Nerdflix, I Love Thee: From Luc Besson's Existentialism to Mel Gibson's Ultraviolence

When I was contemplating what to write about for my blog post this week, I considered cutting this Nerdflix, I Love Thee feature. I thought to myself, I'd been putting off a new entry in this series for a while now at first because I thought I've felt completely unexcited about a lot of the films I've watched via the online DVD/streaming service. Then yesterday I saw a film in the theaters called The Brothers Bloom. And while it was by no means perfect, I came out of it thinking, "there were way too many good things about that movie to call myself unexcited about it." Especially in a sea of blockbuster averageness this summer, I'm grateful to find movies that have even just one interesting thing about them, much less one like Brothers that has innumerable interesting things. So I took a gander back at my recent Nerdflix history and with a new and refreshed perspective, I found the "post-core reverberations transcendic" even to the tiniest degree in each of these films (and one TV show), even though none of them jumped out and screamed "awesome!" to me. And thus, we continue with the un-revolutionary but, to me, incredibly necessary feature Nerdflix, I Love Thee...

Angel-A: Well it's easy to find the good in something when it's pretty, so Luc Besson's (who brought us pretty and awesome movies like The Professional and The Fifth Element) 2005 existentialist character-driven fantasy is pretty easy to get excited about. Yes, even when it's essentially the same plot as It's A Wonderful Life and the word "quirky" is impossible not to use when discussing it. Jamel Debbouze is a terrifically talented actor, both in comedic and tragic territory, but his version of Jimmy Stewart (named Andre here) is so lightly sketched by Besson here that there's little for him to work with depth-wise other than convincingly making us giggle and feel sorry for him, but only to a certain extent. The devastatingly gorgeous Rie Rasmussen plays the angel that eggs him on to find meaning in his life even when she clearly enforces that there is no meaning is equally effective as an actress and complex symbol of desire and artificiality, but yet again, Besson's too busy wowing us with his skills as a director (seriously, probably the most beautiful B&W cinematography of the past 20 years) to fully develop her background as a (possibly?) former human to make us care about the crazy wicked ending sequence. Nerdflix Instructions: Add to Neverending Queue.

The Promotion: And when a mostly mediocre movie's not pretty, you can always rely on idiotic humor to make it even remotely worthwhile. Hell, isn't that the reason everyone still goes to see Will Ferrell vehicles? They're never good, but the allure of a larf by a guy who talks loud and has beady eyes is undeniable, regardless of the film's plot, general oafishness, or excruciatingly annoying supporting cast. Doesn't hurt when your film's scribe and director is a guy who you know as "having potential" in the dramatic area as well as the comedic zone. His screenplay for The Weather Man had funny moments that made up for the cloying dramatic pitfalls and his one for The Pursuit of Happyness had honest, tender, and moving moments that I ate up despite the film's emotionally manipulative warmth. So when his 2008 directorial debut starred Seann William Scott, who recently became revelatory in Role Models, and John C. Reilly, who I love as a dramatic actor and have always wanted to love as a comedic one (but never have). Put it all in a blender and you get The Promotion - pure mediocrity with sprinkles of genius and knee-slapping goodness. Worth it, but don't expect the world. Nerdflix Instructions: Add to Neverending Queue.

Paprika: Apparently there's such thing as "anime that doesn't totally blow". Well DoktorPeace has proved that before (though I never followed up on his suggestions like I promised myself i would) but this film, while once again not mind-blowing, was enough to at least get to me to add some supposedly legendary animes such as Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle to my queue thanks to some persuasive arguments devised by my students. I knew I wanted to branch out and see Paprika back when it came out in 2006 because it dealt with dreams, which I'm always a sucker for when it comes to movies. Unfortunately, for every great movie dealing in dreams (Eternal Sunshine), there's one that infuriates me and swears off an otherwise likeable director (Richard Linklater's Waking Life) for me. And if you're paying attention even a smidgen to this entry's theme, director Satoshi Kon both succeeded and failed with this, his most well-known feature stateside. Centering around the theft of a psychology research institution's most prized possession (a machine that allows therapists to view their patients' dreams), it wows with its animated splendor and philosophical ponderings as much as it devolves into nonsense in its convoluted plot and lack of character development. Kinda like...yes, Waking Life. But at least this movie tried to have a plot - hey-oh! Nerdflix Instructions: Add to Neverending Queue.

Undeclared (The Complete Series): Okay so this is as close as we get to awesome in this month's Nerdflix feature. But as much as Judd Apatow may seem like my homeboy on this blog, even I admit that while he may be the mainstream blockbuster comedy's savior, his movies still are not flawless. And neither was his second failed attempt at a TV series after the demise of his first and only perfect project (Freaks & Geeks). If you've never seen it, it's an awkward Jay Baruchel (the guy who wants to marry Jennifer Love Hewitt in Tropic Thunder) trying to reform his identity as a college freshman at Generic University (not really its name) aside his new roommates Seth Rogen, Charlie Hunnam (of Sons of Anarchy), and Timm Sharp, who is by far the most interesting of the supporting cast. It's too bad he still hasn't made a name for himself as an actor. The other gem is Jason Segal as a controlling boyfriend of Baruchel's love interest, who continues to impress me after his ability to be a protagonist in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and wonky sidekick in I Love You, Man. All in all, it's fun as hell to watch, but unfortunately what makes Apatow's work stick out elsewhere is its emotional resonance, which is largely either absent or confused throughout Undeclared. Although I wouldn't be surprised if it was largely FOX bossing Apatow around and not keeping track of their script revisions. Ooh also: a brilliant Will Ferrell cameo that proves the man is best as a supporting actor and should have remained that. Nerdflix Instructions: Add to Neverending Queue.

Apocalypto: Yes, I willingly watched it. For the second year in a row, when talking action movies in Film Studies, a large portion of my students brought up the "kickassness that is Apocalypto". Once again, I thought I misheard them. "You mean Mel Gibson's period piece about the Mayans?" I assumed they'd respond, "Oh our badz, we meant Apocalypse Now; we're big fans of abstract adaptations of Joseph Conrad works." But nay, they indeed meant the film in question. After my jaw dropped, I asked, "are you sure it's not incredibly boring?" They said it was "the coldest" film they had ever seen. They said if I rented it, I would not be disappointed. So I did. And I wasn't. Don't get me wrong - Mel Gibson is a terrible human being. It's very clear he did little to no research about Mayan culture and his attempts at making them seem like the highly evolved, civilized, and intelligent people that most people agree they were usurped by his desire to have a cast dominated by intensely animalistic savagery. But there's one thing for sure - the man knows how to turn a single chase scene into an entire movie and never leave you blinking. Essentially it's the story of a kidnapped man who tries to escape his captors to get back to his wife and child, who are hiding from the blood-thirsty rivaling community. Yes, sounds lame, but the action sequences are ridiculously clever, complexly filmed, and breath-takingly engaging. It's so not fair. And while the main actor Rudy Youngblood does what he can to escape the insipid "other" stereotype Gibson created for him, the rest of the cast cannot, and we're ultimately left with the most delicious pile of rotten Nazi apples of the man's questionable career. Nerdflix Instructions: Add to Neverending Queue.

