Movie Memories: Hot Fuzz

It's March 2007, and I'm outside my beloved Brattle Theater with a group of friends. The occasion is a free preview screening of Hot Fuzz, and we could not be more excited. We all love Shaun of the Dead, with some being "Spaced" fans as well (I hopped on that bandwagon later). Not only that, but director Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost will be in attendance!

We get there probably about two hours early - eating, schmoozing, and goofing around in the (thankfully!) nice weather. The line of nerds grows longer and longer as we wait. A few promo people cruise through the line, and while a couple of my cohorts are out getting food the rest of us score T-shirts that inexplicably read "Grow your fanbase without having to sleep with gross people!" It was advertising something - not sure what, but it hardly matters. (I still have the shirt somewhere - I could check, but why ruin the mystery?) Our friends were mad jealous of our oversized duds when they got back.


And then, release the nerds! We crowd into the vintage theatre, scoring less-than-ideal seats even after being so early. We settle in the watch the flick and it couldn't be better - I even liked it more than Shaun, to be honest (seriously, if you like...anything, see this movie). The crowd is great too, responding enthusiastically to the action, comedy, and gross-outs. Afterwards, there's a Q&A with the three Brits (of which I can't claim to remember much), and then they indulge the crowd in requests for autographs and photos. This is where my absurdly bad luck reared its ugly head.

I push myself into the pulsating mob of geeks - I have nothing I want autographed but I'm vying for a picture with Pegg. A slight semblance of order and hierarchy forms, and I wait patiently as various fans get their DVDs and posters signed (including my friends - my now-boyfriend's boxset of "Spaced" bears the John Hancocks of two of the three lads, I believe). Then I hear the distant voice of the event organizer saying that the guys have to wrap it up. My turn hasn't come yet, and I might have resorted to some light pushing and shoving. It seems like I can still make it. Finally, I'm next - but then Simon declares the girl before me to be his last and starts walking away!

I panic, and since I still want something to show for my efforts but have no interest in physically dragging a celebrity into a photo op, I quickly toss my camera to one of my friends and say dammit, just get me and him in the same frame. He did, just as Pegg was making his exit across the stage. I got my picture with him...sort of.

I've posted the resulting picture below, which I find kind of hilarious. It makes it seem like I'm posing in front of animals at the zoo that I know damn well would never make an effort to pose with me. Due to being somewhat uncomfortable with plastering pictures of myself across the internet and/or destroying the illusion that I'm blindingly hot, I've blacked out my face. I promise I'm not on any wanted posters...just a bit shy in the photo department. I also added a couple of other pics from the event. Sorry for the low quality!

 

Pegg is the fellow with the hat that appears to be emerging from the right side of my head, Frost is the one is the blue striped shirt. Click to enlarge! I promise it's really them!

Blurry Nick Frost.

Three Amigos

For more proof the universe hates me, this wasn't even the first time that this had happened - a couple of years before, I was just squeezed out of an elevator (as in I would be the first person too many) containing Denis Leary. And one of my friends was in there, thinking the whole time that he was Willem Dafoe. Clearly I deserved to be there more than her! (But I'm not bitter).

Tune in next time, when I will regale you with a Movie Memory involving a much more minor celebrity...

A-Z #2

Here's another solid 26 for ya...this time they have to be from between 1951 and 1980. The same rules apply - I'm going for a variety of years, genres, and countries, and for the tricky letters (Q, X, Z) they just have to be somewhere in the title. I endorse and recommend all of the below for your viewing pleasure!

A Alien (1979)
B Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958)
C Charade (1963)
D Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
E Executive Suite (1954)
F F for Fake (1973)
G Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
H The Hustler (1961)
I In the Heat of the Night (1967)
J Judgement at Nuremberg (1961)
K The Killing (1956)
L The Last Metro (1980)
M The Misfits (1961)
N The Night of the Iguana (1964)
O On the Waterfront (1954)
P Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
Q EQuus (1977)
R Room at the Top (1959)
S Scandal Sheet (1952)
T The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
U The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
V Vivre sa vie (1962)
W What a Way to Go! (1964)
X TaXi Driver (1976)
Y The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)
Z All that JaZZ (1979)

Disturbing...

The lovely nerds over at Total Film posted a list of what they consider to be the most disturbing movies ever - and based on the synopses alone, it's hard to argue. The link is here, but it's that annoying thing where you can only see one at a time - plus, the accompanying photos may be more than you asked for. For impatient types, a cheat sheet of the list is below:

25) Antichrist
24) Blue Velvet
23) Shivers
22) Martyrs
21) Man Bites Dog
20) Begotten
19) Aftermath
18) The Human Centipede
17) A Clockwork Orange
16) Flower of Flesh and Blood (aka Slow Death: The Dismemberment)
15) The Last House on the Left
14) Irreversible
13) Nekromantik
12) Men Behind the Sun
11) I Spit on Your Grave (aka Day of the Woman)
10) Happiness
9) Funny Games
8 ) Visitor Q
7) Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
6) Cannibal Holocaust
5) In a Glass Cage
4) Eraserhead
3) Audition
2) Threads
1) The Exorcist

I haven't seen very many of these films, and the ones I have seen are the more conservative or "commercial" of the bunch (you know, relatively speaking). In trying to establish my own limits on the freaky, gross, or upsetting, I realized that there's no firm line. An act of violence that's extremely disturbing in one film may be deliciously vengeful, perhaps even comical in another. The fact that I have an overactive imagination that fixates on the frightening means I have to stay away from horror for the most part. It's really just to protect my sanity and mental health - like a pregnant woman who would otherwise enjoy drinking alcohol avoiding it for the sake of the baby. I do like myself some dread and suspense, but most of the films on this list have provocations of the more visceral variety.

But in pondering this topic further, I realized that I can tolerate a fair amount of disturbing content in two situations. The first is if the tone is anywhere from silly/funny (Shaun of the Dead) to pulpy/entertaining (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo). The second is if it has a point. I'm fine with a realistic war film, for instance, but few people would take issue with that (or they'd make themselves sit through it because it has historical importance). But taking it a step further, it just needs to have a point within the narrative. The violence in A Clockwork Orange works because you see Alex both as an aggressor and a victim, and the film uses that to paint a picture of moral ambiguity. In Happiness, where all of the horrors are spoken or implied (I think the worst thing you actually see is a guy masturbating), the characters are all three-dimensional and have both good and bad qualities (yes, even the child molester). Blue Velvet weaves a nice-guy-gets-in-over-his-head tale that seeks to unmask the hypocrisy of the suburbs. Even the infamous Audition has only two or so upsetting scenes, which underscore and enhance what is really a dramatic satire of gender roles in Japan.

