Best Movies You've Never Seen – Day 4 – Aurora Borealis

Posted in movies by - Oct 15, 2010
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According to Maltin, Aurora Borealis is a movie saved from melodrama by strong performances. I say it’s just an average soap opera with a seriously overqualified cast. Obvs, I win because this is my blog.

The story is on the slight side. A handsome young man with great hockey promise gives up the sport and most other ambitions at 15 when his father dies. He bounces from crappy job to crappy job in perma-frozen Minneapolis, squabbling with his school chums and watching his grandfather slowly succumb to dementia.

As luck would have it, grandpa has a pretty home health care worker who …

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Quicker than usual Quick Review: Buried

Posted in movies by - Oct 13, 2010
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I fell asleep about four times. I don’t know if Ryan Reynolds gets rescued from his coffin in the Iraqi desert. I don’t know if his cellphone battery ran out. I also don’t know if I was snoring.

I was probably snoring. I mean, I do that.

Maybe it was the fact that most of the movie takes place in a dark box, leaving me with nothing to look at on the screen for long stretches. Maybe Ryan Reynolds is not particularly compelling. Maybe it’s that movie theater seats are like my second home and I’m inordinately comfortable …

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Best Movies You've Never Seen – Day 3 – Animal Factory

Posted in movies by - Oct 11, 2010
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I realize that it’s been quite a stretch of time between day two and day three. There are reasons, but not especially interesting ones. I will spare you. Together we shall agree to ignore that gap and proceed as if nothing were amiss. In payment for that gesture of goodwill, I dedicate myself to the more frequent gratification of my vast reading public.

The next movie I saw on the list is Animal Factory. It’s a prison coming-of-age story that stars Eddie Furlong and Willem Dafoe. My spirit guide Danny Trejo plays a tiny but unimportant role and …

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Best Movies You've Never Seen – Day 2

Posted in life after cable by - Sep 04, 2010
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Another strong disagreement with Mister Maltin.

The movie at issue is “Better than Sex.” It’s an Australian movie written and directed by Jonathan Teplitzky, and it stars the aesthetically pleasing but sort of dull Susie Porter and David Wenham.
It follows the arc of a one-night stand that turns into a long weekend.

There’s a lot of nudity, arguably enough to make the nakedness boring. Even so, it’s not particularly sexy or erotic. I’m going to blame the lack of sexy on the clear influence reality TV had on this film.

“Better than Sex” uses the reality show trope of the “Confessional,” and …

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Best Movies You've Never Seen – Day 1

Posted in life after cable by - Sep 02, 2010
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Mr. Maltin organizes his films by alphabetical order. I’m not sure why. It seems to me there are a lot of principles to organize around that would improve the book’s utility, but what do I know? I’ve never been on Entertainment Tonight, so alphabetical order it is.

The first movie in the book is American Dreamz, and I’ve seen it. I can’t say that it held my full attention – I was in a crossword puzzle phase at the time. I was working through a puzzle-a-day calendar, and I rented this on the strength of a newspaper …

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Long-form Book Review: 151 Best Movies You've Never Seen

Posted in movies by - Sep 02, 2010
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So I bought Leonard Maltin’s book, hoping to find a bunch of gems to pull off Netflix Streaming. Well, that and I wanted to try out the Kindle app.

While I love watching Netflix movies on demand, searching through them is still pretty unwieldy. It’s a slog on the website, and impossible on the Xbox. Even InstantWatcher leaves a lot to be desired in the UI department. For the next few weeks, I’ll abandon all that clumsy searching and let Leonard guide me through my entertainment choices. I believe there is much to learn.

I’ll watch everything in this book …

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Quick Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Posted in movies by - Aug 20, 2010
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This movie is delightful, and you should see it. Especially if you ever had an NES.

If I have anything bad to say about it, it’s that Michael Cera seems to be getting a little long in the tooth for the role of adorably stammering adolescent. Not that he doesn’t stammer, or isn’t sort of adorable in his awkward way. I’ve heard that he doesn’t possess enough natural swagger to be true to the Scott in the graphic novel. Having never read the book, I’m going to have to defer judgment.

The basic conceit of the film is that …

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Quick Review: The Expendables

Posted in movies by - Aug 20, 2010
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The Expendables is the evil spawn of Call of Duty and a Miller commercial.

Before this movie is fifteen minutes old, we’ve seen our heroes on choppers in a tattoo shop after hours drinking and listening to classic rock. It’s just that manly. I literally grew unexpected tufts of hair during this film.

There is a plot, but it doesn’t bear much discussion. Our gang of aging and anachronistic action heroes are mercenaries. They miss having souls. One of them needs more money. They don’t take a job killing the dictator general of an island in “The Gulf”, but then they …

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I, 258, will not be on Millionaire anytime soon

Posted in life after cable by - Aug 03, 2010
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The postcard came today. It’s barely a postcard – more of a quarter sheet of card stock with a photocopied MIllionaire logo and the following text:

“Thank you for your interest in being a contestant on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” You have not been selected to be a potential contestant. We appreciate your continued interest in the show and thank you for taking the time to audition with us.”

There’s also some finer print about how they reserve the right to limit the amount of times a person may attempt to qualify for the show.

I don’t see much …

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Quick Review: The A-Team

Posted in life after cable by - Jul 27, 2010
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Dear Hollywood: stop strip-mining my childhood for movie ideas. Watching things that suck for free when you’re 12 is very different from being asked to pay 23.00 plus snacks to watch stupid things when you’re ..older.

The A-Team was a hacky mess of a show – it was basically Scooby Doo with guns. All the episodes were basically the same, just like Scooby Doo. The gang travelled around solving mysteries in a conversion van, just like Scooby Doo. The skinny guy was crazy, just like Scooby Doo. The team never got any better at its work but managed …

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