I’ve never seen a movie ahead of it’s official release date so never had an opportunity to write a release-day review. And I’m not going to now, because I don’t really enjoy writing reviews unless I really hated a movie. Which is not the case for Michael Clayton. It was an excellent movie, with great acting, a refreshingly creative opening and lots of moments that make you want to pump your fist and clap. Point being, a fucking good time at the movies. Ebert and the Times agree. So instead of a proper review I will offer you this: If you’re looking for Hollywood supplied entertainment this weekend you should check out Michael Clayton. It’s damn good.
About MorrisonFilm
Hello, my name is Shawn. This is where I put things. This site has been active since 2002. A lot has changed since then but basically I'm still writing ridiculous articles about ridiculous things. You can also look at my Flickr photostream which is a lot of fun if you aren't blind.
This site uses Simplelog, a simple Ruby on Rails weblog application. I explain why I use it in this entry. This site is hosted by Dreamhost.
I've made 4 short films that are currently available online. I also host a semi-regular comedic podcast with Garrett Murray that has a 5 star rating on iTunes!
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Ugh. Just noticed they adapted Charlie Baxter’s excellent and under-read Feast of Love into a movie. My excitement quickly evaporated as I watched the trailer. They apparently turned it onto a sentimental chick flick, no offense to chicks. Hopefully that’s just trailer voodoo. Either way, read the book, I think the odds are high that you’ll enjoy it more than the movie.
Plus you’ll be able to feel smug and superior while rolling your eyes and saying things like “God, the book was so much better.”
Roger Ebert writes an update us on his health. Some interesting thoughts on illness and the instict to hide it. Doesn’t look like he’ll be returning to TV any time soon but hopefully he’ll begin writing his weekly reviews again. He has been missed.
On more than one occasion I have said, “I love Quentin Tarantino so much, I’d watch him take a crap on film for 2 hours and love every moment of it.” Well, last night I saw him do just that. And let me tell you, I didn’t enjoy every moment of it.
Yes, one way to make your car chase seem better is by padding it with the most atrocious, long, pointless dialog ever recored outside of a college campus, but then the car chase really has to be fucking great, not just SO-SO.
Planet Terror was fucking amazing though.
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So I’ve seen two movies since I made my list and decided to reconfigure it:
- Little Miss Sunshine
- Children of Men
- Little Children
- V for Vendetta
- Brick
- The Departed
- Hard Candy
- Pan’s Labyrinth
- The Queen
- The Devil and Daniel Johnston
Bounced are the Science of Sleep and Thank You for Smoking, though both are still highly recommended. Added are Little Children and Pan’s Labyrinth because both of those movies rocked my world. Especially Little Children. Dysfunctional suburbia is my movie kryptonite.
Also, while we’re here, I found Kevin Smith’s 2006 movie list a fun read.
[UPDATE: I’ve modified the list a bit.]
For some reason I saw a whole heck of a lot more movies in 2006 than I have most years. I get a kick out of making my top ten list, so here it is for 2006.
- Little Miss Sunshine
- Children of Men
- V for Vendetta
- Brick
- The Departed
- Hard Candy
- Thank You for Smoking
- The Devil and Daniel Johnston
- The Queen
- The Science of Sleep
I could flip the top two and feel just as good about this list. In some ways it felt like a weak year because I had to dig through my saved ticket stubs to remember some of these films.
Wasn’t a good year for action movies.
Here’s the list of movies I definitely did not like this year. It also happens to be most of the big budget movies I saw.
Superman Returns
X-Men 3
Mission Impossible 3
The Da Vinci Code
The big action movie I did like was Miami Vice. Definitely a flawed movie but there was just something about it that I really dug. Maybe it was because of it’s rough edges and not despite them. I’m not sure. There were enough moments when the movie Mann wanted to make peaked through that I just got it.