Nerdflix I Love Thee: From The Barren Antarctic To Richard Gere Biopic Tedium

I've finally come off my high of doing 2008 catch-up. This will be the last edition of this feature for 2009 that largely spotlights my attempts at revising my personal Top Ten list for the previous year. Now that I officially have found ten films from 2008 that I truly love, I feel like I can be at peace with my journey. Imagine me at the top of a blizzardy mountainous peak, a path marked by film reel and a pack of pistachios (my 2008 sustenance of choice) slung over my shoulder. Other film freaks, critics, and people with lives either never embarked on the arduous quest or they have long since descended and started chowing down their 2009 offerings long before I had even known the greatness of Melissa Leo. It's sad up here at the top, especially when you're the lame kid in gym class that just figured out how to play bombardment. Here be the latest entry in my Nerdflix DVD/Watch Now diary, written to you from atop the precipice...

Encounters At The End Of The World: Yeah so brilliant documentarian Werner Herzog inspired my forced Everest metaphor, so what? I can't help it. He's probably the only consistently cutting edge filmmaker of his medium, so naturally I feel the need to rip him off in more oblique and obvious fashions. When he brings you a documentary about a man who's crazy in love with grizzly bears, he brings it hard and weird. With adorable foxes and crap. And when he brings you a wide array of non-fiction factoids about everything at the extreme end of our Earth's southern hemisphere, you know he's going to go all schizo with it, cutting between an interview with a guy who works at an ice cream shoppe in the middle of an industrial village and shots of bottom-dwelling crustaceans that might contain genes tracing back to the beginning of time. Atop all of this is of course narration that is truthful as a textbook but as abstract as a Lynchian nightmare, delivered with Herzog's discomforting and intriguing snarl. It's mesmerizing and sure as eff should have beat out Jackass On Wire. Nerdflix Instructions: Move To Top Of Queue.

Towelhead: Alan Ball, is there no controversial topic you're afraid to tackle? Rather, I should ask, did you feel American Beauty didn't cram enough deadpan suburban depression down the audience's throat for your tastes? You just had to tell the same story, but add a half-Arab protagonist with a black boyfriend into the white upper-middle class neighborhood. The rest is still there: a soldier that stirs up a political subtext, pedophilia, possible homosexuality, and female sexual awakening. Throw in Toni Colette as an uber-liberal neighbor, place it all during Desert Storm and just call the president by his last name, and you've got one big mess of shock and awe. What's most infuriating? It's all actually pretty interesting and engaging. Definitely nothing that moved me or will stick with me, but Ball has a way with characters (especially the dad, played by Peter Macdissi) that makes them as complex as much as it makes them obvious and facile. Nerdflix Instructions: Add To Neverending Queue.

Frozen River: My March faves listing says it all. This is the perfect movie to crawl up with on a late weekday night with all the lights off and just totally grip you from beginning to end. The setup makes it sound like a standard melodrama: lower-class single mother wants to buy her sons a bigger trailer to live in, starts trafficking illegals over the border in order to afford it. But in fact it's as much a straight-up thriller as it is a heartstring-tugging tragedy. The natural lighting and cinematography is relentlessly enigmatic in its uncompromising honesty. Whether it's the dead black of night or the bright whiteness of a winter's day, first-time director Courtney Hunt is a marvel at making us care deeply for Melissa Leo's Ray not only as a human being but as a modern day anti-hero that we really want to see get away with doing some pretty awful things. And Leo deserved that surprise nom like none other, even more so than Jenkins in The Visitor. She's a wreck throughout, the perfect kind of forlorn soul for David Simon's next show (oh wait, that's happening! awesome!). See this movie please. Nerdflix Instructions: Move To Top Of Queue.

School Daze: Spike Lee was bound to fail me again one way or another. He's just too full of vibrancy and chutzpah to warrant the tag of "consistently rewarding filmmaker". What is consistent is that the ideas for, the execution of, and the performances within his movies are always outstanding. Unfortunately it's all those middle steps, such as flow and character development, that keep many (including myself) from calling too few of his films worthwhile. This one from 1988 (one year before his masterpiece Do The Right Thing) threads a narrative through the fictional campus of Mission University, a black-dominated college whose students struggle with frat pledging, social activism, and of course girls. And all through Lee's trademark lens of "it's not a race thing, it's a human thing" which always has and always will make him leagues beyond people like Paul Haggis, even when his filmmaking chops aren't up to par with his best work. Regardless, Laurence Fishburne pulls the film the best as he can with the little progression he's given as a protagonist, proving that his modern days as the CSI guy are even mroe depressing in retrospect. Also, whatever happened to Giancarlo Esposito? He's hammy and great. Ultimately though, I can't recommend spending your time with this. Nerdflix Instructions: Delete From Watch Instantly Queue.

The Hoax: So this Watch Instantly thing. Nerdflix has recently added a feature that allows the subscriber to know if a movie available on their Watch Now page will be relegated to DVD-only status anytime soon. Which is how I ended up watching this totally random flick as well as the previously reviewed Spike Lee joint. I figured I might as well take advantage of watching films like these online so I don't have to see them plop back into my stuffed-to-the-brim regular queue after they're made unavailable on Watch Now. Sure maybe I'll never get through either queue completely before I die, but at least it's an illusion of progress. I took this opportunity to present you this useless aside because while there are elements of interest in this (once again) totally random choice of film following a man named Clifford Irving (played by Richard Gere? since when do I watch Richard Gere movies?) who almost got away with writing a fake autobiography of the recluse billionaire Howard Hughes. It's your standard biopic/based-on-a-true-story formula with no flashy (read: interesting) direction, but at least the premise is slightly impressive in its basic form. The lovely Hope Davis plays a McGraw Hill assistant whose naivety and brilliance combat back and forth while Gere pretends to be likeable and Marcia Gay Harden and Alfred Molina both pretend they're no more than acceptable supporting cast. Nerdflix Instructions: Delete From Watch Instantly Queue.

Nerdflix, I Love Thee: More 2008 Catch-Up

The next best thing to running out and spending half your salary at the moviehouse trying to catch all the potential awards contenders before the Oscars nominations (this Thursday!) is Nerdflixing all the available 2008 titles that were on blog/print year-end Top 10 lists that the entertainment media world has been overwrought with over the past month-and-a-half. Here be a new batch of (mostly) winners, all of which are worth your time IMHO, but ranked in order of awesomeness (which should be the order of your Nerdflix queue of course) for your convenience:

Redbelt: My personal #1 movie of 2008. It slipped under the radar being an indie released to predictably solid reviews (written and directed by the reliable David Mamet of Glengarry Glen Ross fame), but in the first quarter of the year, ensuring that everyone except the wonderful Tasha Robinson of The AV Club would forget about it. While everyone hailed The Dark Knight (partially deservedly so) as the perfect synthesis of thrills and heady brain chills, Redbelt does the exact same without being overbloated and having an obnoxious gravelly superhero voice. Chiwetel Ejiofor is quite possibly the world's greatest on-screen hero that deserves superstardom, but is way too modest to ever let that happen, playing a martial arts teacher that gets embroiled in the most satisfying twisty-turny conspiracy in many years. And like Mamet does so well, every scene is imbued with contemplative but quick-witted dialogue and fast-paced excitement. This is what movies are all about: simultaneously escaping and provoking thought.

