The Incredibles - Brad Bird (2004, in theatre)
This is an astoundingly good movie. Story good enough for live-action. Some of Pixar's most impressive graphics yet - unbelievable rendering of hair, cloth, skin, and water (though they miss the mark with some of the fire effects). More high energy nonstop action than any three James Bond flicks. Hundreds of standard (and not-so-standard) comic-book and action hero tropes incorporated, half of them somehow made fresh. Dozens of moments from other action movies stolen yet made new and better. This immediately leaps over Spider-Man and X-Men to become my favorite superhero movie, and it's contending for a slot in my top three movies of all time. Catch it on the big screen - I'm likely going to see it again myself.
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The Usual Suspects - Bryan Singer (1995, DVD)
Not the first time we've seen this. Um, it's a great movie? You should see it over and over? And I just wanted to get a new post on the new site to say we're back in business?
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Full Frontal - Steven Soderbergh (2002, DVD)
Weird low budget self-referential meta-Hollywood thing. I'd give it a pass; if you want something like that, The Anniversary Party is much better.
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The Thing - John Carpenter (1982, DVD)
Yep, we watched this on Halloween morning, so it was like "nasty alien killing the humans one by one" day, all day. I'd never actually watched the whole thing through before. Why do people at an Antarctic research station or on a mining starship always have flamethrowers handy?
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Alien (Director's Cut) - Ridley Scott (1979, in theatre)
Our annual Halloween tradition of Ti Couz dinner plus horror movie continues. This time we went off to the Metreon for the re-release of Alien. I've seen Alien several times, but never on the big screen. The big screen exposes the shakiness of some of the miniature shots of the starship, but it also reveals lots of nice little touches throughout the whole movie - there are tons of examples of "show, don't tell". The science-fictiony detail elements are pushed into the background, but are still visible, even as the human element takes the foreground. The bits added in the director's cut are mostly minor. One scene which, according to Tad, was cut for pacing reasons, should have stayed cut, particularly as it is made redundant by the sequel, but otherwise the additions were beneficial.
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well okay
I'm pretty sure we've watched some movies in the last 8 months. I'm pretty sure a lot of them won't get written up in here. Live with it.
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Reviews to do

Movies we've seen that need to be reviewed - some quite a while back, some second (or later) viewings:

AI (3?/2002)
Henry Fool (3/23/2002) Nth viewing
Panic Room (3/31/2002)
Drunken Master (4/7/2002)
Focus (4/7/2002)
Full Metal Jacket (4/12/2002)
Eyes Wide Shut (4/13/2002)
Mulholland Drive (4/21/2002)
Sexy Beast (4/22/2002)
The Sixth Sense (4/22/2002)
Barry Lyndon (4/23/2002)
The Shining (4/23/2002)
Spiderman (5/22/2002) in theatre
X-Men (5/25/2002)
Bridge On The River Kwai (5/25/2002)
Bandits (?)
Live Nude Girls Unite (2?/2003)
more Sex & The City (2?/2003)
Reign Of Fire (2?/2003)
K-19: The Widowmaker (2?/2003)
Lilo & Stich (2?/2003)
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2?/2003) live!
Wasabi (3?/2003)
The Bourne Identity (3?/2003)
The Killing (3?/2003)
Possession (3?/2003)
Pride and Prejudice (3?/2003)
Antitrust (3/20/2003)
Labyrinth
Buffy - 3rd season
The Game