Compare these to something like Salo or Antichrist, which from my understanding through the reading of detailed synopses consist primarily of psychosexual torture scenes, leaving you without much to compare against or build on. Who are these people other than that they do sick things? What does it mean? What purpose does it serve? Personally, I don't have much interest in watching disturbing content for its own sake. Obviously these films are trying to shock and provoke you, but I feel that goal is undermined when it's a 2-hour barrage of horror as opposed to some of the lines quietly uttered by characters you sympathize with in Happiness. There are plenty of cinephiles that would defend the examples I just listed, but what about #19, Aftermath, which is a documentary-style short film depicting nothing except a man doing horrible things to a female corpse? Would it make me close-minded to say that I'm not really sure what the merit of that film is?

Ultimately, I think that messed-up stuff in movies should serve the same purpose as cinematic technology - it should enhance the film, not be the film. Just as "I can shoot it in 3-D!" is not and should not be a movie pitch, neither should "There is so much necrophilia!" even if it's a movie about necrophilia (Almodovar's film Matador is about necrophilia, but in a balanced sort of way that explored what it meant to various characters and their relationships). A movie overloaded with viscerally provocative material can often come off looking like it has nothing to say.

What do you think? Do you enjoy or loathe disturbing films? Furthermore, how do you even define "disturbing" in terms of cinema?

Who are your most-watched directors?

Whether by accident or on purpose, have you devoured a significant percentage of any one director's filmography? If you're not sure, tally them up - the totals might impress you! Sometimes you catch on to a director early in their career and can follow their releases theatrically; other times they are long gone and you have a lot of catching up to do. I never really made it a point to see every work by a certain director (except perhaps Pedro Almodovar), since there are usually a few duds holding me back. But through some vague combination of effort and coincidence, here are the directors whose films I've seen the most of, either by quantity or percentage - and I suppose they do paint a pretty accurate picture of my tastes. For my purposes, I am only counting feature-length narrative films that they directed all of (i.e. not just a segment), and requiring that the person in question directed at least five qualifying films (I mean, I've seen all of Jason Reitman's movies, but that wasn't very hard, now was it?).

The Whole Enchilada
PT Anderson - all 5 (including his debut film Sydney aka Hard Eight from 1996)
Wes Anderson - all 6
Christopher Nolan - all 7 (including his debut film Following from 1998)


Almost the Whole Enchilada
Quentin Tarantino - 6 out of 6.5 or 7 (I haven't seen Death Proof/Grindhouse, so however you'd count that)
Charlie Chaplin - 8 out of 11
Stanley Kubrick - 8.5 out of 13 (the half is for The Shining, which I watched with some friends in high school but was so terrified that I was looking away for a considerable amount of the running time. I heard the whole movie though...)
Orson Welles - 9 out of 11 (I'm counting F for Fake, his 1973 documentary/fiction hybrid)


The Double Digit Club
The brothers Coen - 12.5 out of 14 (the missing one is The Ladykillers, which is supposed to be terrible but I might watch someday to be a completist, and the half refers to the fact that I watched Intolerable Cruelty on a plane with varying degrees of attention) 
Pedro Almodovar - 14 out of 17 (a number that will unfortunately remain the same until the final three get Region 1 releases or play at a rep house)
Woody Allen - 15 out of 39 (this excludes You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, which comes out in September)
Billy Wilder - 17 out of 26
Alfred Hitchcock - 23 out of 58ish (the ish is because there's some unfinished, uncredited or co-directed business)
Special thanks to the various rep houses that helped me fill in some gaps!
How about you? Who are your most-watched directors?

Which is worse - trying and failing, or not trying at all?

How do bad movies happen? In the most general sense, bad movies are born in one of two ways - either the filmmaker/creative team doesn't put in any effort, or do they try very hard and fail. But are all failures created equal?

I'm not sure. One on hand, these lack-of-effort films (think empty, loud blockbusters) seem to be easier to sit through. They're kind of dull and uninvolving, but they will never actively offend or agitate you, and you might even get a couple of laughs or thrills. You'll forget them quickly. The spectacular failures, on the other hand, can get under your skin. Their (subjective, sometimes) badness is confrontational and forces you to become involved (to cite an extreme example, some who have seen and disliked Antichrist seemed to have felt violated by the experience).

And yet, I find that deep down, I always have a begrudging respect for artistic failures. I could never accuse these films of being easy cash grabs - I know they were works of passion and vision. Sometimes I even find myself feeling a bit bummed out that a promising idea wasn't executed to its full (or correct) potential - I almost want to rescue the good parts from the flames and find them a loving home in a better film.

Of course there can be grey zones, particularly in determining the artistic intent of the filmmaker - you don't want to psychoanalyze. James Cameron said that he had been developing Avatar in some capacity since 1994, which prompted many snide remarks about his inability to write a half-decent script even over a 15-year span. But was he even that concerned with the script as opposed to the technical side? Maybe he really did just want to make something dumb and explodey that just looked really really cool (and a closer look reveals he only worked on the actual screenplay for about a year). Also, was Christopher Nolan even trying for the complexity and depth of emotion and psychology that some critics claimed he failed at? (There are also the unclassifiable oddities like Tommy Wiseau's infamous opus The Room, which he originally made thinking it was a masterpiece but eventually came around and embraced its cult status as one of the worst movies ever made.)


So why does any of this matter? Well, I believe in giving credit where credit is due, and it's frustrating when people push a film like Inception aside with the same indifference and snark as Transformers. That's completely unfair. Christopher Nolan made a film that, even if it wasn't the gift from heaven that we all expected it to be, is an exciting and well-crafted thriller. Like Avatar to Cameron, Inception was Nolan's pet project for years, and he built it with loving care and intelligence. Entertaining the masses while trying to offer something beyond robots and explosions is a noble goal, and even if the final product didn't work for you I can't really see how it deserves downright scorn. It probably has something to do with certain people's compulsion to shoot down popular films with a venom that would be absent if the film were more obscure. At any rate, I would hope that my esteemed colleagues would know better than to fall into that trap...but perhaps they need the reminder!

Multiplexes are loaded with no-effort failures that come and go (typically without being missed). But really, we need more noble failures (particularly of a mainstream variety)because they prove that filmmakers give a damn and think audiences are more than just dumb walking wallets. And even when people don't like a film that tried, we still get discourse. It's been heartening to see all the honest-to-god discussion of Inception, which is far more evolved than the usual "Iron Man 2 was okay" or "Clash of the Titans was gay and if you liked it you're gay." Here we have analysis, conspiracy theories, interpretations - what was the last mainstream film that could possibly have multiple interpretations?!

