An old post about movies

I used to write a lot of two-line movie reviews around here.  Then I stopped because I thought I was going to make a podcast called Contra Zoom.  I thought I'd publish all the capsule reviews on the podcast's website.  Then it seemed like we weren't going to do that show anymore, but by then I was out of the habit of posting them. These were written before we recorded the tech demo / episode zero of Contra Zoom.  I had just been to Vegas, guested on the Combinations and Permutations podcast, and gone to MaxFunCon II.

-Deep Water - Similar to Man on Wire, this is the story of someone who attempted something extremely improbable (a solo circumnavigation by sailboat), why they did it, and how it turned out.  I liked it better than Man on Wire, possibly because I hadn't heard all the details in advance - I just heard the screenwriter of The Informant! mention it somewhere.

-Big Fan - I found the events of this movie surprising, but I shouldn't have.  This is the apt-est title since Apt Pupil.  I haven't seen Apt Pupil.

-Loose Change: An American Coup - The popular opinion on these guys is that they're maniacal revisionist cranks.  I mean, probably, sure, but no less intriguing because of it.  And not really any less believable than any other explanations out there.

-Battlestar Galactica: The Plan - This was better than Razor, since it provides new information at the very least.  Still, felt pretty pointless to watch after the series conclusion.

-Django - This is one murdery western, and probably almost single handedly responsible for the fad of accessorizing with gattling guns that swept 1960s Italy and eventually the world.  You know those photos of your parents when they were just teens or in their early 20s, with their chainguns?  Whether they acknowledge it or not, the whole craze pretty much stems directly from this movie.

-9 - looked fantastic, had some cool action sequences, and has the same appeal that Home Movies or Be Kind Rewind has in seeing objects repurposed.  Also has quite a bit of 'wait, what?' and 'hold on, why did, ah, how does that, er…huh?"

-Dawn of the Red, Zitlover, H.R. Pukenshette, Harry Knuckles and the Treasure of the Aztec Mummy, and Please Kill Mr. Kinski - Shorts distributed by Troma.  The last one is a story told by a director who made the somewhat ill-advised decision to cast Klaus Kinski as the 'name' in a project.  It didn't go well for anyone.

-My Best Fiend - This is Werner Herzog's remembrance of Klaus Kinski.  I didn't know very much about him, and I thought this would be an interesting counterpoint to the preceding short.  Here's the point of view of one of his best friends.   Not as such.  Although one gets the sense that they have fun topping each other in horror stories of working together, supposedly the crew of Herzog's movies were just as eager to murder the guy, who had to be threatened with guns from time to time, just to keep things civil.

-Red Sonja - Not a good movie, but it was nice to see Ernie Reyes Jr. in something.

-Shutter Island - This I liked a whole bunch.  There was some complaining going around to the effect of the ending not being twisty enough, but I think those people are probably missing the point. In fact, the only way to be more wrong would be to be like what seems to be a majority of reviewers and treat the clues as mistakes and then complain about both.  This movie also had one of my favorite Creative Screenwriting podcasts, with writer Laeta Kalogridis (who is now working on The House With A Clock in its Walls!), because she sounds like a lady who's totally on the ball, who knows what time it is and where her towel is, and I feel bad for her for the amount of forehead slapping and 'did you even see the movie?'-asking she probably had to do when people asked her what was up with certain parts.

-Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief - This was apparently a less-successful book adaptation.  Since I didn't read 'em, I'm not as outraged as my roommate that did.  To me, it was a kind of fun, kind of dumb thing with some parts that don't make sense and some other parts with fun references to greek gods.

-Breakout -While this movie does have helicopter pilot Charles Bronson trying to spring framed dope Robert Duvall from jail via helicopter, and a running gag about a bad check, it also has that weird pacing of its era where it seems like nothing is happening, and then everything happened much too quickly, and now nothing's going on again.

