North by Northwest

Oh, right, I did promise to watch some movies for RIP, didn't I? And my list does say, "Um. Hitchcock?", and this is totally suspenseful so first movie DONE.

And it was pretty good! North by Northwest tells the story of this guy Thornhill who gets mistaken for some other guy (who turns out not to exist) and then is almost murdered The Postman Always Rings Twice-style except he turns out to be a pretty awesome drunk driver. Except he gets caught for, you know, drunk driving, and then he's all "Nonono, someone else poured a giant bottle of bourbon down my throat and then tried to kill me," and everyone's like, "Right," and the attempted murderers totally make him look like a crazy person and then like a murderer and then he's on the lam and he meets a sexy lady who is sexy and also not actually on his side. Also there are some FBI or whatever people who are like, "Sweet, this guy is solving our nonexistant-dude problem." But Thornhill is going to prove himself innocent whether anyone likes it or not.

I had some stuff to say on the Twitters (sidenote: it took me way too long to figure out how to do that search) while I was watching the movie, and you can see from the seeming non-sequitur-ness of my comments that it is an odd one. Using murder as a flirting tool? Attempted murder by crop-duster? Annoying an auctioneer to get a police escort out of an auction? Having a chase down Mount Freakin' Rushmore? I don't... I just don't understand.

And I especially don't understand the ending, which is like (SPOILERS), oh, look, she's gonna fall down the mountain, oh, just kidding, now they're on a train and possibly married and OH LOOK AT THAT TRAIN GOING INTO A TUNNEL WHAT COULD THAT POSSIBLY MEAN. The end. That chick is nice and all, but I rather wish she had fallen off the mountain with my beloved Martin Landau, who can stare at me with those eyes all day long.

Ahem.

Anyway, the ending aside, I kind of liked the ridiculousness of the whole movie, which had some wonderfully quotable lines, like "I don't like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me." Excellent. And while sometimes the exposition was a little much, I enjoyed the times when I was like, "How did he get out of THAT situation" and then the character would exposit for me. It's not the most subtle movie ever, but it's certainly an entertaining time!

Rating: 7/10
(RIP Challenge)

Interview with the Vampire

This movie had been in our Netflix instant queue for a while, so when Scott and I had our movie day with Halloween and The Core (which is only scary in how terrible it is), we threw in this vampire love-fest as well.

I haven't read Interview with the Vampire. I'm sure that someone has and will tell me that the book is way better than the movie, but I certainly enjoyed the movie itself. Though it could have used more Christian Slater. And less gross blood everywhere, but I'm sure that was half the point.

The story, as far as I can tell, is that this journalist, Slater, stumbles upon a vampire, Brad Pitt, who decides to tell the journalist his life story. The story is not very pretty — Pitt has a crappy life and for whatever reason is picked by the vampire Tom Cruise to become a vampire himself, which is even crappier than being a vampire usually is, because there just aren't that many around. Pitt realizes that he's made a pretty bad life decision, and tries to be as un-vampire-like as possible, but eventually he succumbs and does, like, the worst thing ever in nomming on the neck of a sweet little Kirsten Dunst, who Tom Cruise then turns into a vampire for shiggles. And then even more bad stuff happens.

I guess my one complaint about the movie is that I keep referring to the characters by the actors' names... I remember that Cruise was Lestat, and Pitt was Louie or Louis or something, but I can't for the life of me remember what Dunst's character's name was (a quick trip to Wikipedia tells me it was Claudia). I don't know if it's just the power of a famous name or a lack of caring about the characters. I think it's probably the latter. But the story is good, and interesting to someone whose experience with vampires is pretty much limited to loving Buffy and rolling her eyes through the first Twilight book. So I think it's an overall good time.

Recommendation: Watch this if you like any of the aforementioned actors, or Antonio Banderas, who is also in this movie. Or if you are interested in what the "real" life of a vampire might be like. Or if you really like the look of blood dripping down everyone's chin. Ew.

Rating: 7/10
(RIP Challenge)

Halloween

Scott and I were talking the other day about how neither of us has seen any of the classic scary films, though we both know the important parts from seeing zillions of references in other movies and on television. With RIP going and Hallowe'en coming up, I thought we should get a start on actually watching these films... and when we found Halloween classic on display at the library, it seemed like fate!

Only... I think maybe I didn't understand this movie. On the back, all the quotes were like, "Scary! Terrifying! Superb!" and when I was watching I was thinking, "Boring! Why do I care? More STABBY!"

I am clearly a jaded, cynical member of the Millenials. But this movie was absolutely not scary, and not even really that creepy. It did look good, though.

If you're like me and thought that this movie had maybe Freddy Krueger or Jason in it (I seriously have not seen ANY of these movies), let me tell you what this one's about. This is the Michael Myers movie, in which our antagonist starts off by stabbing his sister to death. When he's a six-year-old. Then, fifteen years later (when he's apparently magically twenty-three), he busts out of the clearly-not-very-secure mental place he's been hanging out in and goes back to his hometown for unclear reasons and decides to kill some babysitters, again for unclear reasons. I mean, I know he's a crazy person. But no reason other than that.

Most of the movie is not about the killing and the stabby, though... there's a lot of watching Jamie Lee Curtis look like she does today but act like a teenager, some pretty terrible acting, a girl getting stuck in a detached laundry room's window, and a weirdo psychologist who is looking for Myers anywhere but where he actually is.

Maybe I needed to be alive in '78 to get this movie. Or maybe I needed to watch it in '78. Is this like my beloved children's books that seem so amazing and novel at the time, but now I've read more and better? And those first books, while still holding a place in my heart, are not nearly as good as I remember them being? I would believe that.

Recommendation: Watch this at midnight. With the lights all off. Maybe with a cat that'll jump on you when you're least expecting it. Or watch it with an eye to the interesting cinematography. Or watch it just so you can realize that, ohhhhhhhh, that's where that music comes from!

Rating: 5/10
(RIP Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Murder on the Orient Express — The Movie

After reading Murder on the Orient Express, I decided that I needed to watch the movie again, mostly because I realized that I hadn't actually finished watching it the first time. I also decided to watch it to kick off the Peril on the Screen. Birds! Stones! Trains stuck in snowdrifts!

So, the movie... let me start by saying that I absolutely hated Poirot in the movie. I dislike his voice, his mannerisms, his moustache, and his intense shoutiness toward all of the suspects. I heard no shouting in the book.

And that brings me to my other dislike of the film — that the writers/directors/whoever changed facts and situations seemingly on a whim. There was a boat, for one, and an introduction of all the characters before they got on the train, and all of the compartment numbers were different, and different people discovered things, and some things weren't discovered at all, and even the first solution at the end is oddly different. Aaaand, my dearest Michael York's character went from being a fairly decent fellow to a kind of heartless fellow, when you look at it, and I don't like it when Michael York is abused like that. Ahem. I've berated the Harry Potter movies for being impossible to follow without having read the books; here I was not well able to follow the movie having finished the book less than twenty-four hours previous!

I'm trying to think of things I liked about the film, but the story is really it, and you read about that yesterday (at least, I hope you did!).

Recommendation: Just read the book! Or, watch just the parts with Michael York in them — you'll only watch like ten minutes of the film, but they will be a very nice ten minutes.

Rating: 5/10
(RIP Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.