Ultimately, it's important to support these films even if they're not perfect, and tell Hollywood that you like to see them take risks. What do you think? Does it matter how a movie fails?

A to Z

Here's a fun idea I found courtesy of Raquelle at Out of the Past - naming a movie you like/recommend for every letter of the alphabet. I started to compile my list, but I quickly realized that leaving it open to every movie ever made wasn't very interesting or challenging. Therefore, I gave myself a theme to work with, so that in the future I can come up with new themes/rules and see how long I can go without running out or doing repeats (if possible). My restriction on this round was that the movie had to be released during or before 1950. I stayed away from the more famous or obvious choices (as much as I could), and aimed for a mix of decades, genres, and countries. For the impossible letters, I tried to just find a title that included them. And this isn't a definitive list of favorites, but rather just films with my coveted seal of approval - all IMDB-linked for your pleasure. Off we go!


A - Adventures of Robin Hood, The (1938)
B - Brute Force (1947)
C - Children of Paradise (1945)
D - Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)
E - Ecstasy (1933)
F - Five Graves to Cairo (1943)
G - Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
H - Heiress, The (1949)
I - The Invisible Man (1933)
J - Jezebel (1938)
K - Kid, The (1921)
L - Lifeboat (1944)
M - Midnight (1939)
N - Night Train to Munich (1940)
O - On the Town (1949)
P - Panic in the Streets (1950)
Q - Quai des brumes (1938)
R - Rope (1948)
S - Stage Door (1937)
T - Trouble in Paradise (1932)
U - Bringing Up Baby (1938)
V - Visions of Light (Okay, I'm cheating. This is a documentary from the 1992 about cinematography, but they have extensive coverage of classic Hollywood. There's also a Ginger Rogers and Jimmy Stewart movie called Vivacious Lady that's not on R1 DVD and I saw that it was on TCM but this was before I had TCM but my mom's boyfriend did so we recorded it there but her DVR was messed up so it didn't work. So if I had actually seen that movie and enjoyed it, I'd put in here instead. But alas.)
W White Heat (1949)
X Pandora's Box (1928)
Y Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
Z Girl Crazy (1943)

Movie Memories: John Q

If the name of this film is unfamiliar to you, don't worry. It's a lame Denzel Washington drama/thriller that's completely forgettable - to everyone but me, that is. For you see, what was just another paycheck to Denzel set the backdrop for a milestone in my adolescence.

It was February or March 2002, and I was 14 years old. I'm pretty sure it was a Monday, even though I hadn't gone to school that day - a snow day perhaps? February vacation? At any rate, I was just lounging around in my pajamas when I got a call from my boyfriend Andy. Now Andy was my boyfriend only so far as a 14-year-old could be anyone's boyfriend. The grounds of the relationship was that we declared ourselves to be dating, and talked on the phone almost every day. We were comically mismatched in every way imaginable - isn't it just always the case that at that age, you confuse the notion of "compatible suitor" with "available warm body?" (and you can't blame hormones, because these were typically very chaste relationships). So anyway, Andy calls and asks if I want to go to a movie. My first official date.

We decide on John Q somehow, and make the necessary driving arrangements with our parents. I hurry to get ready, throwing on my favorite shirt - a little airbrushed and rhinestone-studded number that says "FREE" across the chest for some reason. It's all so sudden that it takes a little while to realize what this night could mean. I have never been kissed before, and I'm quite aware of the long legacy linking movie theaters with hanky-panky. It's not long before I'm insanely nervous.

We get chaffeured to the theater by my mom, and soon the movie starts. Now, apparently this movie is terrible and boasts a whopping 22% on Rotten Tomatoes, but at the time I had no way of judging it objectively. For all its flaws, it's almost preposterously tense and manipulative. The suspense of Denzel running around a hospital with a gun and trying to save his dying son melded with my intense fear that I might experience my first kiss. Not anticipation or excitement. Fear. So imagine Mia Wallace immediately after the adrenaline shot in Pulp Fiction, but sustained for two hours. As far as date movies for 14-year-olds go, it couldn't have been more appropriate - they were plentiful opportunities for being jolted into clutching the other person.

So the climax of the film comes and goes, and I find myself literally paralyzed with terror, a terror so palpable that I can almost feel it again as I write this. I truly cannot move. Andy, meanwhile, is all too aware of the opportunities that this outing might provide, and he's staring at me with his face so close to mine that we're almost touching, albeit in a perpendicular fashion. I'm so terrified that we end up watching the entirety of the credits this way. Yup, right from Denzel to the very last intern, with Andy joking that I must find these credits exceptionally fascinating. Finally, the lights come up and the theater staff comes in to clean. I made it! A huge feeling of relief comes over me and I leap up to leave. Andy follows, and we make for the exit. But then a very unexpected thing happens.

We're in that narrow passageway that you have to walk through to get to the seating in a typical multiplex theater. I'm a woman on a mission, bolting for the door. Suddenly I hear Andy say "Wait," and then softly grab my arm and pull me in for a kiss. Now, admittedly from an outsider's perspective, this all sounds very suave and romantic. For me, however, it was a nightmare. He went in for the kill, and my body froze. I think it's fair to say that I did not participate whatsoever. We both had braces, which could not have helped matters. When my gal pals later asked if tongue was involved, I said I didn't know, which was the truth. It seemed to go on for hours, and yet it's as if I blacked out. One thing was for sure, however - the second it was over, I knew I didn't want to be his girlfriend any more. It had nothing to do with his kissing skills, but I guess that moment just crystallized that we had nothing in common and no spark.

Andy went on to date my best friend for four years (we had an amicable breakup, so I hardly considered it betrayal) and now he's in the Marines. I'm not in touch with him anymore, but no matter what, he'll always be my first. It happens to everyone - for me, it was Andy and John Q.

Underrated child performances

Kick-Ass comes out on DVD tomorrow, which reminded me how awesomely bonkers Chloe Grace Moretz was in it. She plays an 11-year-old assassin whose fierce performance got somewhat overshadowed in the media by the fact that she says some bad words. I thought she did a great job, especially with the demanding physicality of the role (she fights grown men!), but acting-wise, I think she delivers more roundkicks than actual lines. She's a promising young talent with an interesting slate ahead, including the remake Let Me In and the Scorsese fantasy Hugo Cabret. But until then, I thought of some of my favorite child performances that were more, shall we say, verbal/emotional.