-Splice - This was a test screening, and it may be different by the time you see it.  For instance, there might not be a man with an infrared camera and goggles apparatus staring at you and gauging your reactions.  But it's by Vincenzo Natali, director of Cube!  And what's more, I like the recent choices Adrian Brody is making, with this, and Brothers Bloom, and Predators coming up.  It's like he did his prize-winning work, and his mega money blockbuster work, and now he's just enjoying fun projects that catch his eye.  (by the by, Bros. Bloom held up well to recent re-watchings, maybe even now a little more enjoyable in terms of how the ending felt to me)

-Hanky Panky - Intended to be another Gene Wilder / Richard Pryor comedy, except with Gilda Radner instead of Pryor.  Mistaken identity a la North by Northwest, silliness ensues.

-The Signal - I just put this on as a movie I could safely ignore in the background while writing things.  You can get through a lot of movies by leaving the TV on like we did back in the day, except I don't have TV like that now, it's all movie files and discs and internets.  And this starts off with a bang, dropping you into the middle of another movie by one of the three directors.  Yep, three directors, each writing and directing their own act of the film.  Each worse than the last is one way to look at it, but the first two have some pretty great stuff in them.  It wasn't at all the movie I thought I was putting on, but it was a nice surprise.

1,600: MURDER at 1600

The movie post that wordpress doesn't want you to see!  Between eaten posts and laziness, it seems like the count got off somewhere as far as the site here is concerned.  In truth, I'm up to 1626 at the moment. -In Bruges - a better movie than a city, if the movie can be believed.  I appreciate movies that deliberately subvert movie cliches (Hard Candy pointed out 'why are you threatening me while you're still tied up?) - in this case, it's the fact that blanks are still dangerous. Additional points are awarded for a lean and economic script that uses every part of the buffalo.  I do think, however, that this movie may in fact be zany.

-Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One - An early sort of pseudo-documentary.  Kind of interesting historically - or it would be if anyone at all claimed influence by it - but as an early example of such a common genre now it's mainly remarkable for the line 'every since we've been married I've had abortion after abortion after abortion….'

-Quick Change - This was great, it starts as a cool take on a heist and the ensuing getaway is a solid 90s comedy.  There's something about the writing conventions that just feels great when they hit the right notes.  I hope that comes from a sense of storytelling and not nostalgia.

-The Spanish Prisoner - A twisty turny Mamet thing, plus Steve Martin.  Really great until the last five minutes.  I just don't think he could have possibly gotten there that fast.

-Battlestar Galactica: Razor - This was a waste of time.  When it was new, I bet fans were happy to see nominally new BSG to tide them over, but I'll bet they would have been even happier to have a new story instead of this rehash of previously discussed events.

-Paranoid Park - Like Soderbergh, Van Sant makes the movies for everyone and the movies just for him, and in his case I prefer the latter.  This movie features the most useless subtitles ever.

-The Number 23 - Sometimes you hear about how bad a movie is, and you just have to look.  Turns out, pretty bad.  And nobody had ever even mentioned the Sin City-lookin' sequences.

-Final Destination - This was pretty dumb too.  While there's something familiar and comforting about a script that hits the right beats (in an interesting way) there's something about formulaic editing that just sucks the life out of a movie.  Line.  Cut to character about to speak.  Wait 1 second.  Character says line.  Cut to character about to speak.  Wait 1 second.  Character speaks.  Audience falls asleep.  Maybe they didn't shoot any reactions or mediums.

-Home Movie - From the director of American Movie, a series of shorts sewn together, each about people who live in unusual dwellings.  I may have oversold the movie with that last sentence.

-Ong-Bak: Thai Warrior - See, now what I learned in Gladiator (no, not Gladiator, Gladiator, from the writer of Striking Distance / director of Road House) is that the top of the head is the hardest part of the body.  Don't know why, that's just one of those things that stuck with me.  But here's Tony Jaa, going out of his way to bash people right atop their noggins with accuracy and enthusiasm.  He does a terrific job of it, going after guys in a flurry of human elbows and knees.

-The Yes Men - So these guys pretend to be these other guys, and in character as those guys they pretend to be a third set of guys who pull these elaborate pranks on the World Trade Organization.  The movie shows us some of the pranks, and how the people being pranked fall for it.  I guess you pay a ton of money to attend a conference, you don't suspect lies.  Anyway, I'm glad I didn't buy this on DVD for thirty bucks a few years ago.

