But I feel that I should have to log the last three I watched before I do that. So there’s that element.
Tuesday was my birthday, but I didn’t really do anything but sit around and watch movies. I don’t remember what I did last year but I bet it was pretty similar.
Lethal Weapon (1987)
I realized this week that I’d never seen this movie, so I thought that I might as well watch it, because I’ve seen the other three Lethal Weapon movies. They all seemed so contextless before this moment. Heh.
This movie invented many of the action movie conventions that we take for granted these days, and stole the rest from Die Hard. Although, Roger Ebert actually traces one of the cliché moments to Seven Samurai. You know, the one where the hero tackles a completely unrelated mission at the beginning of the movie? That’s in a lot of movies. Just another thing we probably owe to Kurosawa.
I was mildly entertained by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in this movie, but Gary Busey just really creeps me out. I mean, this movie was made at a point in Hollywoody history where we’re supposed to think that Gary Busey is the type of person that you might want in your movie, but it was just as false back then as it is today.
Spoorloos (1988)
aka “The Vanishing”
This was lent to me by a co-worker and I was pretty impressed with it. The only things that marred the experience were the depressing ending and learning about the even more depressing American ending. Turns out the same filmmaker put together the American version starring Keifer Sutherland, Sandra Bullock, and Jeff Bridges, and they slapped on a happy ending. Fucking great.
This movie is basically about a guy whose wife/girlfriend/? is kidnapped, and three years later, he gets the opportunity to find out what happened to her. Thoroughly creepy, and the chick who plays the kidnapped chick is very very cute, even if she’s only in it for like twenty minutes.
Videodrome (1983)
If you’ve never seen a Cronenberg movie, you could do worse than to start with this one. But you probably have seen one. He did the remake of The Fly! And he just came out with A History of Violence this year! You probably saw one of those two, and you know that this guy is capable of some weird imagery. This movie has everything you need. Torture, sex, TVs exploding in a deluge of guts and meat, six inch vaginas embedded in guys’ stomaches, VHS tapes bulging and growing veins, Japanese dildos wearing kimonos …everything!
I got the great Criterion release of this movie at DVD Planet because I am a sucker for gimmicky packaging. I could spend like five thousand bucks at that store. I’m glad I don’t work there.
Here, I’ll test the upload feature of wordpress.
That’s a pretty good point about Seven Samurai.