Here's the thing. I hate children. I absolutely loathe them. So if they're just sitting there osncreen looking cute, that's not enough to win me over. But at the same time, I cut them slack because, well, they're kids. Acting is hard at any age, and especially when they're young you just can't really expect them to be exceptional. So I don't hold it against them, but that makes it even more of a treat when one shines.

When I started looking into this topic, I saw a lot of the same names/roles come up again and again. Your Portmans, Fannings, Osments. So since I don't want to just regurgitate those, I thought I'd highlight some of my personal faves that don't seem to get as much digital ink. For my purposes, I define "child" as age 12 or younger - 13 or older definitely counts as "teen" and that's a whole other barrel of monkeys.

Peter Billingsley in A Christmas Story (1983)

RALPHIEEEEE!!! Seriously, though, I think the credit here might actually go to Jean Shepherd as the narrator. Without Ralphie's adult reflections on his childhood, watching him ham it up might be a bit too cutesy. But still, the kid's got a knack for comedy, and Ian Petrella as his younger brother is pretty great too.

Mason Gamble in Rushmore (1998)

Gamble is great as Dirk Calloway, the very young friend of protagonist Max Fischer. He is mature and sensible beyond his years, but the bitterness he projects when Max betrays him is extremely heartfelt and well-projected through the prism of little boy rage. Dirk has a special place in my heart because he's the closest cinematic equivalent to what I was like as a kid - an extremely smart, mature (hey, it's what my teachers said), and curiously deadpan outcast.

Jeremy Blackman in Magnolia (1999) [Note: I can't find his birthdate, but he's listed as a 2009 college grad, which would probably make him either 12 or 13 at the time of filming. Whatever, I'm counting it.]

As isolated child prodigy Stanley Spector, Blackman delivers a heartbreaking and inspiring performance of a kid who just wants to be taken seriously. From softly telling his dad that he has to be nicer to him or standing up to a game show host after a denied bathroom break causes Stanley to wet himself, his is a triumph for children everywhere. And no one appreciates the (appropriately) bizarro ending more than Stanley.

Grant Rosenmeyer and Jonah Meyerson in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Though their screen time is relatively brief, this duo is very sweet as the identically-dressed sons of the overprotective Chas Tenenbaum, who constantly makes them run safety drills and never lets them have fun. They comply, but sadly and begrudgingly. So when their wacky grandfather takes them on a day of "forbidden" adventures, it's one of the most joyful moments in the film.

Maude and Iris Apatow in Knocked Up (2007)
Somtimes nepotism DOES work, as it does with Apatow casting his two daughters as the children of Leslie Mann (their actual mother) and Paul Rudd. What could have been essentially two glorified extras, these two imps are true scene-stealers, opting to play it a little more outrageous than you'd expect from little girls. Case in point: Maude's absurd and surprisingly graphic explanation of where she believes babies come from (it involves "your butt falling off").

Bill Milner in Son of Rambow (2007)
As I've mentioned previously, the whole "young innocent child" shtick has to really stand out for me to be taken with it. And here, as Will Proudfoot, Milner crafts just such a character. He belongs to a sort of Mormon/Quaker/Amish religious group that forbids him from numerous activities such as seeing movies. But life changes forever when a rebellious classmate named Lee Carter (Will Poulter, also great but disqualified from my list due to his age) shows him a bootlegged video of Rambo. From then on, we live vicariously through Will's thrills and mishaps of trying to recreate Rambo's adventures himself while bonding with the unpredictable Lee. Will has boundless energy and a sweet demeanor, and he serves as a great portal to one's own childhood memories of discovering taboo delights.

Kodi Smit-McPhee in The Road (2009)
Okay, so I didn't read the book because I am a bad person, but even just from seeing this movie I could tell that if you didn't have the right kid, it wouldn't have been worth making. I thought Smit-McPhee was incredible at maintaining the delicate balance the character needs. He has to be pretty frightened by certain events without being screechy and grating, and at the same time depict a character completely accustomed to a post-apocalyptic world without being unrealistically stoic. I was apprehensive going into the film, predicting that he would just be clinging to Viggo Mortensen and screaming "PA I'M SCARED!!!" the whole time, but I found myself very impressed.

The children of The White Ribbon (2009)
Maybe it's the stark black and white cinematography, or the austere 1910s clothing and environments, but I don't think I've ever seen more sinister-looking children outside of a horror movie. The young cast has an array of very interesting faces, made all the more creepy by the fact that their expressions are usually blank. There's an array of ages here, some of which are too old, but they all kind of meld together into an ominous ensemble.

I know that this list skews very recent, which is a total coincidence. Some of my older picks, such as Virginia Weidler in The Philadelphia Story (1940) and Diana Lynn in The Major and the Minor (1942) and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944) turned out to be above the age limit. Oh well. So fill me in - what are your favorite performances by youngsters (under age 13)?

The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T

Theodore Geisel, more commonly known as Dr. Seuss, created words and images that seemed like a great fit for the silver screen. Yet strangely, the full cinematic potential of his work was rarely explored, and almost all of his adaptations were for TV. There are three theatrical features adapted from his books: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000, live action), The Cat in the Hat (2003, live action), and Horton Hears a Who! (2008, animated). The latter two were critical failures and caused Audrey Geisel, Seuss' widow and current holder of licensing rights, to forbid any future live-action adaptations of her husband's work. It's a shame, because there is a lot of great stuff in those books and the films ruined them with overacting and shoddy CGI. But there remains another, much more obscure film in Seuss' filmic canon...

In fact, it's not based on a book at all, but rather an original screenplay (his first and only) by Seuss. It's The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953) and it's just as wonderfully demented as it sounds. The plot is more or less that young Bart has to thwart his nefarious piano teacher from imprisoning 500 boys (x 10 fingers each = 5000 fingers) to play a giant piano in unison for all eternity. While the film is definitely uneven, it's certainly worth a watch to revisit your childhood days when every unlikable authority figure was an evil supervillain. But an even more compelling reason is that the imagery is incredible - it's what a Seuss film should look and move like. Instead of digitally grafting comedians' faces onto CG renderings, we get charmingly organic sets and costumes shot in the brightest, most glorious Technicolor. This is how Seuss' world moves in (non-animated) three dimensions. Oh and did I mention that it's also a musical with lyrics by the Doctor himself? I've included images below to whet your appetite for this wacky masterpiece...