-John Oliver: Terrifying Times - I have a standing appreciation of John Oliver.  I even claim that weird indie band 'before they were cool' kind of fandom.  The Department, Political Animal, The Bugle, The Daily Show, and this standup special are all the places you can enjoy John Oliver. And often Andy Zaltzman.

-Anvil! The Story of Anvil - At times almost heartbreaking, at other times so absurd and inextricable from Spinal Tap that it seems like it couldn't be real.  (The drummer is named Robb Reiner, for pete's sake.)  But hey, I want to believe.

-The Station Agent - Sought out after learning about writer / director Thomas McCarthy's involvement with the real best picture of 2009, Up.  This was roundly terrific.  I feel like it could lead to some seriously boring discussions though.

-Ninja Assassin - This was a return to $5 Mondays at Cleveland Cinemas.  Also, this sucked.  It didn't look very good, but I was hopeful based on a) director of V for Vendetta James McTeigue and b) the title.  And besides, ninjas.  And then what do they do?  CGI ninjas.  Waste of everyone's time.  Bleh.

-Avatar - I enjoyed watching this movie.

-Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian - I knew this was written by a couple of The State, but I guess I'd seen bad reviews or something.  It was mostly pretty good.  Some bits that didn't make sense to me were either explained in the first movie or didn't jibe with the first movie at all, depending on who I asked.

-X-Files: I Want to Believe - Often referred to as a 'monster of the week' movie in comparison to Fight the Future as a 'mythology' movie.  Morbidly amusing to note they killed off Mulder & Scully's child instead of having them lug him along to crime scenes or deal with babysitters or something.

-Unknown - I think I mixed this up with a Vincenzo Natali movie.  Maybe 'Nowhere.'  It was roughly Sci-Fi Original in quality.

-Sherlock Holmes - Really cool, really solid, I enjoyed this way more than I thought I would, after all the hand wringing that preceded it.  There's kind of a problem that Holmes knows all the details of a murder he neither witnessed nor investigated in any way when he's recapping everything for the audience.  Deleted scenes, I hope.  I wonder what happened to the competing Judd Apatow version...

-Up in the Air - On the one hand, this was pretty good.  But on the other, it's pretty much the same 'slick misanthrope suddenly feels the need for deeper meaning and finds it in family' thing that the director's already made two of.

-It's Complicated - Great cast, but still kind of boring.  I recall the discussion afterward being about how shoddily made parts of it were.  Bears an odd resemblance to Modern Family.

-Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask - Raised more questions than it answered, unfortunately.  How DO you make a man impotent by hiding his hat?  I've hidden hats before.  I don't -think- that was a side effect.

-Book of Eli - As of January 18, this is my favorite movie of 2010.  Cool and fun and works pretty well as Fallout: The Movie.  I felt an odd connection to it when I saw that it was written by Gary 'Gaz' Whitta, former editor at PC Gamer.  Sure, I don't actually know him, but I've read and listened to his work for a while, and it's no surprise that there are some game-like elements in the movie (a good thing).  The fact that people aren't really talking about this one is a benefit to you, the viewer.

-Across the Universe - This was strongly recommended to me, but it's not so much a movie as a collection of videos for Beatles covers.  I'm pretty sure that the reason the non-music parts don't make any sense is to cram in as many additional Beatles references as possible, but I just don't know their catalog well enough to appreciate it.  I guess I've never been into boy bands....

-Assassins - Stallone is an assassin just days from retirement, Banderas is an assassin just coming up.  Moore is a hacker in the finest 1990s computer technology tradition.  The whole thing is worth it for this one entirely inappropriate exchange.

-Laura - A fun old murder mystery where nothing is as it seems!  Really!  It's great when a movie lives up to one of those review cliches.  They probably could have sorted the whole thing out a lot sooner, but not in a 'well why didn't he say that one sentence two hours ago' kind of way.

-Heart and Souls - Kind of reminds me of the original story that lead to Monsters Inc.  Fun premise, well done, just another more or less forgotten '90s flick.

-Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil -  Not at all what I expected.  I guess it gets grouped in my head with The Bridges of Madison County or a River Runs Through It, probably for no other reason than having leafy green poster art, since I haven't seen those either.  Anyway, for some reason, I was under the impression this was going to be a good movie.