In Bruges: I was ready to be completely bored by this movie. It was in theaters for approximately seven years this spring here in Minneapolis and you couldn't see an indie movie without seeing its seemingly rote Tarantino/Guy Ritchie-ripoff-style trailer. It looked completely useless, but it got nothing but positive reviews. Flash forward to January 2009 and Colin Farrell, out of all the bland douchey-looking actors of our generation, is deservedly winning a Golden Globe? Apparently anything is truly possible. His performance, along with Brendan Gleeson's, makes this movie a must-see on its own. But the performances wouldn't be so eclectic (most hilariously manic and intensely sad) if it weren't for Martin McDonagh's subtle direction of a beautiful city (how it looks like Bruckheimer in Europe in the trailer but Malick in Europe in the actual movie is beyond me) and biting script, those performances wouldn't have happened. Yes, it's about two hitmen hiding out in a quirky tourist town, but it's also uniquely human and soft-hearted in its execution. No pun intended. Or is it?

Reprise: This movie wants to be great, and it has a lot of greatness in it, but it never fully reaches true affectation. The landscaping of Oslo and the constant artful framing of the Norwegian cast make up for the distracting back-and-forth of the chronology and character development, but ultimately I don't see this film sticking with me down the road. Two best friends send in their first novel manuscripts and only one gets published, and the fallout is documented. A narrator tells us what the characters are going through as we see them go through them, and sometimes it's literary and other times it's unnecessary. Luckily the outcomes in both of these young men's lives is unconventional and unpredictable enough to keep things lively, along with the quick-cut editing between flashbacks and flash-forwards.

Man On Wire: Dude has a dream, dude achieves dream, but at what cost? Not original, no. But at Qualler succinctly put it when discussing the film last night, "it was extremely well documented." And it's funny how such a basic element of documentary filmmaking can really make a final product soar above many others. How a movie with so much its premise stemming from illegal activity (albeit non-harmful acts such as highwire walking between the Twin Towers) can have so much legitimate footage (and incredibly well-preserved and beautiful footage at that!) from events leading up to and following the climax fo the man's life is astonishing enough to merit giving this otherwise slow-moving picture a look-see. The turn which the mood takes during the film's final act makes up for the plodding that it does earlier, as does the sheer WTFness of achieving such a ridiculous goal in one's own life. Like so many coulda-been-great movies of 2008 (ahem, Benjamin Button), "it would have been a great short film."

Snow Angels: David Gordon Green, aka my new pet director whose films I will always see from here until eternity, really teeters on the edge of brilliance with this morose tale of small-town depression, but never fully hits it. Actually he does - the film's first 10 minutes, featuring Synecdoche, New York's (and my new favorite character actor) Tom Noonan giving one of the best monologues of the year, is mindblowing. After witnessing his harange in the middle of the gorgeously shot Midwestern snow, I thought for sure I would be smitten with following scenes featuring the underrated Kate Beckinsale (okay, maybe I like her for other reasons than her acting) and the critics' darling Sam Rockwell. Unfortunately, what follows is merely an involving and ultimately unsatisfying yarn about second chances and parenthood. It's relentlessly sad, but if you're into that (which I kinda am, okay, really am) it's worth it to see how the fascinating characters' fates eventually roll out.

Nerdflix, Qualler's DVR, and Random Minneapolis Theaters, I Love Thee: 2008 Potential

The Golden Globes announced their nominees in the past week and while I will reserve judgment until a) the Academy upchucks their most likely similar but more prestigious list of nods and/or b) I've seen a greater majority of the films nominated, I have made quite the effort in the past two weeks of crossing off a good chunk of 2008 movies from my "might not waste my time" list. I still have quite the ways to go regarding films both with and without year-end accolades, but I can say that thanks to two of the flicks mentioned below, I now have a non-embarrassing Top 10 list for the year. It was touch and go there for a bit, but thankfully it turns out there were in fact ten movies that came out this year that didn't waste my time by at least 80-90%. The two in question bookend this post, so you only have to have a bad taste in your mouth in the middle of it all.

Finding Amanda: Probably the most wrong the Nerdflix rating predictor-bot has ever been for me. It thought I would give this dark comedy 1.5 stars, when in fact I completely loved it. Full disclosure: one of my favorite movies of all time is The Cable Guy. It's not a fact I like to advertise, but I would be lying if I said I haven't seen it willingly at least 20 times. Election is also another all-time fave, but that's not nearly as embarrassing. Why you ask? Matthew Broderick. I am a sucker for this guy and I've never fully realized it until I watched the very obviously mediocre Finding Amanda, and totally fell for its misanthropic characters (which Broderick plays perfectly every time) and bought into its facile premise. A semi-autobiographical story from writer-director Peter Tolan (creator of Rescue Me) that follows the gambling-addicted and alcoholism-recovering Broderick into Las Vegas to find his lost niece who has become a prostitute. It's an unapologetically meek and small movie with no grandiose ambitions, which is one of the reasons I love it so much, and yet the quick-witted snarky dialogue and self-absorbed but sympathetic characters are so maniacally entertaining that it could never be labeled as generic or unmoving. Move To Top of Queue.

Transsiberian: I really really wanted a good thriller for 2008. I thought it might have been possible with Ben Kingsley as a hardcore Russian (see the can't-be-topped caper flick Sexy Beast), especially with mostly positive reviews, but Transsiberian sinks as soon as it defies logic, as all (***minor spoiler alert!***) "woops I killed someone" movies do. I really didn't think it was going to be a "woops I killed someone" movie (***end minor spoiler alert***), what with the many possibilities of setting a thriller on the trans-siberian railway (drugs, human trafficking, Russian mob), but alas director Brad Anderson proved me wrong. And he directed two episodes of The Wire! Oh yeah, directing television doesn't really mean much, does it? Anyway, I think I'm just drawn to variations on Strangers On A Train by nature, and I should learn by now that train thrillers just cannot go more than 40 minutes without starting to suck. I mean, Eric Bogosian is downright amazing in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, but not every movie can co-star "The Bogose." There are upsides though: Woody Harrelson is often hilariously believable as a naive do-gooder train nerd who gets mixed up in all the madness, and Kingsley is delightfully creepy until the lame twist rears its head at the end. But ultimately...Delete From Queue.

Flight of the Red Balloon: It does not matter how many glowing reviews I read of this modern update of the dearly beloved simple childhood short "The Red Balloon", I just could not bear to stay awake during it and have little to no desire to try to watch it again. I'd like to blame the large comfy blankie that Qualler and Brigitte provided for me. I'd like to blame the warm and cuddly puppy that rested on my tum-tum and even the fact that it was nearly (realizes it wasn't that late at night)...well nevermind. The fact is that it is a gorgeously shot film with a lot of calm confidence in integrating barely any conflict into the story (keeping with the simple journey theme of the original) other than the usual stresses of any single-parent households, but I just did not care enough to keep with it past the 40-minute mark. It makes me feel like a common plebian, but at least Transsiberian had people dying and/or trying not to get killed. As the red balloon hovered elegantly above the apartment whose family we observed very voyeuristically, I quickly retreated to the one childhood activity I loved more than being entranced by the cinema: sleeping soundly and oh so comfortably. Delete From Queue.

