31 movies in 31 days

So that's it, 31 movies in 31 days. I had a lot of fun with it, I hope anyone reading it got a few laughs. I learned a bit about film and enjoyed a lot of movies I wouldn't normally have made the time to see. All with the help of my local library. Happy New Year!

Day 31: The Bicycle Thief

Pee-Wee's bike is stolen and he goes on a quest to find it. It seems like everyone has a bike now that his is gone. He follows clues and even consults a psychic looking for answers. He hurls accusations at a young man without evidence. Ultimately he's forced to become a bicycle thief himself.

That's pretty much it, except his name's not really Pee-Wee. He doesn't look for his bike in the basement of the Alamo (since they're in Rome), and it doesn't end with an exciting chase through Universal Studios. Had it had those things, maybe Vittorio De Sica's film would be thought of as a masterpiece. We'll never know.

Day 30: The Handmaid's Tale

I felt obligated to watch something written by Harold Pinter after his recent death. I think I could have made a better choice. In theory this kind of movie works for me, future dystopias are some of my favorites. Be it nuclear war, fascism, plague, zombie advent, or robot holocaust, I'm all over it. This one however, fell short.

I think it's amusing how often future dystopias have their citizens dressing in uniforms, like it's some private school gone horribly wrong. The security forces all wear black, head to toe, and drive black cars with black trim and black wheelcovers, just in case you didn't get the point. The "handmaids" wear red, and the wealthy wives who are to receive their infants all wear blue - some sort of modified futuristic Jackie O number with a white pearl necklace and pillbox hat. Why you'd make even the ruling elite dress in uniforms is beyond me. Perhaps to show how misogynistic the regime was, that even the rich wives were reduced to wearing standard issue fashions?

Anyway, for a better futuristic dystopia about human sterility, see "Children of Men". Also, if you haven't seen Children of Men, see Children of Men. It's pretty great.

Day 29: Igby Goes Down

Sadly I was working while watching this movie, which I think is kind of a shame, because I think it has more laughs and more sadness than I could experience glancing back and forth from emails and remote desktop sessions, work for an office that's supposed to closed today. (Am I Dante from Clerks?)

Anyway, I thought I'd never make a "Holden Caulfield" reference, but this movie just screams it. Compared to Igby, Holden gets off easy. It's fun when a bunch of well-known actors get together and make a movie with a real script and everything. Goldblum is, well, Goldblum, which happens to be perfect for the role he's playing. Sarandon plays well as yet another overbearing mother, this one addicted to various pharmaceuticals.

Day 28: Dot the I

A love-triangle movie with several twists. The acting is pretty good, the male lead is Gael Garcia Bernal, who played Ernesto (Che) Guevara in "The Motorcycle Diaries". I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that it's kind of a chuckle that the film won an award at an indie film festival. Sort of the dot on the i, if you will.

Day 27: Internal Affairs

Ok, so this wasn't supposed to be the movie today. I watched it this morning while I was eating breakfast and trying to decide which of the three interesting movies playing at the theater I'd go see today. I ended up passing on all three and watching hours and hours of hockey instead. So you get Internal Affairs.

Andy Garcia is from said same police unit. Richard Gere is the crooked cop he's investigating. Garcia and partner investigate, Gere has sex with women and kills people. They investigate more, Gere has more sex and kills more people. Et cetera.

Day 26: Patton

Ok so, have you ever seen a movie where the something ruined it for you because it was later parodied or by the time you saw it, it had become such a cliché that it was hard to get past it and just enjoy it? I've known folks who didn't like "The Godfather" because it was full of Italian mob movie clichés. Yeah. Well this movie features a theme song that was apparently shamelessly ripped off in "Police Academy". Having seen more of the Police Academy movies than I care to remember or admit, I can't dissociate the theme song from the nyuk-nyuk laughs of the movies, such as they were.

Good film though, won a bunch of statues. The combat violence is tame by today's "Saving Private Ryan" standards and the horrors of war in general are whitewashed pretty thoroughly.