-Day Watch - Didn't like Night Watch, didn't like Wanted, didn't really like this.

-Food, Inc. - This was the movie being used to demo my new movie watchin' monitor, so I made it the first movie I watched on said monitor.  Not great.  Doesn't really add anything new to similar programs that have been coming out for what seems like years now.

-Black Cobra and Warriors of the Wasteland - Two more courtesy of Doc Mock.  Black Cobra himself, Fred Williamson, actually appears in WotW too.

And now, even shorter reviews for short films:

-Balance - A: Awesome.  It's right here if you want to see for yourself.

-Bullethead - yuck.

-Un Chien Andalou - I thought the cloud on the moon was more effective than the actual eyeball shot.

-100 Years at the Movies, President McKinley and Escort Going to the Capitol, President McKinley Taking the Oath - kind of neat, but mainly just me working on my lists at icheckmovies.

-Validation, Signs - two sketch-like shorts of a very simple premise heightened over time.  Neither mind-blowing nor disappointing.

-Hangar #5 and I Love Sarah Jane - two shorts made as effects demos, the latter in conjunction with fxphd, and notably better acting  (Sarah Jane would become Tim Burton's Alice, I think.)

-The Adventures of Andre and Wally B - very early pixar work.  Not terrific, with its off-camera punchline.

-Dug's Special Mission - Very recent pixar work.  Much more terrific.  Looney Tunes in flavor.

-9 - Slightly less good looking than the feature that followed 4 years later, but containing just about as much story.

-Some Folks Call it a Sling Blade - Another short that was expanded into a feature.  Rather less CGI intensive though.

-Anna is Being Stalked, The Delicious - two by Scott Prendergast, whom I heard interviewed on TSOYA.  The former played at Sundance.  I would not be able to explain why.  There was nothing for me in these.

-The Cat Concerto - Inspiration for the Mouse Organ?  No, that's a Katzenklavier, this is an Oscar-winning Tom and Jerry cartoon.

-The Cat Piano - speaking of the Katzenklavier...didn't really dig this one.

-Skhizein - a little bit weird and unsatisfying, which probably effectively communicates the feeling of being displaced by 97 centimeters.  Terrific idea.

and finally...

-Murder at 1600 - You might be surprised to learn that this suspense featuring Wesley Snipes as a cop who plays by his own rules and builds meticulous scale models of entire cities who is called in by White House staffers going through the motions of pretending to be interested in solving a murder and insists on pushing through the lies, upholding the law, and bringing the murderer to justice was chosen only because of the number in its title and is not, in fact, especially good.

#1,514: KRAA! The Sea Monster

Surviving Disaster ended last month.  Better Radio rages on.  Applied for UCB's Maude and Beta teams.  Writing a lot of things.  Booked holiday plane tickets.  Watched some movies.  Watching movies faster than I'm writing 2 liners about 'em though, so I'm just going to do that in sections for a little while. -The Last Temptation of Christ - Courtesy of the hulu.  Started off funny.  Became less so.

-Let the Right One In - Cool, especially for explaining what happens to a vampire who ISN'T invited in.  I may have been late to the scene, but at least I saw it before the remake.

-Secret Beyond the Door... - Not a very good secret, frankly.  The orchestra liked this movie significantly more than I did.

-Closed Mondays and Your Face and Kiwi! -Animated shorts, like you read about, presuming you read about short films, or animation, or something.  Maybe a general interest publication with a particular focus this month on award-winning short subjects.  Kiwi was great.

-Shooter - I guess if they explained the shock reveal of the last couple minutes at the beginning when it was equally valid, it wouldn't be much of a movie.  Certainly, Marky Mark wouldn't've had to commit the dozens of murders he ought to be prosecuted for instead.

-Battle for Terra - Humans are the invaders! Oh no!  It wasn't clear why flying creatures need flying machines, or what they have to fear from falling.I think it looked good except for the humans, but it didn't stick with me.

-The Girlfriend Experience - A Soderbergh experiment.  Better than Bubble.  Making the story non-linear just seemed like a technique to spread a thin story...thinner?  That can't be the analogy.  That's not something you'd do on purpose.

