The Bourne Supremacy: 2004, dir. Paul Greengrass. Seen at Gateway (Sept. 18).
Oh, lord. How long has it been since we saw this movie? I didn’t write about it right away because I didn’t have much to say. I don’t have much to say now, either.
This was a summer action movie, but we didn’t see it until the end of summer, at which point it lost a lot of its allure. I feel like movies like this should be seen in the middle of the day, so that part of the enjoyment is that you have walked across the glaringly hot parking lot into a dark, cool theater. Instead, it was dark outside when we went, and we saw it at Gateway, which has a theater lobby that sounds like a bus station.
Category: films seen in 2004
Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
Napoleon Dynamite: 2004, dir. Jared Hess. Seen at Alamo Village (October 2).
Okay. Hands up. Who has seen Napoleon Dynamite?
Okay. Who liked it? You did?
Why, in God’s name, why?
And why did some of you tell me to see it? Were you drinking? Were you partaking? Did you have your hand up someone’s skirt? Were you suffering from Friends deprivation and desperate for some sitcom, any sitcom, to make you laugh?
movies this week: distracted by books
The Monster Book Sale is going on this weekend in Austin. Tons of library books and donated books are going to be on sale for $1 or $2, and then on Sunday the leftovers will go for $3 a bag or $5 a box. And all the money goes to Austin libraries, so how can I resist?
A smart bookcase store really should post ads outside of this sale, they would absolutely clean up on business.
Anyway, you can see where my mind is today, since I am going to the book sale after work. I have the baby stroller in my car so I won’t have to lug around a big bag of heavy books. My mind is not on movies, other than wondering if I can get some cheap film books. Last time I found a nice copy of The Celluloid Closet lost on the Architecture table.
seven DVDs in August
I’m backlogged on writing about the movies I’ve seen recently, in theaters and on DVD. So I’m going to catch up here with summaries of seven movies on DVD that I saw for the first time in August. (There were nine, but the Alice Adams and The Manchurian Candidate reviews were so long that I moved them to their own entries.)
It’s a little sad to see that I only went to a movie theater once, for The Manchurian Candidate. I had sinus hell for two consecutive weekends in August, and then I was home resting after the medical thing for another weekend (and couldn’t wear glasses for that long). But there weren’t that many enticing movies in theaters so I also felt relatively unmotivated. I feel satisfied enough that I saw nine new movies in the past month, even if they weren’t in theaters.
The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
The Manchurian Candidate: 2004, dir. Jonathan Demme. Seen at Barton Creek/Cinemark (August 27).
The remake of The Manchurian Candidate is one of those movies that I liked while I was watching, and then afterwards I kept thinking of a million different plot holes and implausibilities. I did buy the initial premise of the movie, but I think I bought it because I bought it in the last movie. In other words, I believed that this stuff was true because it had been true for the last movie. Also, I hadn’t seen a Jonathan Demme movie in maybe 10 years, and noticing all the familiar directorial touches and the usual cameos (I caught Charles Napier but totally didn’t recognize Roger Corman or Tracey Walter) might have helped me believe the general premise of the movie.
Out of Sight (1998)
Out of Sight: 1998, dir. Steven Soderbergh. Seen on DVD (July 18).
I rented Out of Sight because I read the Elmore Leonard book while I was in Vegas and I wanted to see how well it was adapted. Would it be as good as Get Shorty? Or would I be terribly disappointed?
I was hoping I would like the movie because it had George Clooney in it, who is consistently entertaining, particularly when working with Steven Soderbergh (we won’t mention Solaris). I love Ocean’s Eleven. And Scott Frank, who adapted Get Shorty, also adapted this one.
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Spider-Man 2: 2004, dir. Sam Raimi. Seen at Gateway (July 17).
It’s hard for me to start writing about Spider-Man 2 because I’m not sure what to say. It’s a summer blockbuster. It busted its blocks, or at least a couple of box-office records, quite capably. It was entertaining, occasionally clever and amusing, and didn’t treat the audience with contempt. I had a good time and if Sam Raimi directed a third Spider-Man movie, I’d be there.
Isn’t that enough of a review?
Giant (1956)
Giant: 1956, dir. George Stevens. Seen at Paramount (July 18).
I don’t generally like Fifties drama films, and I saw entirely too many in a grad school class on melodrama in film and TV. I had the sneaking suspicion Giant fell into that category of film. But my boyfriend wanted to see it, and I figured it would be Good For Me, so I went along.
My boyfriend did not realize how long the film would be, long enough for an intermission. At the intermission, I turned to him and said, “You wanted to see this movie, but you refuse to see Gone with the Wind? Because …” and he shrugged, understanding me. Both movies have that same kind of epic storytelling tone. He doesn’t mind watching epics, he just doesn’t want to see a movie glamorizing the antebellum South, and I can’t blame him for that. (I’m rather burned out on GWTW myself.)
Brother Bear (2003) (moose commentary)
Brother Bear: 2003: dir. Aaron Blaise, Robert Walker. Seen on DVD (July 11).
Let me explain. It would never have occurred to me in a million years to rent Brother Bear, which looked like a pretty mediocre Disney offering. But then my boyfriend put it in the rental queue after reading about the special commentary track performed by Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis, reprising their moose characters from the movie. The moose sound a whole lot like certain other characters for which Thomas and Moranis are well-known: Bob and Doug McKenzie. I am not a huge McKenzie brothers fan, although my brothers did subject me to repeated viewings of Strange Brew. I also am not a huge Disney fan these days. However, I was curious about the commentary track, which some articles described as rather surprising in contrast to the movie itself.
one month, 13 movies
I like to write a summary of every new movie I see, so that I’ll have a record of it later on. I want to be able to recall what I thought about it, when I saw it, and so on. If you’ve been reading my stuff for awhile, you’ve probably noticed these summaries/reviews.
I am way behind on these, so I have decided to catch up all in one entry here. That’s 13 movies, a couple of paragraphs each, just to jog my memory. It’s a pretty interesting collection. These are the movies I’ve seen for the first time in the past month.