Rocket Science: Technically a 2007 film, but it was released in most cities in 2008 and it pissed me off a lot, so I'm finding reason to include it with this batch of 2008 potentials. Sure, I didn't have high expectations for it, but it turned out to be even more quirkily offensive than I had ever thought possible. So much so that I once again fell asleep during it. With a matter-of-fact whirlwind intro à la Magnolia and characters even more self-pitying characters than those in my other indie quirkfest hatred Thumbsucker, I thought at first that I would at least stay awake through it because even if it was grossly pastel, at least my anger could fuel my consciousness. Following a shy kid's quest to become a master debater (obligatory chuckle), it wants you to think it's showing you something different (awkward interactions, awkward pauses, awkward holds on widely framed shots, etc.) when in fact it's basically the same plot as Hillary Duff's Raise Your Voice, except with debate instead of a conservatory school full of mall punks. What really grated my goat though was a scene directly lifted from the almighty Bottle Rocket, where two brothers sit on a bus and the crazier one talks about how he has mapped out a 5-year plan for his life that he's sure will not fail. It's so exact you might be thinking, "homage, right?" but even if that's what writer-director Jeffrey Blitz would say when asked, I would steam and scream: "no! lazy!" Delete From Queue.

Happy-Go-Lucky: Okay, so both Nicole and Sean have had this listed as a fave in their sidebar bio and no one's blogged about it yet, so here I lay claim to starting the discussion. But rather than conversing as to whether or not it's a good movie (it's awesome), I'd like to ask how long it took each of you to figure out that it was awesome. Like the other two Mike Leigh movies I've seen and loved (Secrets & Lies and All For Nothing, both of which I highly recommend, especially the latter), I really didn't like the film for the first 20-25 minutes. It being his first comedy, I thought he would have let up on the meandering and fly-on-the-wall directing, but he did not until real conflict started popping up. Following Poppy, an elementary school teacher whose rampant happiness often disturbs others, the main actress Sally Hawkins just goes about her life at first like there's no story being told at all, except unlike Flight of the Red Balloon, every interaction she has is indelibly absorbing and her balancing act between perpetually annoying and perpetually likable is almost a conflict unto itself. Far and away it's the best lead female performance I've seen so far this year, and once its scenes move from light comedy to smirk-inducing existentialism, it firmly places itself at #5 on my Top Ten list for 2008. Psst...stay tuned in the new year for the official Blogulator lists! Move to Top of 'Saved' Queue or Quick See it at St. Anthony Main!

Nerdflix/Amazon/The $5.50 Shelf At Target, I Love Thee: Childhood Revisited

Nostalgia lust comes in spurts. Flummoxing, terribly painful/satisfying spurts. A late night conversation with the GF, who many know I lovingly refer to as Jerksica, somehow got on the topic of childhood movies. Now, this is not a topic that usually incites such madness; in fact, it comes up quite often. On this particular evening, however, whether it was the combination of cheese dip and Pepsi or the fact that I had been awake for nearly 18 hours, I started getting deeper than the usual Jurassic Park or Honey, I Shrunk The Kids recollections. References to Explorers and Mac and Me (of which I did a rewarding double feature in my college days) spew forth from my mouth as I also listened intently to Jerksica's retellings. The movies she held close to her heart were films I had never heard of, much less seen. Intensely interested, I suprised her with some of the titles she mentioned via that old reliable horse of wishlisting, Amazon. Conveniently, she also convinced me into purchasing choice titles from that temptress $5.50 shelf at our local Target, which indirectly led me to forcing us to watch one final flickering childhood memory via the fantabulous Nerdflix Watch Now feature. Two films I shan't discuss, for they have been mentioned here and here, but here be the nostalgic findings of the others...

Baby Boom (1987): The second of Jerksica's picks that we viewed, after a surprisingly enjoyable viewing of Big Business, was this curious anti-feminist feminist parable, starring the usually delightful (before her streak of blandness in the 90s and 00s) Diane Keaton. Coming from a staunchly feminist family, Jerksica lamented that she had no idea why her mother encouraged her constant re-watching of this maternal-role-cementing film. The only argument I could muster was that the film's first half (in which Keaton confidently dominates her high-pressure workplace and personal relationships) is so blatantly "hey check out what women can do! Whoda thunk?" that its dreadful and frightening second half can easily go unnoticed if not watched carefully. So, as may easily be surmised, one day she hilariously inherits a baby. Seriously, she gets a mysterious phone call saying that a relative of hers has died and she must meet her at the airport to pick up her inheritance. Thrilled with the prospect of more possessions (because women can't be successful without being materialistic of course), she arrives at the airport gate (remember when you could do that?) and out comes a lady who hands her a baby. Wacky! Anyway, of course she can't handle the baby AND her job, so she quits and spends the last half of the movie canning fruit in Vermont while taking care of her new child. That's it. That's the movie. I was quite sleepy at the end of it all (on account of the boringness you see), but I could noticeably discern an inner turmoil writhing inside my dear Jerksica as the credits rolled. Move To Top Of Queue, Add To Neverending Queue, or Delete From Queue: Delete From Queue, unless it was a part of your childhood and you enjoy shattering your memories.

Welcome Home Roxy Carmichael (1990): This last entry in the recontextualization of Jerksica's filmic youth is far superior to the aforementioned blunderfest, but is just as meddlesome. It's infuriatingly and pleasantly genreless - a rarity for the sort of bland family-friendly fare that populates afternoon TBS programming and so many 8-year-olds' rainy afternoons. The plot is deceivingly simple: a small town prepares for a former resident, now a celebrity, to return home. The tone of the film's score, cinematography, and general pastelness implies a light comedy with a feel good ending about growing up, acceptance, or something trite but admittedly important. However, the issues that our cast of characters deal with are a lot messier than usually delved into in one of these films, plus there's an absence of that one thing that makes a movie a comedy...what is it? Oh yeah: jokes. And yet, the "issues" behind many of the characters' disappointments in life (Winona Ryder feels like an outcast, which surely was a stretch for her, Jeff Daniels feels like he missed his one chance at true love, etc.) are of course not fleshed out enough to make this a full-fledged drama. Anyway, the device of Roxy Carmichael's awaited return is put to good enough use (think Where's Fluffy? in Nick and Norah, the only interesting part of that movie) to make for a mildly interesting character study - definitely not something that I would have clung to as a youngster, but has distinct tinges of genuiness to it that made me forgive Jerksica for Baby Boom. Move To Top Of Queue, Add To Neverending Queue, or Delete From Queue: Add To Neverending Queue.

