For three years, I blogged about movie challenges that I set for myself: a different movie every day (2009-2010), how many movies I watched a year (2010-2011), and how many NEW movies I watched in a year (2011-2012).
Now it's more a catch-all for my entertainment musings. The title, of course, is how James Bond takes his martinis.
The answers to the last two years' questions were 199 movies in a year, and 135 new movies in a year (one every 2.7 days). In case you were curious :-)
Return of the Jedi (1983) #14 on my Top 100 List I'm going to get this out of the way first - I really don't mind the addition of Hayden Christensen into the end of the DVD version of this movie. It appeases my sense of continuity and links the two trilogies together. (It almost makes up for Leia's discussion about remembering her mother, which is impossible, since she was minutes old when Padme died in Revenge of the Sith.) There are a lot of things that I love about this movie, from the Ewoks smashing an Imperial Walker between two logs, to the entire Jabba's Palace and sail barge sequence, to the celebration at the end (which includes my favorite moment in all of Star Warswhen the Ewoks use stormtrooper helmets as drums and also now includes a shot of Naboo). I know that it's campy when compared to the other two, but I love it anyway. The three parallel battles in the end are shot and edited beautifully. Yoda's death scene is moving - the most moving death of a backwards-talking puppet ever - and works as an appropriate reveal of the Skywalker twins' existance. Though, I gotta say, for a Jedi who's supposed to be all about peace and defense, Luke kills people in this movie left and right. Even so, Jedi Luke is hot. My Netflix rating: 5 stars
Into the Wild (2007) #84 on my Top 100 List Once you get over the fact that the main character, perpetual wanderer Chris McCandless, has a lot of opinions and expresses them in self-important, pretentious voice over, there is a lot to love about this movie. Chris's story is very interesting, even if his musings on life are not. It's also moving and heartbreakingly tragic. The supporting cast is just as good as Emile Hirsch as Chris and includes Vince Vaughn (in one of his rare non-comedic roles), Kristen Stewart (pre-Twilight), Catherine Keener, Marcia Gay Harden, and Hal Holbrook in his Oscar-nominated role. The landscapes are stunning, shot in Alaska, Arizona, Oregon and California, and the way that Sean Penn (who I like way better as a director than an actor) uses them almost creates an additional character for Emile Hirsch to interact with, since for a lot of the movie, he's alone. The look of the movie makes it seem like he is truly communing with nature. My Netflix rating: 5 stars
Moulin Rouge! (2001) #67 on my Top 100 List Mmmm, Ewan McGregor can sing. He's not great in this movie about always suppressing his Scottish accent, but that's fine with me. Though this movie's been out less than ten years, the doomed romance between Christian and Satine (Nicole Kidman) is already one of the more iconic and memorable film couples from the last decade. It helps that they both sing beautifully. The color in the movie is vibrant and alive, shown through Baz Luhrmann's almost overwhelming filming style, where everything is fast and bright and loud. Most of the songs are covers, though between the arrangements and the performers, they don't feel like it. "El Tango de Roxanne" embodies lust and jealousy, "Meet Me in the Red Room" is pure sexuality, "One Day I'll Fly Away" is hopeful and hopeless at the same time, and "Your Song" is reminiscent of innocent true love. My Netflix rating: 5 stars
Jurassic Park (1993) #13 on my Top 100 List Anytime Steven Spielberg and John Williams get together, you know you're going to get something amazing. This movie is absolutely wonderful. From the attack at the beginning to the stunning and majestic first view of a dinosaur (perfect with John Williams' score), it's all moving and exciting and then thrilling and scary. I love Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum, who delivers his dryly sarcastic lines with great wit, including one of my favorite movie lines ever, "Yeah, but John, if the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists!") and I love that Samuel L. Jackson has a bit part. The special effects hold up to the test of time, still impressive even now after we've seen CGI blow-outs like The Matrix. The raptors are great villains - the scene in the kitchen is tense and slightly horrifying and the scene where they eat the poor game warden (maybe I'm spoiling this, but this movie's been out nearly 20 years and if you haven't seen it by now, why are you reading this?) scared me so much when I was little that I didn't actually watch it until the third or fourth time of viewing the movie. I like that the T-rex isn't actually the villain. Yeah, she ate the lawyer, but she was hungry and that guy was annoying anyway. There's a great article on Wikipedia about what sounds they blended to make all of the dinosaur calls. It's not very similar to the book, but Michael Crichton was involved with the screenwriting, so one has to assume that he approved of the changes. My Netflix rating: 5 stars
