Movies Thus Far

If you read the last post you know I have a new goal to watch 750 movies this year. I'm a little behind since I didn't choose this goal until 1/2way through the month of January but I'm slowly but surely catching up.

January 1-15
1. Before Night Falls. Good movie about a Cuban writer prosecuted after Castro gained power.
2. All the President's Men. I really liked this one about Woodward and Bernstein, the journalists who unearthed the Watergate saga.
3. Burden of the Dreams. A definite look at the crazy that is documentarian Werner H.erzog. WOW! Dreams really can be a burden, I'll tell you that. It was part amusing, part train wreck. I really wanted him to give it up.
4. Slumdog Millionaire. An Indian love story. It was cute. I didn't think it was necessarily Oscar-worthy though.
5. Red Nightmare. No. No, no, no.
6. I Am Legend. Interesting but creepy.
7. Right at Your Door. WAY too long to get to the inevitable. I liked the surprise ending. It just took too long to get there.
8. The Bucket List. Not as funny as I thought it would be but I enjoyed it.
9. Overnight. WOW cautionary tale. It made me want to think of everything that ever comes out of my mouth VERY carefully after a watching this man squander a 2 picture deal as an untrained filmmaker because of his big mouth. He didn't know how to shut up and lost EVERYTHING as a result. I wanted to turn it off but Rashan wouldn't let me. I'm kind of glad. :P No gloating, Rashan.
10. Lolita. I really don't remember this movie even though I know I saw the whole thing.
11. Holiday. Carey Grant and Katherine Hepburn. Amusing. I liked it.
12. Paris is Burning. Documentary about the 1980s ballroom scene of gay black men in NY. I really liked it.
13. Mayor of the Sunset Strip. Kind of sad. About a male groupie from the 1960s who became the it guy of L.A. but has now become largely irrelevant.
14. The Self-Made Man. Depressing and thought-provoking but yet still made me want to turn away. I was in class so it wasn't possible. The story of a man who had to make the decision of whether to commit suicide upon learning he had an operable brain aneurysm in addition to advanced prostate cancer and the impact of his decision on his family. The story was told my his family, including his daughter, the filmmaker. I definitely didn't love it. It definitely could've benefited from being shorter.
15. Rome: Open City. Another in-class film. This one from the Italian Neo-realism era. Too long. Meandered to get to the point.
16. The Cutting Edge. Good movie, again, too long. I did want to see many of the movies mentioned and started taking notes during the film. Lol.
17. Winged Migration. 4 years of migration of various bird flocks. I was done after 30 minutes despite the beautiful photography. I mean really. How long can I watch birds fly? Apparently an hour and a half.
18. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. I'm really, really not a nature person. There were some pointless interviews. I didn't like the font used for text though it may or may not have been appropriate for the film. I didn't like the narration. Professional narrators and/or actors really are so much better.
19. Gray Matter. Not a fan of the narration. I've come to realize I'm extraordinarily picky about filmmakers narrating and personal documentaries. Lots of talking heads, a minimum of video. The pictures of the handicapped children who were killed and used for research in Nazi Austria were moving. I would've used them at more regular intervals. His usage was seemingly haphazard.
20. Dare Not Walk Alone. St. Augustine's fight for Civil Rights. Heavy on Dr. King's involvement to the detriment of the inclusion of local leaders. Rough transition from the 1960s to the present. Odd mix of styles and too many story lines which jumped around too much. The first 1/4 of the film was amazing, particularly the use of archival footage, then it seemed to oddly become a completely different film about present day St. Augustine without connecting it to the past.
21. The Unbelievable Truth. Unbelievably bad. Quite odd. Not the worst movie I've ever seen but it made absolutely no sense to me. Rashan didn't mind it. But he loves being seen as odd so consider the source.... lol.
22. Big Mama. An 89 y.o. grandmother fighting to raise her 9 y.o. grandson who was born to a drug-addicted mother who disappeared, his father is dead. She gets sick, he begins lashing out. Oddly not depressing, though. I'm not sure why. I think because I still felt like at the end despite the issues, he is going to make it.
23. Bride Wars. Oddly I liked it a lot. There were one or 2 scenes that didn't work because they made me supremely uncomfortable and they didn't fit with the overall tone of the film but that was only 2 scenes. The rest of it was great. It got some pretty bad reviews but that's because you can't put Bride Wars and Amelie and Revolutionary Road (not that I've seen it) on the same rating scales. Come on.
24. Semi-Pro. As dumb as you thought it would be. I loves multiple brain cells. Rashan made me watch this.
25. To Catch A Thief. Amusing. I thought a different thief would've been more interesting. Saw Grace Kelly and thought, wow... she has a (multi-thousand dollar) handbag named after her and she was a princess. (More interested in the handbag lol.)
26. Huey Long. Really long. (Only 88 minutes but sometimes that seems extraordinarily long.) Amazing use of archival footage.