Honorable Mentions
Here are some honorable mentions of movies that I enjoyed quite a bit and would definitely recommend:
Pan’s Labyrinth
The Prestige
Stranger Than Fiction
Marie Antoinette
Borat
God Grew Tired of Us
Miami Vice
Best Movie Moments of 2006
Meaning, moments that surprised me. Period. And I don’t mean in a “I can’t believe he was the killer!” type of surprise. I mean, surprised me as a filmgoer. Showed me something I had never seen before. Or reinvented a moment. Or just simply stunned me. Or delighted me. (I’ll try to be as vague as possible but these are potential spoilers.)
Children of Men - The birth.
Little Miss Sunshine - That final scene on the stage.
Miami Vice - The shot.
Hard Candy - That Scene, You know which one.
The Departed - Every scene with Mark Wahlberg.
V for Vendetta - At the end, everyone marching with Fawkes masks.
Little Miss Sunshine - Smuggling grandpa from the hospital.
Brick - “Throw one at me if you want, hash head. I’ve got all five senses and I slept last night, that puts me six up on the lot of you.”
Borat - Yes, that scene, you know which one. (how could I not?)
Missed ‘Em
It’s amazing, despite how many movies I saw there’s always so many I didn’t. Here are some 2006 movies I’m still eager to see:
Babel
The Good Shepherd
The Last King of Scotland
Little Children
The Pursuit of Happiness
The Fountain
This post is for Matt (see this). But first of all, let me just get this out of the way: since when is PT Anderson married to Maya Rudolph?! And since when is she the mother of his child!? And since when is he the father of her child?! … ?!?! … Anyway, apparently PT Anderson and his wife (really??) Maya Rudolph had a problem with bed bugs in their exorbitantly expensive New York apartment. It’s probably just the tone of the article but I love how they were apparently outraged that such a problem could happen to them, when they were paying so much for their luxury apartment. I can just see the scene at 3am, while furiously scratching bed bug bites:
PT: I’m PT Anderson! I made Boogie Nights! It was 3 hours long! How can I have bed bugs! This doesn’t make sense!
Maya Rudolph: I’ve been on SNL for 11 years! That’s impossible!
PT: I made a movie where it rained frogs for Chirst’s sake! And this is what I get??
N.B. I love PT Anderson and all of his movies. I do not mean to mock him, his wife, his baby, or his bed bugs. This is just funny (and shocking, apparently).
Have you ever returned a Netflix movie and forgotten to manage your queue? You automatically end up with the next movie in your queue but it’s not necessarily the exact one you were in the mood for. The cool thing is that if for some reason you absolutely positively must have that movie tomorrow, or else, you can e-mail Netflix and they’ll give you a bonus movie. You’ll still get the movie you didn’t want but you’ll also get your next queued movie. You won’t get a new movie after that until you no longer possess more movies than your account allows.
This just happened to me but I’m going to accept the movie I’ve gotten which is Chinatown. This movie is on my list of shame. That being “Best Movie of All Time” caliber films that I’ve never seen. The kind of movies I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never seen. The kind of movies that inspire the “OMFG! You’ve never seen that movie! OMFG!” reactions. I got yelled at in film school for never having seen The Godfather trilogy. I’ve since remedied that one but a few big ones remain.
Here’s the top 5 on my list of shame:
- Apocalypse Now
- Dr. Strangelove
- Chinatown
- The Seven Samurai
- 8 1/2
I’m probably missing a ton but these 5 are a good goal. Sometimes I tell people I’m saving Apocalypse Now because I like knowing that at any moment I can freshly experience one of the best movies of all time. Sort of like how John Irving is saving Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend for his deathbed (Which is where they got the idea for Desmond on LOST). But truth be told, that’s not really why I haven’t watched it. To be honest, that movie feels daunting to me. It feels heavy. Like I can’t just watch it I have to watch it. It’s exactly like the passage I quoted last week about not feeling guilty about reading the classics of literature. But films are only a 2 hour investment. There’s really no excuse. Except that sometimes that two hours is three hours and sometimes that 3 hours feels heavy. Yeah, fuck all this movie guilt. It’s too much.