There aren't a ton of stills from this online...so just watch it! (For as much as it sounds like a lost treasure, it's actually on a Region 1 DVD and available from Netflix and Amazon VOD. So you have no excuse!)

The Office: a show for our times

I know I don't usually write about TV - in fact, I'm not sure I ever have - but, um, there's a first time for everything!

Obviously "The Office" is in the off-season right now, but it's been on people's minds lately because Steve Carrell has announced that this upcoming season will be his last. Many are calling for his exit to signal an end to the show, but they'll probably just beat it into the ground unless enough key castmembers leave. The general consensus is that it jumped the shark long ago, and has been limping towards death ever since. I agree to an extent, but that doesn't mean I'm not emotionally invested in the characters and still chuckle a fair amount during each episode. I'm seeing this thing through to the finish. But with the end ostensibly in sight, I don't think it's too early to start eulogizing, analyzing what the show has meant and represented. And honestly, the more I think about it, this show has been goddamn revolutionary - not really in content or style, but message. And the message is this: the world doesn't give a shit about you and doesn't owe you anything.

What is this crazy lady talking about? It's just a funny show where Steve Carrell acts silly, right? Well, let me explain.

Every scripted television show I can ever think of has had it one of two ways: the show itself cared about its characters, or it just made them caricatures and didn't (and in both cases, it makes the audience agree). The former category covers all dramas and almost any sitcom made before the 90s - when something bad happens to the characters, either the other characters come to their aid or the music swells and the God of that show's universe seems to say, "I may not be able to help you right now, but I feel your pain." The latter category is much more rare, but a good example would be something like "Arrested Development" or even "30 Rock" at times, where the tone is just sheer absurdism and "feelings" don't really factor into the equation. "The Office," however, does have it both ways - the show doesn't care about the characters, but the audience does. What results from this is a veritable manual for coping in the modern age, a guide to finding values and priorities in a mediocre life.

When I say that a show doesn't care about its characters, I mean that the characters have misfortunes that are presented in a fairly serious light, but not resolved. A good example of this is Michael's loneliness and sense of failure in his personal life. In the Season 2 episode "Take your Daughter to Work Day," Michael excitedly shows the employees' kids a video of when he was on a children's show as a boy. On the show, young Michael says he wants to "get married and have 100 kids, so I can have 100 friends, and no one can say 'no' to being my friend." This clearly never happened in real life, and Michael is visibly upset. This becomes a theme that runs through the seasons, and while he will almost certainly be granted a happy ending, he's been miserable trying to get there.

The the real emotional hooks of the show, however, are Jim and Pam, and their evolution is closer to the average American life than anything else right now, on TV or beyond. It's unglamorous, painfully realistic, and has been teaching the audience to focus on what's important. Let's take a look at the two key episodes here. Even if you've seen them already, it might be worth a refresher, and these synopses aren't exhaustive but hit the major points for my argument.

- "Niagara." This is the episode where Jim and Pam get married. She is already pregnant, a fact she is trying to conceal from her conservative grandmother. Her grandmother eventually finds out and we actually never see them reconcile - for all we know, she doesn't attend the wedding at all. The night before, Andy tears his scrotum (!) and Pam is the only one sober enough to take him to the hospital. Right before the ceremony, Pam rips her veil and starts crying because her wedding isn't anything like she thought it would be. Jim cuts his tie in a show of solidarity; cue my tears. They realize that all these people they wanted at their wedding are just ruining it with their selfishness, so they run off and get married on a ferry that goes through Niagara Falls (and then return to the church to get married again in front of everyone). The newlyweds can't even get a moment's peace on their honeymoon - in the next episode, they have to deal with Kevin accidentally canceling Jim's credit card.

- "The Delivery." Three guesses as to what this one's about...Pam goes into labor but tries to postpone her admittance to the hospital until after midnight so their insurance plan gives them an extra day. Her contractions get closer together and she and Jim start fighting about what's best for her. Suddenly the contractions are very close together and she has no choice but to go. After the delivery, the staff is extremely terse with her - after all, she's just another patient to them. She has trouble getting the baby to breastfeed, so she requests a coach, who turns out to be male, causing great discomfort with Jim. It still doesn't work, and the two have a restless night. They are promptly kicked out the next day, and Pam finally gets the baby to breastfeed.

Here's the revelation: "The Office" dismantles the myth that anyone on earth other than you gives a damn about the most important moments in your life. Now, perhaps that's being a bit harsh, as surely close friends and family share your joy. But you are surrounded by others, from caterers to nurses, for whom this is just another day. The world doesn't stop for them. Compare Pam's delivery with the baby-having episode of "Friends" (which I guess I caught in syndication, even though I never watched the show otherwise), where the entire hospital appears to be at our heroes' disposal. Rachel has some trouble getting the baby to nurse, but this is quickly resolved and the whole scenario is played out mostly for Joey's humorous reactions. Really, having a baby just seems like a goofy good time and Rachel is still the center of the universe. On "Sex and the City," Charlotte's wedding to Harry is a disaster, but throughout it they just kind of chuckle and shrug and it never appears to be a real tragedy. Compared to these and other shows, the treatment of these milestones on "The Office" is pretty bleak.

The real message here, however, is just that you have to distill these moments in your life to what really matters. Will your remember your wedding day because of the perfect floral arrangements and bridesmaids' meticulously identical outfits? No, you'll remember being in love and being happy, and that's what Pam and Jim realize on the ferry even when everything else is falling apart. Is the birth of your first child supposed to be a thoroughly radiant experience from start to finish? No, nothing is guaranteed and every small accomplishment is a huge success (like when Pam finally gets her baby to nurse at the end). In this time of economic failure and an uncertain future, many people are readjusting their priorities - letting go of superficial things and learning to just be thankful for their loved ones and basic necessities.

For those of you whose response to this is "duh," well, good for you - but some people still don't get it. I remember reading an article (which, unfortunately, I can no longer find) about a family of four who couldn't afford to buy a house due the recession. It had the potential to be tragic, but I read on and discovered that they were not consequently homeless or even jammed into a tiny apartment. They were renting a large apartment (or maybe even a small house) and both parents had jobs, but they still considered themselves victims that were simply annihilated by the recession. The article even quoted the oft-repeated mournful cry of their young daughter: "Mommy, when can we buy a house?!" These people are still fixated on home ownership as some God-given right, completely ignoring the fact that their own neighbors might be facing eviction or poverty. These are people who need to hear what "The Office" is preaching.

