Tuesday, 3 weeks later

It's been a while... here we go... 5 new movies watched since last time.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

A Halloween weekend, option, available for free with Cable On-Demand. I was hoping that I would be truly frightened by this... scared in the type of way films let you imagine the horror rather than rub your face in blood and guts. But maybe the violence I've seen has been so sensationalized and common that the low-budget and drawn out scenes didn't do a whole lot for me, although I can respect the ambition. I think I read somewhere that there were some parallels between this movie and the late 1960s Vietnam-era anxiety that I missed. But it is a classic that I'm glad I saw.

DUE DATE (2010)

Well, I was in Chicago the weekend I saw this, and even my tasteful friends, in a City with great culture and many cinematic options, want to see crowd-pleasers like this. I was fine with me, even though nothing turns me away in general that a road movie plot... just because road movies have a pattern I have grown bored with. However, this was fairly entertaining, and I give a lot of credit to the acting of the two main characters. First of all, Robert Downer Jr. has made every mainstream movie I've seen better with the ticks and twitches of his performances, and he adds depth to a character that, played by anyone else, would be extremely one-note... because in addition to this being a road movie, it's also part of an overlapping genre of movies that are basically guy-runs-into-complete-lunatic-who-ruins-life-and-said-guy-gets-very-angry-before-realizing-that-lunatic-has-redeemable-qualities. Downey doesn't just scream at Zach Galafanakis the whole time, but sometimes tolerates him, abuses him, consoles him, etc. Anyway, I went along with my buddies to see this (and gave them a ride since I was the only one with a car) and it was all right.

THE WAY WE GET BY (2009)

A 2008 WIFF selection, this was available only through last Friday via Netflix Instant, so it went to the top of my list. Appropriately I was enjoying my day off on this Veteran's Day holiday, and this is just about the best non-partisan film tribute to veteran's imaginable. These elderly New Englanders, despite varied opinions on the wisdom of Bush's war decisions, get up at all hours to greet returning troops flying into the Bangor, Maine airport. So powerful, yet it was too bad that I felt the movie drag along. There was usually a pattern of hearing these people and the soldiers talk about the sacrifices of service, then some powerful backstories of these greeters and then it started back up again without much narrative driving the thing. Just my impression... this was a story worth telling regardless.

LAKE TAHOE (2008)

A 2009 WIFF selection available via Netflix Instant. I purchased an iPhone in August, and I'm questioning my true ability to focus my attention on 90-120 minute motion pictures when I am constantly tempted to play with my phone, and even look up the movie I'm watching on IMDB. Unfortunately, this film encouraged fidgeting with my gadget, the ADD-addled temptation being encouraged by a very minimalist film, even by independent cinema standards. Sadly, the one dramatic force that might have made this film more substantial was spoiled for me as a glanced at the IMDB summary too much, during one of the many early slow scenes. It was still pretty good, but maybe hypersensory film experiences aren't always shallow and bad.

THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGOISIE (1972)

A movie (selected because of it's status as a Criterion selection) that probably has satirical elements very much of its time, but still entertaining visually, especially if you know it's supposed to be a surreal film. I probably need to read a whole volume of film criticism to understand this, but I think the element I could pick up was that there were scenes that turned out to be dreams, and others that were supposed to be kind of absurd exaggerations of upper-class behavior, and one couldn't really tell the different until one of the characters "wakes up" from one scene. It's supposed to be a real film classic, but I really couldn't understand it.

Quite a handful of movies, huh?