cousin in the popcorn line, and he acted so sorry for me when he heard I was there alone. It's not like I don't have friends and family. (In that case, I would be pitiable.) Going to a movie alone is actually quite nice. Although I would have preferred a slightly less crowded theater where I wouldn't have had to fight strangers for armrests.

Anyway. About the movie. I know I'm a big fat Narnia nerd, but I got all choked up just seeing the Dawn Treader come to life up there on the big screen. It was absolutely perfect. Every tiny last detail of it.

As far as being true to the book, the ship was just about the only thing that was perfect. I could probably go on and on and on about the changes they made for the movie, as they were legion, but I'll just mention the ones that disappointed me the most.

First, the lack of surprise when Lucy and Caspian recognized each other, as if it were an everyday occurrence. Their greeting was almost as mundane as, "Oh, it's you, how nice." This struck me like the beginning of the second movie when they glossed over one of my favorite parts. ("I wonder who used to live here? I think we did!")

Second, there were a few lines from the book I really wished they'd used in the movie. Of course now the only one that comes to mind was when Eustace wandered off on Dragon Island. No matter how hard I willed it, I could not get Edmund to say, "Where's that blighter Eustace?"

Finally, while it was a nice lead-in to the next movie when Jill Pole was mentioned at the end of this one (and to be honest it gave me a thrill to hear her name), it's hard to believe she would have been friendly enough with pre-transformation Eustace to stop by his house.

I am torn between horror at the bastardization of the book and a grudging concession that they actually improved upon the storyline. The book always was just a long string of adventures, one after another, but the movie added more of a driving force (the evil green mist) and wove the different parts of the story together more tightly than the way they're found in the book.

I wrestled with this movie because it wasn't exactly like the book, but if I could look at the movie as its own entity I would have to admit they did a beautiful job with it. Everything in the movie looked wonderful, and the story was thrilling and exciting. Eustace was so perfectly, appallingly Eustace-like. And I loved how they used the old Pauline Baynes illustrations from the book during the credits at the end.

I had to see this movie in 3D because I waited too long and they're no longer showing it in 2D (which I tend to prefer, because I'm a cheapskate and I am convinced that 3D movies are just a ploy to milk more money from the moviegoing public). It's my opinion that the third dimension didn't add much to this movie. I mean, sure, it looked great, but beyond the uncomfortable granny glasses, I usually forgot to even notice the extra depth. But I finally got to see the movie, and that's what counts.

And . . . The Silver Chair is supposed to come out sometime this year! I can't wait!!