I read an article last year that called the show "the most depressing on television," and while the author makes good points I disagree that you have to interpret the data negatively. She says it's depressing that Jim and Pam will never escape their dead-end jobs which they're not even that good at, and that they don't have any friends. Well, there are plenty of people like that - perfectly nice people with mundane lives and small social circles. Hell, I count myself among them. So what should those people do, jump off a bridge? Can't it instead be heartening to show that they can still find happiness with each other? Homer and Marge Simpson have been doing it for decades, and I don't see anyone complaining about that.

Now, obviously "The Office" isn't the first show to tackle serious facts of life. "Scrubs" is a good example of a funny show (not necessarily a sitcom, though) that masterfully deals with topics like ethics and dying. But what other show has really confronted mediocrity head-on? "The Office" shows viewers that if even people in a sitcom can't lead an easy life, then you sure as hell can't. Jim and Pam work a crappy job with a crazy boss, live in an ugly house, are exhausted from raising their baby, and have probably never shared a single Kodak moment. That sucks, and they know it and convey it. But they also have a happy family, and they celebrate their small victories. And in the end, that's what it's all about.

What do you think? Am I over-analyzing, or does "The Office" tap into a raw and critical part of the zeitgeist?

Fun with Miis!

A few months ago, my boyfriend purchased a Wii. I'm not really into video games myself, but something we agreed on was that it provided lots of fun in terms of creating Miis. For those who don't know, a Mii is an avatar you design for playing certain games, and they're highly customizable. We first made ourselves, of course (mine is my Blogger avatar), but then being film geeks, we moved on to creating notable figures in the world of cinema, both real and fictional. I've provided some of our creations below, with hints to see if you can guess who they are. If you can't figure some out, don't worry - I'm sure that has more to do with either the limits of Mii creation or our own incompetence. You can peep part deux over on my boyfriend's blog.

Both a gangster and a song-and-dance man

French actress who's played everything from a prostitute to a matriarch

Just add hat and cane

Wanna flip a coin?

Famous, among other things, for her insistence on always wearing pants

With a Z

Her face has graced tacky merchandise first, movies second

Spaniard whose career is finally getting respectable

"Don't point that gun at him, he's an unpaid intern!"

Star of autobiographical show

Neurotic Jew

The problem of "trailer bingo"

I see a lot of movies in theaters - typically at least 2-3 per week, depending on the time of year (i.e. Oscar season pileups). As a result, I see a lot of trailers. Or, to be more precise, I see a moderate amount of trailers many, many times over (even considering that I watch DVRed shows so I can skip commercials and I rarely watch trailers online). Aside from just being repetitive and rather irksome, this especially affects me because I seem to have a disproportionately receptive and sticky brain for trailers (and all the images, lines, and musical cues therein). I only have to see a trailer once to have it lightly etched into my memory, and by the third or so time every frame of it is burned there forever. Thus, when I actually see the movie in question, a phenomenon occurs where I am actively anticipating every microscopic fragment of the trailer. I call this "trailer bingo."

It truly makes me crazy. Symptoms range from noticing that a character is wearing the same outfit as a clip from the trailer and thus waiting for a certain line to come up, to realizing that the movie can't be over yet because a particular moment has not yet occurred. Even for movies whose trailers are mostly visual, such as A Single Man and Micmacs, I kept waiting for every single two-second closeup to appear.

For the most part, I can manage. The one truly unbearable studio, however, is Fox Searchlight. They mercilessly beat you over the head with their trailers (never more than one for the same film, either) for months. My boyfriend and I could fully recite and act out the trailers for The Wrestler, (500) Days of Summer, Crazy Heart and most recently, Cyrus. (He's not as badly afflicted as I am, though.)

I generally have a low threshold for repetition - even for things I like - so perhaps that explains it. I'm not sure what to do about it other than sit in the lobby like a sulking toddler for the entirety of the previews, which isn't a very appealing notion. Guess I'm destined to suffer forever...

Does this affect you too, or am I just completely insane?

Five solid female characters in Apatow (or Apatow-esque) movies

You might have heard that Judd Apatow's upcoming projects (at least as producer) mark a departure from his typical bro-centric fare. He's producing Business Trip, which stars his wife Leslie Mann and is described as a female version of The Hangover, and Bridesmaids, which is supposed to be kind of like Bride Wars but actually funny. I give kudos to Apatow for branching out. He and his contemporaries (aka his peers working in similar styles) are not known for their favorable depictions of women. And while I get that not every female character has to have Meryl Streep levels of depth and complexity, and I'm totally fine with goofy flat characters in an otherwise pleasing comedy, many of these films are downright Freudian in their widespread castration anxiety. In films like The Hangover and Knocked Up, we see women who more or less ban their significant others from having any fun. These shrill, naggy women are sometimes "traded" for more awesome, easygoing women (in the case of The Hangover, it's a stripper). And the men never take any responsibility, oh no. In Hot Tub Time Machine, Craig Robinson's character Nick was somehow coerced into hyphenating his last name when he gets married. This is portrayed as an act of God that Nick was powerless to prevent, whereas in reality if this was a healthy relationship they would sit down and discuss it like adults, and Nick wouldn't have to do it if he didn't feel comfortable with it. But by just smiling and nodding and then secretly feeling emasculated, men enable these behaviors in women. Even when it doesn't go that far, the women are often just unbearable shrews, as in Knocked Up.

But there's hope - there have been a few femme bright spots in Apatow and company's oeuvre, and I've singled out five below. Granted, the following are no Katharine Hepburns, but they bring a welcome and refreshing touch to the world of chubby man-children. It might even seem like these cool gals actually outnumber the shrews. But even if that's the case, there is much more attention paid when filmmakers get it wrong then when they get it right. Or more accurately, audiences and critics are either praising the profound Streep types or slinging mud at Apatow's creations. I wrote this post, then, to highlight the modest achievements of this filmmaking group which I feel have been overlooked or negated in discussing their work. Here we go...

Catherine Keener as Trish in The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)
There was actually a great female character at the dawn of the Apatow era, played by the consistently great Keener. In fact, the richness of the character probably stems from the fact that Keener never lets herself play a flimsy part, because it certainly had nothing to do with Apatow himself. In an early draft, Trish was a bored waitress who didn't seem to have a lot going on in her life or her head. In the finished film, she's sexy, messy, complicated, and extremely likable. She loves her children but gets flustered dealing with them, she's sexually aggressive but also insecure, she runs her own business but dreams of making it something more. In short, she's totally real.