Short Circuit (1986): Awwww hellz yeah. Now I give you the first of two movies that no doubt help defined me as the wise-cracking/mess-making robot and/or sasquatch that I am today. Despite its glaring racism (Fisher Stevens playing an Indian with a heavy accent who's good at computers but not much else?) and astounding lack of plot (top secret military robot accidentally escapes and...that's it, they chase him for 100 minutes), Short Circuit holds up surprisingly well 22 years later. Steve Guttenberg plays the robot's designer who doesn't believe in using robots as death machines, but creates them for a living anyway (it's not like there's any company that would hire him to make peaceful robots, am I right?). Ally Sheedy plays the crazy cat lady (seriously) that befriends the robot, thinking it's an alien in an exoskeleton (seriously), when it happens upon her house during his aimless journey away from the military center. Oh and of course the robot has a heart (it got it from getting struck by lightning, you know, like you do) and there's an evil military general that wants to blow it to kingdom come. From the opening credits, it boggles the mind why a) Pixar didn't get sued for ripping off Johnny 5 for WALL-E, and b) why WALL-E will get an Oscar but Short Circuit never even got nominated. Really there's no reason not to like this movie, and if you haven't seen it, I'm lending it to you next time you come over. Move To Top Of Queue, Add To Neverending Queue, or Delete From Queue: Move To Top Of Queue, or borrow it from me.

Harry And The Hendersons (1987): And for every movie that turns out to be as awesome as you remember it from when you were a wee lad, there is surely a movie that is as painful to watch today as it was to get sat on by the mean fat kid on the bus, with your stop being the last on the driver's schedule. This, my friends, is that movie. Thankfully only a portion of my Nerdflix subscription fee went toward bringing it up on the ole online (oh how my face beamed when I searched for it on a whim after thoroughly enjoying my 100 minutes of nostalgic robot love), but still the goodness that once emanated from my childhood memory of this here "film" has now been scorched, decimated, corroded, many other adjectives that imply decay and existential suffering. And I should have known it when I saw John Lithgow's ugly mug pop up on my laptop's screen. Being the man that both called for the outlawing of dancing in Footloose and annoyed millions on TV in 3rd Rock From The Sun, I will now forever know Lithgow as the harbinger of broken dreams. Even when Rick Baker's masterfully designed Bigfoot, aka Harry, gets hit by the Lithgowmobile to start off the movie's stupefying course of events (arguably even less plot-driven than Short Circuit), the metaphorical tears of regret did not stop pouring down my face. Basically, we get 110 minutes (almost two hours!) of a non-talking giant version of ALF breaking everything in the Hendersons' house after they bring him home, thinking they've accidentally killed a mysterious monster from the woods. He wakes up, starts destroying everything in sight while slide whistles and various sound effect ephemera populate my eardrums, which relentlessly bled (not metaphorically) until I finally fell asleep in protest against my childhood getting ruined any further. Luckily I woke up just in time for a Joe Cocker original to soundtrack the closing credits alongside A-ha-esque animations of Harry and the gang, all of which deserved whatever certainly idiotic fate was given them in the film's finale. Oh wait, they probably all learned a lesson about how beauty's on the inside. And this was turned into a short-lived sitcom? Howwwww?!?!?! Move To Top Of Queue, Add To Neverending Queue, or Delete From Queue: Delete From Queue, regardless of your penchant for shattering your childhood memories.

Nerdflix I Love Thee: Adorable Amy Adams and Sprawling Italian Cinema FTW

Sometimes Nerdflix queues are neglected, forgotten about, left off in a distant and stagnant corner of cyberspace by their users. I am one of these Nerdflixers. However, while some people get an unwanted film that was queued up months (or in my case, years) ago that ends up sitting unwatched on the edge of the entertainment center, I cannot let such a crime happen. I'll put anything in the DVD player - ANYTHING. Sure there are tons of new releases out that I'd probably rather view (Snow Angels and Finding Amanda come to mind), but I cannot bear the thought of sending a movie back without watching it. So here be the leftovers that have come in the mail (or watched on a larf via the site's Watch Instantly library) and my suggestions for what ye shall do with them if you ever find it in your heart to reorganize that queue of yours...

The Best Of Youth (2003): Disc One of this 2-disc set arrived one day toward the end of August and I immediately remembered the moment 2-3 years ago when I added only half of this sprawling Italian miniseries, thinking it sounded good enough to try out, but definitely not enough so as to commit two separate discs to my list of upcoming rentals. Here's something I do often when a film doesn't grab me right from the beginning but I end up loving - I watch the first 20 minutes over and over again until I finally realize how amazing the characters are and how much I want to find out what happens to them (this also happened with The Celebration and Days of Heaven). The 3-hour epic chronicles two brothers, one a desperate and lonely rebel turned police officer played with mancrush quotientability by Alessio Boni - who needs to get noticed by American filmmakers if he can speak English - and the other a neurotic and embittered doctor. Sounds thrilling on paper, right? Seriously, though, if you're patient, it's like watching a beautiful multi-generational classic novel on the screen. Move To Top Of Queue, Add To Neverending Queue, or Delete From Queue: Move To Top Of Queue.

Tsotsi (2005): The Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner from its year is definitely worth seeing if you haven't yet, but it certainly isn't flawless. What does make it uniquely entertaining and eye-catching is its exquisite cinematography, which while pretty glossy and clearly influenced by high-budget American thrillers, works well to build suspense both emotional and psychological. Panoramic and dark establishing shots and taut and intense close-ups help in telling a story about a low-class parentless teenaged thief who winds up inadvertantly stealing a baby that he is forced to take care of. Yes where a story like this goes is predictable, and this usually turns me off from these kinds of transformative protagonist vehicles, the lead Presley Chweneyagae is really magnetic throughout. That doesn't keep from a two-dimensional supporting cast (with a couple notable exceptions) getting in the way from making the movie truly affecting, unfortunately. Move To Top Of Queue, Add To Neverending Queue, or Delete From Queue: Add To Neverending Queue.

Flannel Pajamas (2006): I have an obsessive-compulsive disorder of sorts when it comes to deciding what I consume next. I won't open a new cereal box until I finish the one that's already open, I won't listen to something else on my iTunes until an album's played all the way through, and I won't tempt myself with other options on my Nerdflix Watch Now queue until I watch whatever's at the top. Yes, it's a odd habit, but I like it. It keeps things organized and I feel disciplined and relieved inside when I follow nonsensical rules. So I pressed play on this indie romantic comedy talkfest (think 2 Days in Paris or the Before Sunset/Sunrise films), not having any memory as to why I added it to the queue in the first place. But it stars Justin Kirk, who is mind-boggingly hilarious in Weeds as the well-meaning brother-in-law screw-up, so I went with it as it started as he and Julianne Nicholson got in a quirky argument about life in the age of the Internet or some inane pontificating upper-middle-class Manhattanite crap. I stayed with it, because while the characters were frustrating and basically unlikeable, their romance was on some level fascinating to see progress over the years. In the end though, I just cannot recommend investing your time in it. Move To Top Of Queue, Add To Neverending Queue, or Delete From Queue: Delete From Queue.

Happiness (1998): Todd Solondz (director of this - probably his most well-known film, along with Welcome To The Dollhouse and Storytelling) is a creep. Okay, so that's not a revelation of any kind, but it really is amazing that at the age of 24, where I feel like I've been desensitized to most things shocking for nearly a decade now, I can watch a Solondz flick from over a decade ago and still be creeped the eff out. Every actor is beyond transcendent here, from Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a sexually-threatened introvert to Dylan Baker as his psychologist who also happens to be a pedophile-in-training. But that's where the admiration stops and the unsettlingness begins. Solondz' success in discomforting the viewer while still forcing them to sympathize with his societally (and mentally) outcast characters is on one level impressive and praiseworthy, but at the same time, he never lets us get too close to them. He keeps everything at a cartoony distance, only letting the actors' moving expressions and line delivery wiggle inside our hearts, but never letting us truly connect with them, ultimately leaving us feeling cold and just...well, icky inside. But it's such a notable and memorable kind of icky! Move To Top Of Queue, Add To Neverending Queue, or Delete From Queue: Add To Neverending Queue.