-Toy Story and Toy Story 2 - in 3D!  Hadn't seen these before, but part 3 is coming.  Except now I don't want to see it.  Part 2 was almost exactly the same movie the first one was, with the same jokes, the same one song, same...everything.  Seems like a waste.

-Zombieland - Yuck.  This is to the zombie genre as timecrimes was to time travel.  It's the smallest possible amount of story they could bother with and still technically be a zombie movie.  Just terrible.

-The Informant! - Hey, this was really good.  Soderbergh's 90s by way of the 70s.  Lots of great comics in cameo roles, cool story, funny, well done, this is the opposite of cinematic warm mayonnaise.

-The Strangers - Worth it for one long genuinely creepy shot of Liv Tyler on the phone, with one of the strangers hanging around in the house, unbeknownst to her.

-Redbelt - I heard sometime later that this is a movie people don't like.  Those people are wrong.  Fancy Mamet-y plotting unfolds, honor is preserved.

-KRAA! The Sea Monster - Truly a misunderstood horrible monster of the sea.  Courtesy of Doc Mock's Movie Mausoleum.  (still, better than the sequel, KRAAmer Vs. KRAAmer)

#1,497: Inglourious Basterds

Here's a post that didn't post at the end of August, because I was too lazy to do all the two-line reviews: Feverishly hacking away at the mountain of editorial assistance required to bring SpikeTV's Surviving Disaster to a television screen near you starting next Tuesday, Sept 1, and every Tuesday thereafter for the next ten weeks.

In June, we had a little time off and I went off to edit a feature film shot on the RED, The Selling, written by and starring Gabriel Diani (who you can hear in episodes of Better Radio, my sci-fi sketch comedy radio show (re: podcast) ).  It's great, by far the best feature I've worked on so far.  Spooky and funny in turn, it's a haunted house story that's more inconvenient for a real estate agent than it's terrifying for a family.

While I was working on that, I was also watching:

-Public Access - Bryan Singer & Christopher McQuarrie's first movie.  Not exactly...good.  Reminded me of Sex, Lies, & Videotape a bit.  And there's the formative version of the big twist they'd get right the next time around.

-Jandek on Corwood - Documentary on a musical recluse.  Not at all as interesting as its own subject.

-Zombie Girl - Same problem, different cause.  I'd suspect this was shot without a plan, and pieced together from the footage, which is a much less likely route to a captivating doc.

-Man on Wire - I probably would have been way more into this one if I'd seen it cold, a year ago when it was new, instead of hearing all the details all over the place in advance.  It was, however, a fun inaugural run for MustacheTV.

-Captivity - Kim Bauer Gets Kidnapped: The Movie.  Snooze.

-Push - Why aren't original movies about superheroes any good?  What's the exception to this rule?  Is it because (almost?) all of them try to break from comic book tradition with the edgy, raw, gritty idea of using superpowers in order to be lazy?

-The Great Debaters - Good, but pretty by-the-book example of one of these.  Also, I think it had some anachronistic stuff about Hitler and WWII that wouldn't've happened yet at the time the movie takes place.

-The Hurt Locker -  This was pretty good, but also kind of a cheat.  What's more exciting in a movie than the stock moment of 'will the bomb be defused in time?'  And this movie is a huge collection of those scenes!  I did wonder though, about what they might have been saying with the spent cartridge floating and bouncing in slow motion, and why they bothered to set it 5 years ago when it probably wasn't written that way, with all its references to things that didn't exist 5 years ago.

-G.I. Joe - I was never at all a fan of G.I. Joe back in the day, so I went into this one not knowing who anyone was.  Thankfully, they make it easy on newcomers by putting one of everyone on both teams.  I wonder if the toys were just repaints of the same figure.  It's been a good year for animation, so this is far from getting the 'one of the best animated movies I've seen this year' joke.  Still, way better than Transformers, even if I did doze off for a bit somewhere in the middle.

-Funny People - First Apatow movie I've seen.  Good thing they didn't call it 'Good Actors.'  I liked it overall, especially from the perspective knowing a bunch of upcoming comics.  That Jonah Hill guy though; yuck.