I’ll start with Chinatown.
Turn any video into a flip book with Flip Clips. Awesome. This would be a cool marketing gimmick for an indie film.
Kottke posted this list of essential films that supposedly one must have seen in order to be “somewhat ‘movie-literate.’ ” I find that attitude kinda snobby since there is a great difference between what most 20-year-olds have seen vs. what most 50-year-olds have seen. That said, this list looks pretty solid. Everything on the list that I haven’t seen is definitely on my “I’m embarassed to admit I’ve never seen” list. I’ve highlighted the one’s I’ve seen:
If we accept the premise behind this list, then my result of 34 out of 102 is extremely appalling. Though in baseball it’d be a great batting average…
2001: A Space Odyssey
The 400 Blows
8 1/2
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
Alien
All About Eve
Annie Hall
Apocalypse Now
Bambi
The Battleship Potemkin
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Big Red One
The Bicycle Thief
The Big Sleep
Blade Runner
Blowup
Blue Velvet
Bonnie and Clyde
Breathless
Bringing Up Baby
Carrie
Casablanca
Un Chien Andalou
Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis
Chinatown
Citizen Kane
A Clockwork Orange
The Crying Game
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Days of Heaven
Dirty Harry
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Do the Right Thing
La Dolce Vita
Double Indemnity
Dr. Strangelove
Duck Soup
E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial
Easy Rider
The Empire Strikes Back
The Exorcist
Fargo
Fight Club
Frankenstein
The General
The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II
Gone With the Wind
GoodFellas
The Graduate
Halloween
A Hard Day’s Night
Intolerance
It’s a Gift
It’s a Wonderful Life
Jaws
The Lady Eve
Lawrence of Arabia
M
Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior
The Maltese Falcon
The Manchurian Candidate
Metropolis
Modern Times
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Nashville
The Night of the Hunter
Night of the Living Dead
North by Northwest
Nosferatu
On the Waterfront
Once Upon a Time in the West
Out of the Past
Persona
Pink Flamingos
Psycho
Pulp Fiction
Rashomon
Rear Window
Rebel Without a Cause
Red River
Repulsion
The Rules of the Game
Scarface
The Scarlet Empress
Schindler’s List
The Searchers
The Seven Samurai
Singin’ in the Rain
Some Like It Hot
A Star Is Born
A Streetcar Named Desire
Sunset Boulevard
Taxi Driver
The Third Man
Tokyo Story
Touch of Evil
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Trouble in Paradise
Vertigo
West Side Story
The Wild Bunch
The Wizard of Oz
( Italicized movies are ones I’ve seen parts of – in school probably)
I love love love the Oscars. The obsession has diminished in recent years as I’ve seen less nominated films, but this year I’ve seen all the big movies and I’m excited to make my predictions and watch the ceremony.
I can’t say I’m too excited about John Stewart hosting. Only because it’s kind of impossible to get too excited about anyone hosting the Oscars. You’re always going to get the “Lite” version of whomever hosts and the only person I’ve ever seen function normally in a Lite mode is Billy Crystal. He’s actually very well suited to host, though I think his run is over.
The coolest thing about this year’s group of films is that I could be happy with just about any film taking Best Picture. I didn’t see Munich, but the rest were all quite good. I’ve actually completely revised my Top Five List into a more proper Top Ten list in light of the movies I’ve recently seen.
Here’s the List of Nominees and here’s Ebert’s Predictions.
I didn’t love Melinda and Melinda. I barely liked it. Well, I guess I really didn’t like it, but my fondness for Woody Allen made it watch-able. Can a movie be bad but still watch-able? Absolutely. It’s a strange and rare little niche.
The premise of the movie is that one story is alternately told as a comedy or a tragedy with different casts. The story flips back and forth, certain scenes play out in both versions. The result was that it wasn’t a particularly moving tragedy or a particularly funny comedy.
My theory is that Match Point is Woody Allen’s attempt to reconnect with his sense of dramatic conflict. From what I hear, he succeeded.