Junebug (2005): By far the best of this bunch, I immediately smacked myself in the head upon the film's conclusion for not seeing this back in its year of release. It certainly would have made my Top 10 list. I can't think of another movie that had two very strong and multi-faceted lead actors and characters, but were viciously outshined by their supporting cast. This sounds like a paradox of sorts, but I assure you, Junebug achieved it. Bourgeois art snob Embeth Davidtz goes with her new husband Alessandro Nivola to visit his family back home in rural North Carolina, meeting the meek and reserved father, the dismissive and fake mother, the fiercely disrespectful (but secretly sweet) brother played by The O.C.'s Ben McKenzie (who turns out can act like a mofo! who knew?), and the incredibly loveable but dimwitted pregnant sister-in-law, played effortlessly and with perfection by Amy Adams (who basically just decomplexified her performance for Enchanted). The restrained direction and natural flow of events dictates no need for an overt plot, as the characters really are enough to keep things lively, interesting, and devastating. See this movie now. Move To Top Of Queue, Add To Neverending Queue, or Delete From Queue: Move To Top Of Queue.

The Edukators (2005): By far the worst of this bunch; avoid at all costs. However, it may just be a combination of my hatred for the bohemian lifestyle (seriously, why didn't those losers in Rent just get jobs?!) and my genuine anticipation for a plot where a gang of misfits break into rich people's houses and rearrange their vast empire of unnecessary belongings and leaving notes like "Your days of plenty are numbered -The Edukators." I mean, that sounds like an awesome idea for a movie. At least I thought so. So much potential: Will they go too far? Will they get caught? What is their reasoning behind the victimless crime? But of course the people behind it are selfish hooligans who blame capitalism for all their problems as well as societies' who care more about a love triangle amongst friends than actually helping out society in any way. Of course the film wants to pretend that these aren't our heroes, that obviously they're in some way culpable of the world of crime they end up getting caught up in, but it never comes through. But ultimately, that's exactly how they become framed, like we're supposed to root for them to never get caught - like they're some kind of socialist savior. Sorry buddies, but real socialists work, volunteer, and help others, not just themselves. Move To Top Of Queue, Add To Neverending Queue, or Delete From Queue: Delete From Queue.

Have you seen any of these Nerdflix leftovers? What did you think?

My Nerdflix Queue is Like an Eternity Long

It seems like any nerdy person is at least slightly OCD in some capacity. Even more interesting, they're almost never ashamed to divulge such organizational or hyper-analytical processes in a semi-ironic confessional manner to whoever is willing to listen. I am no exception to this pattern. You see, when I first got my Nerdflix account, I might have gone a little wild. I rated movies more compulsively than I checked for new comments on the Blogulator, back in ancient times before the e-mail notification feature. After rampant IMDb searches, skimming down lists of the greatest movies ever from various sites/critics/awards histories, and several recommendations from Nerdflix themselves, I suddenly I had over 100 movies in my queue. I instantly got nervous. I knew what would happen, and it did.

Only a month or so later, I started receiving DVDs in the mail and asking myself, "what the hell is this and why did I put it on my queue?" I had absolutely no connection between my desire to see a certain movie and the movies I actually ended up watching at home anymore. Oh and it never really got better, either. I just had to deal with this new way of movie-watching life. Let's not even talk about how Jerksica reacts to this when she gets to the mail before me. I attempted to use my OCD for good, limiting myself to only 100 movies in the queue at a time, but that soon failed when I started reading Pajiba on a regular basis, where I get an idea for a movie to add to the list almost every day. Here are a couple examples from the recent past that resulted from this kind of random Nerdflix-mania...

David Gordon Green Movies: I honestly don't remember reading about this director, but once I got his movies in the mail, it totally made sense that like two years ago I probably read about him or one of his movies on some site and decided I needed to see his movies. He's basically a working-class Terrence Malick. Slow-moving elegaic movies with sketches of characters, naturalistic settings, and deeply pretentious dialogue and/or narration. So right up my alley. I popped in All the Real Girls and from the opening frame of seeing Zooey Deschanel say something soft and whispery about love while staring off into the distance past her male counterpart's eyes, I instantly hated it. I continued to hate the movie even though it had all the aforementioned traits that make me love a movie. It felt totally disconnected, too concerned on this guy and girl who are completely uninvolved with the rest of the world, and thus I did not care about at all. I couldn't stand the movie. Next in the mail I got George Washington, which had all the exact same things as All the Real Girls, but featured a strong cast of various child/teenage characters as well as some of the working class characters from Real Girls. Also, there was an EVENT in the movie. Who would have thought that by simply making it an ensemble and adding a main EVENT to center the movie around, you turn a terrible idea into the best movie I've seen in years. Real Girls, stay away from it. George Washington, so very highly recommended for fans of pretentiousness. I wondered if he had any other movies and why those weren't also in my queue and then I found out he made Undertow, a little retro-western/thriller that I randomly rented from Hollywood Video back in the day, which is a solid movie that I'd like to revisit.

Asian Movies: How is it that there are so many great Asian movies that never make it to American theaters? It boggles my mind how many are out there, waiting to get a cult following. Now only one of the three I saw in a row would I consider great, but they're all pretty good. The requisite horror movie that somehow found its way to me was South Korea's A Tale of Two Sisters, a creepy little movie where two BFF sisters return from time away in a mental institution to their father and stepmother's home, which has some dark (maybe haunted?) secrets within. Very subtle and switches from the mundane to the completely freaky within minutes, and has more twists than a sock hop curated by M. Night Shyamalan. It's silly at times and melodramatic, but overall was a pleasant enough diversion from the nothing-but-terribleness that is American horror. Next was the truly awesome Last Life in the Universe out of Thailand, an almost impossible movie to describe without giving away too much. A huge event screws up the life of our protagonist in the beginning, so he escapes his city life to trod along a beach with a girl for a gorgeous slow-blooming minimalist love story. It's like a Gus Van Sant movie where he gave the camera to Scorsese only for the beginning and ending. Soooo recommended. The final film was Japan's Vital, which starred the same lead actor from Universe, but turned him into a stoic amnesiac who begins to unravel the mystery of his memory loss as he dissects his first body in medical school. Intriguing concept executed in a mildly dull and blasé manner, but almost worth it for the gut-wrenching and mind-tripping conclusion (and I'm not talking twists here, I'm talking hypnotic cinematography and an editing sequence that would make grown men cry).