-District 9 - Cool movie.  Loved it less than the popular response.  Close as we'll get to Half-Life: The Movie.  Still don't like when mock docs don't commit.  Hope, like Cloverfield, they'll have the guts not to take the bait on a sequel.

-District 13 - Action parkour fighting movie!  Kind of like Escape From Paris.

-District 13: Ultimatum -  The sequel to action parkour fighting movie!  I actually liked this one even better for the most part.  Crazy and more elaborate fights, flashier parkour chases, and an even more disappointing ending!

-Ponyo by the Sea - Hot on the heels of the original, Studio Ghibli's anime remake of last year's action hit Taken is a terrific retelling.  It hits the beats of the original while still adding something new to the father's relentless search for his missing daughter.  The casting for the English dub was well done, and the recruiting Liam Neeson to reprise the original role is brilliant.  The primary difference in this version is that the girl is overcome with Hugo's Disease.  I don't think anything I've seen in the theater this year so far has gotten as much laughter as this did.

-Last of the Mohicans - the 1936 version.  AND

-Last of the Mohicans - the 1992 version, which is a remake of the 1936 edition, not a fresh version of the book.  I thought I'd start a series here on double features, but it's been a while since I saw these, and I was surprised by how lousy they were.  Even more so, how the movie doesn't seem to be about the Last of the Mohicans (who, by the by, aren't extinct).

-Inglourious Basterds - this was fun to see, the way it's always fun to see more from someone who has such a distinctive mark on their movies.  And it was fun to see the audience around me not-enjoying it, from the walk-outs to the guy who kept complaining that scenes didn't make any sense and it was too much work to read the subtitles.  I liked the way it would make silly concessions and then double back on them and turn out to be clever.  I wonder how much it changed since it's premiere at Cannes, since Ebert's review didn't seem to apply to the finished cut.  Also, one gets the sense that the clan of Basterds were only included as an excuse to use a title QT loved on his movie about something else entirely.

8 or 9 out of 17 this round.

#1,477: Moonwalker

Deliberately let this lay a while.  Starting back in with the easy post.

