Brigadoon. Loved it more than words can say. It was an awesome movie. They really don't make them like that anymore.

Gran Torino.



An amazing film. I love Clint Eastwood, most of his films are great.


Before that, it was The Dark Knight. I still think the Batman films directed by Chris Nolan are better than the ones Tim Burton directed, although I still love Batman Returns (one I still need to go out at get, on DVD at least). I'm looking forward to The Dark Knight Rises.

Gran Torino is a beautiful movie. So well done.

Kiss of the Spider Woman; I'm actually only halfway through it, but I had to come upstairs and take care of something real quick.

This is one of those films that would really adapt well to a straight-up play, and actually inspired a musical of the same name, as there's one primary set throughout 65+% of the film, and the rest are either little segues to the "film within the film" or very brief flashbacks or even briefer scenes elsewhere within the prison. The primary characters are Valentin (Raul Julia), a political prisoner, and Luis Molina, a homosexual imprisoned on morality charges who passes the time re-telling Valentin of his favourite film, a romantic thriller from the 1930s/40s that Molina was previously oblivious was actually a Nazi propaganda film (and if you've ever seen the final issues of Propaganda magazine, you'd realise that this is actually a very goth film -LOL). I'm at the point where it's just been revealed that the warden and Argentine secret police have been blackmailing Molina, withholding visits from Molina's ailing mother, to exploit Molina and get him to give them information on Valentin and any other information he may have on the revolutionary group.

I kinda know how it ends, but for some reason, that doesn't ruin films for me.

American Psycho.

Pretty...interesting to say the least, Bale is quite a good actor.

50 Dead Men Walking. Very good film, hard to watch at times due to the torture scenes. It's crazy that it was going on only twenty years ago in Ireland.

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Based on a novel of the same name (which is considered gothic fiction), starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford to terrifying perfection. Crawford, for the benefit of the unfamiliar, built her career on playing strong-willed and dominating women, so for some-one raised on cinema of the 1940s and earlier, it's kind of surreal to see her in a part where she's so helpless you forget that this is the same actress-turned-company-Chair of Pepsi who made the Mommie Dearest image that her adopted daughter created in the public eye shortly after Crawford's death an image very easy to believe[1]. Bette Davis, on the other hand, was clearly more femme fatale to Crawford's dominatrix, and while that's an impractical role for a woman in her later fifties in 1962, Davis does still manage to bring elements of that to the role of Jane Hudson, an emotionally unstable woman, once a child star of vaudeville, then a struggling film actress of the early 1930s, and now caring for her sister Blanche Hudson, a former film star crippled in a car accident in 1935.

A lot of facts of the story are vague due to Jane's instability and deteriorating mental state, facts including the ownership of the mansion the sisters share (did Blanche purchase the house with her film contract earnings? or did their father purchase the house 'for Jane' with the money made from Jane's childhood on Vaudeville?), and even who really was the cause of Blanche's accident. By the beginning of the "present day" (1962) portion of the story (the first twenty minutes or so are flashes to 1917 and 1935), Jane has practically imprisoned Blanche to her bedroom, with the only other human contact Blanche receives being from the maid and doctors. Fan mail (from a revived interest in Blanche's films after a television station starts airing them) is stolen, Blanche's voice is imitated and signature forged to keep Jane in steady supply of gin, and eventually Jane begins more blatantly stealing Blanche's money to hire a pianist in hopes of reviving her old childhood act, Edwinn Flagg, an English emigrant living with his mother and himself an alcoholic[2]. Edwin clearly recognises that Jane is unstable, but humours the old woman because she's promised to pay him $100/week[3]. With every effort of Blanche's to have a neighbour or someone help her, Jane cuts off her means of communication more and more, eventually murdering the maid, and finally her sister's prison is discovered by Edwin, who flees the house in horror.

I found the ending one of the most heart-breaking things ever to be put to screen, and I find it hard to believe that there wasn't a single studio that had enough faith in this picture to back it during production, leading it to be one of the most successful and critically acclaimed independent films of its day. Before this, the status quo of the indie film was either a hasty script churned out over a weekend, and a "twelve-day miracle" produced and directed by a team less interested in story and art than making cheap films that could (hopefully) make more money than it cost to produce them *or* a convoluted "art film", usually foreign, and more often than not with the addition of gratuitous nudity just to help it break even. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? set a new bar for the general public, even though it took a couple decades to fully cement, what with the rise of the exploitation genre in the later part of the decade and then into the 1970s, but Baby Jane? did still manage to set a standard for excellency than even big studio films all too often will miss the mark.


1: Coming from a childhood of abuse, myself, I'm inclined to side with Cathy Crawford, but I also know how tempting it is to embellish the truth when there's no-one to counter it. I'm not in any way believing that Joan Crawford was a good mother, clearly her relationship with her eldest daughter was a bitter one, on its best days. I'm just saying to remain objective.
2: I haven't read the novel since I was eleven or twelve, but I believe Edwin is also implied to be a homosexual through these tropes in the film, which was rather common for the day.
3: Remember: 1962 dollars. By modern standards, that would be about $715, or working for $17.88/hour (if 40hrs/week), over twice modern California minimum wage

"Capitalism a love story"

After watching it i really hate politicans

That it is. I borrowed the blu-ray from a family member. Every time I see it I'm impressed.


Now I'm watching Taken with Liam Neeson on blu-ray. This one is another favorite.


Before this, I watched Terminator Salvation, which I actually did like despire public opinion being otherwise. It was WAY better then T3.

To be fair, there's little that isn't way better than T3

^well..........yeah, you're right

Kubrick's "The Shining"

Yes, Jack Nicholson does seem to have the MO for his characters: man starts off normal then becomes a psycho. But there's still something about this movie that I really enjoy. Not a big fan of Wendy's character though.

I recently watched Coraline.

-- Wed Feb 29, 2012 4:00 pm --



Oh, this film never gets old! I agree with you big time about Wendy's character, as well...there's something irritating about her, but I just can't put my finger on it. Maybe it's her "I'm-submissive-to-the-clear-and-present-dangers-in-my-face-and-that's-okay" attitude?

Last movie I watch? Oh damn what was it... I believe... It was... Well the last movie I *tried* to watch was Case 39 but Netflix hates me or something. But before that I watched the Ward, which I've been wanting to watch for quite a while. I really enjoyed it, only because I was really caught by surprise with the ending. And there were moments that made me jump. Definitely a fun movie.

Watching The Departed. Normally, I like Martin Scorsese, and I love mobster films, but this one feels a bit off. It seemed to lack the ferocity and likability of some of the characters in other Scorsese films such as Goodfellas and Casino. It almost feels sluggish and slightly boring.



It's certainly not a bad film by any means, but I guess I love my mobster films a certain way, I guess.