It was a tough couple months indeed getting through all these movies that I can't remember for the life of me why I queue'd them in the first place. Overall, however, with only one of them being downright horrible, looking back on this reminds me of just how not terrible most movies are. It's almost JUST those movies out in theaters right now that I end up paying more money for that are the stink of society. As far as my concern for never "renting" a movie again that I actually have a desire to see when I watch it, I came across two solutions: 1) Move movies to the top of your queue right before they're about to send you one! I did this in order to see In the Valley of Elah, because I had read a particularly passionate review of Tommy Lee Jones' performance and the movie in general from someone known to hate all things Paul Haggissian (Crash, The Last Kiss), until he saw this movie of his. I had to find out for myself, and indeed, with the exception of a cheesy flag metaphor and a sometimes overly-distraught Charlize Theron, the movie was not that bad. 2) Utilize the 'Watch Now' feature on Nerdflix! I used this to indulge a random desire to watch a Lili Taylor movie (she rocks!) and because I saw one which was also about military men, a subject I was interested in after watching Elah. So I plugged the laptop to the TV, pressed 'Play' on Dogfight, realized yet again how much of a better actor River Phoenix was in comparison to his lazy brother Joaquin, and thoroughly enjoyed the simple love story that took place over the course of one night and adorably reminded me of my love for Before Sunset.

Three cheers for new technologies and OCD habits that help remind us that there are indeed good movies out there somewhere! We just have to deal with them being a few years older, not having unintentionally funny scenes, and being on a tinier screen. I was getting worried about the lost art of enjoying movies when I saw Shutter and most of our group (including myself) thought, "huh that wasn't that bad of a movie."

movie diary assault - so much drama.

most of the "greatest films of all time" are dramas. interestingly enough, "the most boring movies of all time" are also dramas. it is a neutral genre where there might be some jokes, but not too many, some frightening moments, but not too many, and (usually) a whole lot of heart string tugging. how those heartstrings are tugged can either make a drama cheesy and laughable, powerful and moving, or just downright yawn-inducing. let's see if the following dramas i've seen recently insult, wow, or sleepify the audience (me) emotionally.

fitzcarraldo: german film by werner herzog (grizzly man, rescue dawn) where crazy dude is determined to build a massive opera house in the middle of the amazon but has to go through extreme lengths to get the money to do so. no models or special effects are used and they lug a giant mark twain ship over a mountain. various crew members reportedly quit/refused to do insane tasks like taking mark twain ship through amazon rapids that herzog wanted to do to make the film more authentic. he ended up prevailing by completing his movie, and fitz...well, it took me four days to get through the film. 0% insulted. 55% wowed. 45% sleepified. grade: B.

the killing fields: 1984 best picture nominee about a reporter played by law and order's sam waterston who investigates american bombings on the devastated cambodia during pol pot's regime with the help of a cambodian translator, who soon becomes his best friend. john malkovich plays a wacky photographer too. chaos ensues and their lives get in more and more danger. lots of storylines to plow through in one movie, and the cinematography/acting is oh so 80s, but the ending did bring me to real un-guilty tears. 0% insulted. 90% wowed. 10% sleepified. grade: A-.

kramer vs. kramer: best picture of 1979 winner pits the career crazy dustin hoffman against the ignored and housewife-not-by-choice meryl streep over their 6-year-old kid months after streep walks out on the two of them. i thought it would be innocuous, but i felt uncomfortable when the movie tried to make hoffman the clear protagonist and vilify streep, and hoffman tried to make the "women's lib? what about father's lib?" argument. so many moments where we're supposed to cry over the unfairness of the situation and i just felt like, "i wish i got to see more footage of how hoffman was a big jerk when his life was peachy and his wife did everything for him and his son." oh well, at least the third act tried to make things more balanced. 55% insulted. 30% wowed. 15% sleepified. grade: C-.

p.s.: neurotic and depressingly aging laura linney falls for neurotic and awkwardly youthful topher grace because he looks creepily like her ex-lover? gabriel byrne as her sex addict ex-husband who's still friends with her? how could i not be intrigued? so i kept watching. then came the way too long sex scenes featuring foreplay, thrusting, and climaxes to boot. then i laughed for the rest of the movie as they tried to make me feel sorry for average upper-middle class people who do dumb things or act melodramatically. 100% insulted. 0% wowed. 0% sleepified. grade: F.

the good shepherd: an anti-social matt damon has never been less expressive as a c.i.a. bigwig who...umm...never talks? never pays attention to his family, including wife angelina jolie? never trusts anyone? never does MUCH OF ANYTHING (assistant john turturro does it all for him) for three hours and tries to act everywhere between the ages of 18-50 using the same damn face. with so much stoicism, i can't really be insulted that much, but i sure can be wishing i was in bed. 10% insulted. 0% wowed. 90% sleepified. grade: F.

[insert barely witty and overly lengthy title about watching bad movies].

another round-up of old movies i've finally gotten around to watching, with succinct reviews and warnings about whether they're worth watching or avoiding. enjoy.

born into brothels: i thought i was getting into another "check out this problem that's going on in the world - doesn't it suck?" documentary, so i was prepared for a big disappointment. however, it turned out to be one of the few documentaries that recognizes a problem, presents a solution, and enacts that solution within 110 minutes and doesn't make it feel like a patchwork job. highly recommended and yes, i cried sad tears and happy ones. but then again, i cried at the end of the pursuit of happyness. see it! grade: A.

night watch: at one point, i must have thought to myself, "this might be what underworld would have been like if it was good," so i added it to my nerdflix queue. and britain's the descent made me consider that possibly all horror movies outside the u.s. might have redeeming qualities, but i was wrong. i now unfairly want to stay away from all russian cinema. there's a sequel out now called day watch, and unless you like hyper-stylized and hyperactive editing and ridiculously convoluted plots about vampire hunters, then stay away. grade: F.

shadows and fog: i only like a few select woody allen movies, but those ones i like i really really like (annie hall, hannah and her sisters). so i'm always up for sitting through something boring and slightly annoying in case on the off chance it's another stroke of genius. for the first 20 minutes, i thought this was brilliant - an awkwardly hilarious blend of uncomfortable comedy and german expressionism. then i realized that that can't really continue to be hilarious for much longer. i continued to fall asleep multiple times as it switched from woody being a jackass at some party to someone getting murdered among the err, shadows and fog. not even jodie or cusack could make it interesting! grade: D+.

klute: donald sutherland is way creepier than his son, kiefer sutherland. he just stands around in this movie as a stoic private eye staring at prostitute jane fonda, who's whacked out and sultry. it's one long drawn-out episode of law and order: svu with good acting. nothing terrible, but nothing to write home about. grade: C.

laurel canyon: here's the kicker. christian bale is a tightly wound psychiatrist-in-training that is living with his hippie record producer mom (frances mcdormand) until he can find a house of his own with his studious and prude wife kate beckinsale. bale can't stand living with his mom, but beckinsale becomes slightly interested in her bohemian lifestyle as she watches her mess around with her rockstar boyfriend (who plays sparklehorse songs for some reason?!) and eventually kisses both of them in the pool (whoa, someone watched wild things and got inspired!). and yet still, it's incredibly boring and frustrating, but had an unresolved ending i actually liked and aggravate everyone else that watched it with me. grade: D+.

bobby: so i wanted to rent a bad movie. i thought this would be a sure fire laugh riot - emilio estevez directing and half of hollyweird (including ashton kutcher, demi moore, shia laboeuf, sharon stone, freddy rodriguez, and more) starring in a pastiche of what happened the night bobby kennedy was assassinated? and yet, it somehow wasn't terrible or totally full of itself. in fact, the only part i really laughed at was when it said "an emilio estevez picture" during the credits. there's a lot of forced dialogue pretty cannily delivered to the point of melodrama, but other than that, good characters and a well-executed closing sequence. grade: C+.