Emma Stone as Jules in Superbad (2007)
Even more rare than finding a worthwhile female character in a male-driven comedy is finding a high school age worthwhile female character in a male-driven comedy. Enter Jules. In comparison to a lot of other vacuous sex objects in similar films (including, arguably, the same film's lovable floozy Becca), Jules is confident, non-slutty, doesn't even drink, and doesn't have to settle for a guy vastly inferior to her in the looks department (Jonah Hill) just because the script calls for it. (She can also hold her own opposite the rambunctious Hill.) She seems to be popular because she's actually a cool person, not because she has the inexplicable draw of an attractive bitch.

Elizabeth Banks as Miri in Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)
In male comedies, even where there are solid female characters, they are never the men's equal. They have less screen time, they don't get funny lines, and they're generally subjected to lighter lifting. Not when Kevin Smith teams up with Elizabeth Banks, however. Zack and Miri are best friends and roommates who support each other through thick and thin. They can casually discuss everything from masturbation to porno titles, and Banks is never put on a pedestal - she has a fair share of humiliation, like finding out her high school crush is gay or that a video of her in granny panties went viral. She also seems to have a healthy sexuality that's neither promiscuous or prudish, another onscreen rarity.

Rashida Jones as Zooey in I Love You, Man (2009)
So maybe Zooey's a little bland, but may all bland female characters strive to be like her! She's fun, easygoing, and understanding - she accompanies her fiancee Peter to a Rush concert without ever having heard of them and even has a good time (until Peter starts getting kind of weird with his new friend Sydney). When she gets mad at him, it's for completely reasonable things, and she keeps encouraging him to have his own life and friends. The only area where I'd dock points is that her best friends are bitchy caricatures, but they're comic relief so it's not a huge deal.

Elisabeth Moss as Daphne in Get Him to the Greek (2010)
A film about a hard-partying rock star's journey with a timid record label employee doesn't seem like the place where you'd find someone like Daphne, but there she is. Cute without being unreasonably attractive, she does fall into the typical trap of preferring reruns of "Gossip Girl" to sex and going out, but she has the completely legitimate excuse of working insane shifts at a hospital. Aaron (Jonah Hill) and Daphne's relationship is under stress because of her job, but they still seem playful and happy together. Most surprising, however, is when she takes control of her sexuality in an extreme and hilarious way near the end of the film as revenge for some of Aaron's wrongs. Where most girls would just scream and cry, she plows ahead and...well, I won't spoil it!

Have I missed anyone? Do you still believe that this generation of filmmakers are all just chauvinist pigs? Sound off in the comments!

Movie Memories: The Little Mermaid

Writing of my deficient movie youth in the last post, it nudged me to finally start a new feature I had long been considering called Movie Memories. The idea is simple: recall notable movie-viewing experiences from my life. Unlike many of my other hastily aborted features, however, I think this one will stick better because I have 23 years of material to work with already. So let's begin at the beginning, with the first movie I ever saw in a theater: The Little Mermaid.

It's 1989 and I'm two and a half years old, still an only child. My dad is taking me to a movie theater, a big, dark, cavernous place, to see something called The Little Mermaid. We pass by the concession stand and my dad offers to buy me a treat. The world stops for a moment.

You see, my mom is a strict sugar Nazi, who fervently denies me access to sweets, except on the rarest of occasions. My dad, however, doesn't care. I consider my options carefully, but there is really no contest - I choose my favorite, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. This is far more exciting than the notion of seeing a moving picture.

We settle into our seats, and I stare up at the looming screen. I rarely ever consider this now, but especially before stadium seating became the norm, poor kids across the world must have been craning their necks at almost impossible angles to see the screen in spite of their stature. I can't bear the wait any longer and I devour the first of my two Reese's, cupping the other in my hand to save for later.

The lights dim, and what seems like a very long series of cartoons begins. I now realize two things: those were trailers for upcoming animated movies, and it wasn't long at all. It's pretty wild to think about how slowly time moved when you were a kid - everything that I can remember from before age five or so seems like a feverish dream. I recall it seemed like about 45 minutes of "cartoons," one of which was advertising an entry in the Land Before Time franchise.

Then the movie begins, quickly solidifying a love of the film that continues to this day (except that Ursula, both then and now, may be the most terrifying thing I've ever seen). After I feel that a considerable amount of time has passed (it probably hasn't), I decide that it is now appropriate to eat my other Reese's. But do you know what happens to chocolate when cradled in a warm palm? I sure didn't, and I look down to find sugary sludge where my treat once resided. I start crying. My dad saves the day, however, by ducking out of the theater to buy me a replacement. If my math is correct, then, I might have actually scored an extra Reese's in the process.

Thus begins a lifetime of watching a flickering screen in the dark with strangers. Only now I don't sit there clutching chocolate in my bare hands.

Catching up on a lost cinematic childhood

I will begin by saying that I was NOT raised Mormon, or any other religion that forbids its followers from viewing or otherwise experiencing certain media. What does that have to do with anything? Well, it might be your first assumption when I reveal the surprising list of films I did not see growing up.

If it was a classic loved by children and young adults from the 80s (or thereabouts), I almost certainly missed it. Back to the Future. The Star Wars trilogy. Ghostbusters. Honestly, I don't know what happened. Your parents are your first source of pop culture influence, and my parents couldn't care less about it. They never prevented me from seeing anything (within reason, of course), but they never encouraged me to watch anything either. (It was the same with music - I don't think I was even exposed to the Beatles until high school, and I had to seek them out.) The lone exceptions were the time that my mom held me hostage when I was home sick and made me watch The Sound of Music, and the fact that my dad often tried to convince me and my sister to watch violent action movies on TV with him. Not even good action movies, either - but drab, explodey ones with the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren (I seem to recall one where Lundgren freaks out anytime he sees anything white?). I didn't get great movie exposure from friends either. So suddenly I found myself as a college student who hadn't seem some of the most beloved films of my own generation.

I feel pretty good about my standing with the film history/film snob canon, but I'd be remiss to dismiss its popular cousin. So, under the guidance of my boyfriend (who had a normal childhood), and a contribution from a similarly-normal ex, I sought to rectify this situation. It's strange and a bit sad to experience this films solely as an adult, but frankly, I'm not sure how much I would have liked a lot of them when I was younger. The best jokes would have gone over my head, and anything remotely unnerving would have scarred me for life (I'm still a relative wimp, but I once ran away screaming from slightly ominous segment on "Sesame Street," to give you an idea). Plus, I'm free from the constraints of nostalgia, or even nostalgia's nameless relative wherein I didn't even particularly love something as a kid but I'm still unable to evaluate it objectively. (For me, that's The Wizard of Oz. I don't even know if I liked it, but it's just the goddamn Wizard of Oz!).