• 3 Dev Adam, Death Warrior, The Eliminators, and Hands of Steel - 4 of the fine feature films, at least half of which are Turkish, presented to me via Doc Mock's Movie Mausoleum, an internet show that combines a big of the ol' Ghoulardi and a bit of the MST3K via a bunch of UCB-LA guests.
• Hearts of Darkness and Coda - two documentaries about Francis Ford Coppola, shooting Apocalypse Now and Youth Without Youth, as shot by his wife, Eleanor.  It's understandable that FFC would feel like some of the footage might make him look bad, but there was nothing particularly damning or shocking in-context, and having read Eleanor's book Notes, not too many surprises.  Strongly recommended to fans of the series Firefly, for Brando's read on the line "I swallowed a bug."
• Mr. Majestyk and The Mechanic - a Bronson double feature at the New Beverly.  The Mechanic is almost completely great.  Bronson badassing around as a professional hitman, and an ending that made the whole theater cheer.  Mr. Majestyk features Bronson as a melon farmer with a disinterest in taking any guff from the local hoods.  Contains graphic scenes of violence done to watermelons.
• Sunset Blvd. and Queen Kelly - amazing that I hadn't seen Sunset Blvd yet, since I have it on DVD, and may have even been assigned to watch it at some point.  A cool double feature, Queen Kelly is the film Norma makes Joe watch in her living room.  It was an actual film Gloria Swanson had made (but not completed) as her own career was in decline, and was actually directed by Erich von Stroheim.  The restoration was kind of boring, actually, but still neat.
• Animal Crackers and Duck Soup - another New Beverly double feature!  I'd wanted to see how the Marx Bros played with an audience, since they worked out a lot of their material on stage in advance of filming, and left the same pauses for laughter on the screen.  If anything, the pauses weren't long enough and there were lines I couldn't hear.  There was a lot of great stuff in both, but I'm especially curious about the things that looked like mistakes and improvisations, and whether they were or not.  Groucho's occasional asides not to the camera, but to someone just off camera, the bit where at the end of a long take he gets his character's name wrong and they work it in, and Margaret Dumont just laughing away during Harpo's closeups in the card game, to name 3 examples.
• Life with the Dice Bag - a largely uninteresting and unflattering homemade doc about tabletop RPG fans.
• Hoop Dreams - an exciting and surprising doc about two young would-be NBA stars, via Hulu.
• Last Tango in Paris - at least watching this helped me to get a reference made in a recent issue of The Bugle.  Also via Hulu.
• Hellboy II - I didn't really like the first one, but I think I like this one better.  I haven't read the comics, but maybe it's more true to the source material than the original, which was more or less Men in Black 3.  Even more surprising, how good Seth McFarlane's character was.
• The Man with Two Brains - the earlier flavor of Steve Martin comedy, this had at least 4 or 5 really stand out gags that I really really liked.  Murmuring, and a bit about retiring, and the 19th century Indian rubber vase.  Steve Martin has made a lot more comedies (and more of them were actually good) than most (all?) of the actors coming up in that era that we remember as comedians, I think.  Your Robin Williams?  Your Eddie Murphy?
• The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Incredibly Inefficient Weapon - I thought I'd heard of this somewhere before, but I couldn't say where.  It seemed like it just had to go on my list, a title like that.
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Even though the previous three X-Men movies were mostly about Wolverine, this one adds in some additional contrary backstory.  It's pretty much bound to be a wash though, since we know he a) lives and b) won't remember anything that happens.  I guess I kind of appreciate making Sabretooth less of a caveman.  Curious waste of deadpool though.
• Terminator Salvation - this movie isn't anything.  It's not even bad, it's just a big empty naught sign.  Nothing happens, no story is added to the existing mythos, and there is no reason why the audience might care about anyone on screen, nor are they challenged to at any point.  Supposedly the title meant something before folks started meddling, and while the 'real ending' that was removed after someone told the internet last year might have been intriguing, that would have ended up seeming pretty out of place in the final product.
• Le Voyage dans la Lune - always good to learn about the hard sci-fi and special effects masterpieces that have gone before, to better understand those coming soon, to a theater near you!
• Star Trek - is one such example.  This movie was way better than it deserved to be.  I hadn't previously thought of Abrams as a good director (nor a bad one, his notoriety simply isn't based in directing) but this was so well made that I barely noticed it was written by some guys that write things I don't like at all.  I found myself agreeing quite a bit with this article about the movie.
• Up - oh boy did I ever like this movie!  I missed a free screening due to foolishness beyond my control, but I got out on opening day (but not on the first attempt - lots of sold out screenings near me) for a 3D screening.  I can't remember the last movie I enjoyed so much in a theater.  I went in knowing almost nothing about the plot except what the teaser trailer revealed (a house and some balloons) and got the most adventurey, violent, sad, delightful, funny Pixar feature to date.  Even the short that preceded it (Partly Cloudy) was simultaneously touching and laugh out loud funny.  Also perhaps the best use of 3D for storytelling purposes I've seen so far (some scenes in the 3D cut are just in 2D, because that's what serves the story).  Can't say enough nice things about it.  With the expanded 10 nominees, even with the animated feature category, this deserves a best picture nod.  The only downside is that 3 of the next 5 announced Pixar releases are sequels.  They'll probably even be good, but when a director can do such great work with original IP, it seems like a waste to go back to wells already tapped.
• Moonwalker - I think I'd seen this before, but it wasn't on the list.  I've been a Michael Jackson fan almost literally all my life, and with his scheduled return to performing in two weeks, I sure thought I was going to get to see him live in a big crazy world tour next year.  Alas.
• Moon - This is terrific, but not getting a very wide release, I think.  You should keep an eye out to see if it's going to turn up near you.  Very solid, interesting, and fun all by itself, but even more so to someone who happens to be writing stories about a guy stuck in space alone lately.  Bonus points for the robot, for including some of my own inside jokes by chance, and for making the 'answer' a reasonable extrapolation of events, not a mind-bending twist.  The movie is not about it's "twist," which is why it's given out fairly clearly fairly early.

This was a good batch, and I think it's turning out to be a good year for movies, and there's still like 15 movies slated for '09 that I think I might like to go see.  No real summer blockbusters though, except maybe Up.  I guess that's the strike for you.