how can i be productive when there are tons of movies i haven't seen yet?

i need a job for the fall. in fact, when i took my job in august, i knew i would be laid off right around now. so i should have been spending a lot of time already doing that whole resume/applying/looking thing. i've dabbled. but largely, i watch an unhealthy amount of movies in my free time. why do i do this to myself? a) my job makes me constantly exhausted and i don't want to move anything, not even my fingers across a mousepad. b) there's so many movies out there! do you KNOW how many movies are available on nerdflix? almost too many. so i have a lot of work to do in both fields: job-searching and movie-watching. here are my results of the latter in mini-versions because i am lazy and don't want to bore you.

waitress is the only movie where i took my dumb self and got out of the house to watch at one of those movie houses. felicity stars in a dark comedy about getting out of a rut and doing what you're capable of in life. sounds like someone i know who watches too many movies. she's really good at making pies in the movie and i'm really good at thinking about how much i wish someone made me a pie. pies are really good and people should make me them more often. grade: B+

third man i ended up watching at amy's after the electrelane/the blow/tender forever show we were at turned into an electrelane-with-three-terrible-local-bands show and decided we didn't want to endure local music for 3 hours to see electrelane. i fell asleep. i hate these "classic hollywood film noirs" that turn out to just be boring traditional classic movies with a murder plot (also see double indemnity). i'd much rather watch over-the-top film noirs like detour or gilda. i woke up for the ending though, and that was pretty gorgeous to look at. grade: D+.

five easy pieces was the best movie i saw out of the bunch in the past week. it was facebook-profile-addition-worthy. that good. and basically, i think zach braff saw this movie and got "his" "idea" for garden state, just before cameron crowe watched garden state and got "his" "idea" for elizabethtown. jack nicholson hates his life and has to visit home to see his dying father and has an affair with a random girl that connects with him unlike anyone else he's ever met. brilliant character study with an amazing existential ending. grade: A.

tootsie i watched because i wasn't really awake yet and didn't want to get up but didn't feel like i should go back to sleep because it was already 10:00 a.m. and it was on the nerdflix online thingy. also 30 rock referenced it hilariously and it's one of the funniest movies of all time, according to the american film institute. and my screenwriting professor often referenced it as "a perfect screenplay." what do i have to say about it? well, bill murray was great. grade: B-.


the elephant man is quite possibly the most depressing movie of all time. having become one of those creepy david lynch fanatics in recent years (later than i should have, i admit), i had to see it. after job searching/studying all day long one sunny saturday, mark and i decided to reward ourselves by watching a movie that reminded us how terrible the human race is. regardless, it's one of those movies where you'd feel like a horrid person if you didn't say it was good. but it was good. (looks around). seriously. grade: B.


henry fool is an art movie from 1997 that just spawned a sequel that's out in limited release now called fay grim. you know how you always see a movie on the video store shelves and think "i should rent that one day," but you never do? this is one of those. luckily this new sequel made me move the original (generically about a stranger that moves into a family's basement apartment) up on my nerdflix queue. upside: it has overly pretentious tongue-in-cheek avant-garde dialogue throughout. downside: this gets old and irritating after about 10 minutes, and the movie is 2 hours and 17 minutes. upside: the score is so amazing that it made me go immediately to amazon to buy it as the end credits rolled. grade: C+.

so as you can see, not a bad haul for a bunch of random (mostly "classic") films i had never seen that i finally got to see because i had a new object of procrastination. thank you impending unemployment!

just because you CAN watch it doesn't mean you SHOULD.

nerdflix is a close friend of mine. it's always there for me when i have a couple hours to kill, when i want to procrastinate grading/lesson planning, when i want something to fall asleep to numerous times and never finish, or when i just want to make myself/jerksica explode with cinematic rage. that last one is the kicker. with the addition of the "watch now" service where lots of crappy movies are available to view online with no additional charge to my account, i don't really remember anymore what a "good" movie is. get in your time machine and take a trip with the C&QPCB to...

1990: backtrack (a.k.a. catchfire)
starring: jodie foster, dennis hopper, joe pesci, vincent price (?!), AND BOB DYLAN???!?!

anyone who knows me knows why i watched this garbage. look at the cast list. dennis hopper is a hitman for the mob (headed by an uncredited pesci in the exact same role as goodfellas) who falls in love with jodie, who witnessed a mob hit and is supposed to be whacked by hopper. even though he rapes her, kidnaps her, and pretty much makes her his slave, she falls for him. oh did i mention hopper directed this? what a creep! vincent price shows up at the end as the "real" mob leader i guess and just says "blow it up" very eerily and the most hilarious sequence of events follows where an entire building blows up for no reason as hopper and jodie escape VERY SLOWLY through a drain pipe wearing radioactive gear for some reason. then hopper does a killer sax solo (playing a baritone, but sounding like an alto?) on a boat they somehow get aboard as they sail off into the sunset. hopper's original cut of the movie was THREE HOURS and he took his name off the project and put the infamous "alan smithee" name on it when it was released in europe and on tv in 91. then he came back and put it on dvd and renamed it, but still kept it only 1.5 hours. thank GOD. oh and dylan plays a pretentious sculptor. surprise surprise.

1981: heartbeeps
starring: andy kaufman, bernadette peters, randy quaid, AND CHRISTOPHER GUEST?!?!?

i fell asleep during the majority of this one, but i'll do my best. it's about robots who fall in love and have wacky misadventures while "the company" tries to get them back. andy kaufman just does a variation on his taxi character and is obviously crazy and not paying attention to acting, but just acting weird and off-putting. jerksica loves bernadette peters (theatre geek alert! note the spelling of "theatre") and is amused by robots (whereas i would like to smash them all) so there's some back story about how this happened. all i really remember before the nap happened is this really wise-ass robot that's programmed to make rodney dangerfield-esque one-liners like...like...oh man i'm starting to get sleepy.

1988: dead ringers
starring: jeremy irons, jeremy irons, and jeremy irons (oh wait scratch that last one)

directed by david cronenberg and i remember my brother said this movie was creepy and effed up, so i figured this one would not fail me. it is not creepy and effed up in an interesting, pushing the envelope kinda way. it's just creepy in a uncomfortably creepy alternating with uninteresting and bland kinda way. jeremy irons plays snobby world-renowned twin gynecologists who sleep with all their patients (you read that correctly). they like to trick their patients into thinking there's only one of them so that if they don't like how one is in the sack, they can pass the chick on to the other twin. basically they act as the same person, creating a strong connection between them but never connecting honestly with anyone else. so when one falls in love and the other doesn't, they start going crazy and doing weird things including trying to operate on women's genitals with really funky sharp things that shouldn't go down there. imagine all this plus the boring yet reputable jeremy irons sloshing around a glass of (insert expensive alcoholic drink here) and talking mildly in his geeves-the-butler-type demeanor TO HIS IDENTICAL TWIN. ABOUT FEMALE GENITALS. i guess i shouldn't expect anything less from cronenberg.