So here is my progress so far. I have viewed all of these films for the first time at age 20 or older.

Alien (1979)
Wow. Wow wow wow. Can you believe that this film is over 30 years old? I can't. The set and prop design and special effects haven't aged a day, and the cast maintains a pitch-perfect sense of tense restraint. The suspense is orchestrated beautifully, and I didn't see the twists coming at all (maybe I was just lucky enough to avoid hearing about them). Definitely something that darling little girls don't typically see, but all the boys did and I owed it to myself as a film fan. I'm not naturally predisposed to sci-fi/horror, but this one won me over hook, line, and sinker.

Aliens (1986)
So remember everything I liked about the original? Well, remove that, and you end up with Aliens. I've detailed my troubled relationship with James Cameron already, and this is no exception. I understand that it's an action movie instead of sci-fi or horror, but it wasn't really working for me on that level either. Sure, there are impressive moments, but I was bummed that Cameron traded the sterile, futuristic environment for something resembling a flashy 80s music video. A lot of the compositions felt frenzied and cluttered, and almost all the characters (Ripley excluded) were goofy 80s stereotypes. Ripley's ascension to heroine was of course fantastic, but we all agree that Newt is annoying and lame. I know she needs to be there for the maternal themes, but how awesome would it have been if Ripley just kept saving her lesser male comrades? Also, I felt an overwhelming sense that they were trying to disguise a lack of actual aliens. The "don't show the monster" approach can be effective in low-budget, atmospheric horror, but it just seems pathetic in an action blockbuster.

Back to the Future (1985)
Most of the time, the three-act structure seems like a drag - "oh, now it's time for the low point!", etc. But it was not originally intended to weigh films down, but to give them life, and sometimes there are films that execute it so perfectly that they freakin sparkle. BTTF is a well-oiled machine that glides along without so much as a hiccup. Everything works, be it Michael J. Fox's boyish charm, the quaint world of the 1950s, the lovably insane Doc Brown, the incalculable menace of Biff, or the thrill of a ride in a souped-up DeLorean. It's good clean fun that never takes itself too seriously. It's a shame I didn't see this as a kid, but as you can see, it's never too late!

A Christmas Story (1983)
My reason for not seeing this one as a kid is simple: it's about Christmas. Being raised Jewish, Christmas was just that stupid day that I never got to be a part of, so I didn't feel compelled to participate in any of its cinematic traditions (even though many are good films in their own right). But when I watched the movie a couple of years ago, I realized that it's something that even a surly Scientologist could enjoy. The depictions of a wacky family transcend all generations and religions. I might even go so far as to say that it's the perfect holiday movie - it has the same theme as all of them (family and loved ones are what matters most at Christmastime) but wrapped in a twisted, sweet-and-sour package that includes scary Santas, f-bombs, leg lamps, BB guns, and a Christmas dinner in a Chinese restaurant. The introspective voiceover also keeps the proceedings from getting too treacly. Pity I didn't catch any TV showings of it when I was little, but I have many Christmases to come.

Dumb and Dumber (1994)
As I wrote in a previous post about "dumb comedy", don't let the title here fool you - this is a smartly-executed flick. A testament to its comedy is the fact that the things I laughed at the most had much more to do with the actors' delivery than the actual lines. Some of the more scatological gags weren't really my scene, but Carrey and Daniels play off each other with such impeccable timing that I'm not really sure how you couldn't dig this one.

Ghostbusters (1984)
In a word: yay! I was lucky enough to see it in a theater, even, no doubt filled with people who loved it in their youth. I realized that I was primarily familiar with Bill Murray's "serious" work, so it was great to see him play freewheeling and silly while still maintaining a deadpan edge (the rest of the gang is great too, of course). I think a trap that many comedies run into (particularly in the 80s) is that they try either too little or too much to make you laugh. Too little when they expect you to find the most basic of premises and situations funny, and too much when they're really straining for yuks. Ghostbusters hits the sweet spot, though - a pleasant and zany ride with demented supernatural elements (giant marshmallow man?!).

Jurassic Park (1993)
Action or effects-driven movies can often be like softcore porn: you have to sit through the silly talky parts to get to the good stuff. In Jurassic Park, the dinosaur sequences, particularly the T-Rex chase in the rain, are stunning. But the characters and everything else fall flat. Am I asking too much when I want my popcorn movies to be consistently entertaining? I don't think so, because those movies do exist. I also have trouble with the notion that an insanely brilliant scientist would put GIANT AGGRESSIVE CARNIVOROUS BEASTS in his park, when a park full of herbivorous dinosaurs would earn him just as much money and acclaim.

Star Wars (1977) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
The problem with some sci-fi/action films that are intended as franchises (or that just end up being one) is that the first one has to go through the motions of establishing the world and the character histories. Sometimes this can be fun ("I was bitten by a radioactive spider and now weird things are happening!"), but even at its best, it's typically more fun in the sequels when you can take everything you've established and just play. Thus, I found Empire to be much more enjoyable, because it could build on the somewhat dull foundations of the original. Han was more charming, Luke more heroic, Vader more villainous, the situations more dire, the Force stronger...you name it. The first one seemed to be more about "look at these crazy planets and creatures I made up!". The prevailing theory is just that Lucas is a weak director. Who knows. For me, Empire offered some genuine thrills, which I just found to be lacking in the first. I have yet to see Return of the Jedi - look for that in a future installment!

The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
I have rarely felt James Cameron movies to be anything more than vehicles for technological innovation. If he was in charge of the special effects and left the writing and directing to someone else, I think the final product would be infinitely better. The Terminator films at least have an interesting premise that Cameron cooked up himself, but he struggles to carry it. Even if he did do it first, the fact that the world must be saved by a helpless-looking and unlikely candidate is unbearably cliched by now. The goofiness of the doctors and cops who don't believe Sarah Connor is over the top, Edward Furlong is annoying, some of the effects are distractingly bad (which would be fine if others weren't amazing - clearly there are capable people working on this, and it's the disparity that's the problem), and it's a little troubling to see Sarah fall for what might be nothing more than the most elaborate pick-up attempt of all time. The presence of Ahnuld makes for automatic camp, and I wish they had given in to that lighter tone more instead of making these films the deadly-serious affair that they are.  


That's it for now, but I still have to see Die Hard, the Indiana Jones films, Return of the Jedi and any or all Bond films, at least.

What childhood classics did you catch up on later? How did they stack up?