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Scotland, PA - Billy Morrissette (2001, DVD)
Extremely clever version of Shakespeare's Macbeth, set in a small town fast food restaurant in 1975. I didn't realize what the gimmick was until seeing Shakespeare's name in the opening credits, and from that point on I was hooked. The shift of setting probably could have been played in a more deadpan manner, but the movie is made lighter in tone with goofy surrealism; it's a black comedy rather than a tragedy. Maura Tierney stands out as "Lady Macbeth".
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Ringu - Hideo Nakata (1998, VHS)
Japanese horror film that's spawned at least three sequels/prequels as well as a TV series and remakes out of both South Korea and the US (The Ring). The story is less cheesy than it could be, given the premise; watching it on videotape probably makes it creepier than seeing it in theater would. It's not a bad story, but hardly worth all the various filmings it seems to have inspired.
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24 Hour Party People - Michael Winterbottom (2002, DVD)
Dramatized biography of Tony Wilson and the rise and fall of the Factory Records label, roughly covering the decade of the 1980s, bookended by the formation of Joy Division on one end and the whimper-and-bang failure of Happy Mondays to deliver a bestselling album to the label in time to avoid bankruptcy on the other. The film cleverly interweaves stock footage (closeups of the Sex Pistols in performance) and new (long shots of stand-ins recreating the same performance). Steve Coogan portrays Wilson as a fool you can't help liking, if not exactly admiring. About half the major characters portrayed actually get cameos in the movie, and Coogan/Wilson points them out through fourth-wall-breaking narration which somehow manages to amuse more than irritate. Interesting, entertaining.
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The Sum of All Fears - Phil Alden Robinson (2002, DVD)
When I saw, not long after 9/11, that this was being filmed, I feared the worst. I was half avoiding seeing it. I thought the book was pretty good apart from the end, and was sure that the movie was going to carry a very heavy-handed war-on-terrorism, America-rules message. The filmmakers in some ways took the high road, choosing to replace the Middle Eastern terrorists with European terrorists, for example. A side effect is that the endgame is a confrontation between the US and Russia, substantially more exciting and higher-stakes than the book version, and actually making better use of the Jack Ryan character (who has gone from being played by a 32-going-on-40-year-old Alec Baldwin in the cold-war era Hunt For Red October, to a 30-going-on-25-year-old Ben Affleck in a post-Clinton setting; Harrison Ford, older than either of the other two, played Ryan in the other two movies, one of which is I believe a prequel to Red October). The strategic decisions for the story restructuring actually make really good sense, but the implementation is hurried and cartoonish, and the pacing is awkward. Finally, the handling of the massively-lethal terrorist attack is problematic; admittedly there's no good way to treat such a thing that doesn't either exploit 9/11 or ignore it, but in avoiding tasteless exploitation, the filmmakers wind up avoiding most of the emotional impact of what should be a hugely powerful scene. Military geek notes: Casting Russia as the opponent allows an opportunity to steal part of a battle scene from Clancy's Red Storm Rising, but it's packed into about 30 seconds and glosses over most of the details (which is all that RSR consists of, really), so it's somewhat disappointing. They got the aircraft and missiles right, though.
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Shaolin Soccer - Stephen Chow (aka Siu Lam Juk Kau) (2001, DVD)
Insanely bizarre and amusing kung fu soccer flick. Thematically similar to Chow's earlier film, God of Cookery. Oh, just go see it.
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Kurt and Courtney - Nick Broomfield (1998, DVD)
Frequently irritating and occasionally appalling documentary on the death of Kurt Cobain. Almost everyone in the movie, director/interviewer Broomfield included, comes off as some flavor of maniac and/or asshole. If I had Cobain's wife and 'best friend', I'd probably fellate a shotgun too.
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Ice Age - Carlos Saldanha, Chris Wedge (2002, DVD)
Pretty good CG in the service of pretty typical Disneyish "making friends and taking care of them is good, never mind what species they are" storyline. Lots of sight gags and Road Runner/Coyote-esque cartoon silliness provide cheap laughs. Also owes a few gags to the Gary Larson school of natural history. Nothing too deep here.
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Sex and the City - The Complete First Season - Michael Fields, Susan Seidelman (1998, DVD)
Okay, admittedly, I laughed a bunch watching this, so it isn't completely worthless. It's very uneven. There's very little chemistry among the recurring characters, least of all between Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her paramour "Mr. Big". Part of the problem with that relationship is in the writing; the writers are constrained to keep viewers guessing as to whether Big is a sleazeball or Prince Charming, so the character winds up just being vague, which in turn forces Carrie to act like an idiot. With the viewer ignoring their painful scenes, and two of the "sidekicks" being fairly one-dimensional caricatures, I find myself mostly enjoying Miranda's caustic wit. I hear later seasons get better, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for them.
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The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers - Peter Jackson (2002, in theatre)
More than a movie, this was for us an Experience; the details of the experience will appear on Un Bon Vin Blanc. Okay, bottom line: it's really good. The Two Towers easily beats the first installment, The Fellowship Of The Ring, in the excitement and action category. On the down side, it stumbles a little bit plotwise in some of its departures from the book (which, to be honest, I haven't yet finished); the Merry/Pippin story thread suffers, with a little too much time given to the Rohan/Helm's Deep arc, and Elijah Wood's Frodo doesn't get to show as much depth and range as in the first film; he just looks a little more goth in each successive scene. The effects are excellent, stunning in spots: I was apprehensive about how the CG Gollum was going to work out; he gets a lot of screen time. His face isn't quite as "right" as, say, that of Yoda in Episode 2 (a bit too "clean", and does every single character in this movie have to have huge blue eyes?), but Yoda's animators didn't even have to face the challenge of showing a scrawny, mostly naked humanoid, crawling and leaping and generally acting like a freak for something like an hour of screen time. Gollum's body — his computer generated skeleton and musculature — is phenomenally real. In some scenes he doesn't seem to interact with his environment correctly (grabbing a tree branch which doesn't flex a millimeter nor shed a speck of dust or bark under his hand, a la the raptors from Jurassic Park) but in others the integration is perfect — one of his scrambles through a shallow creek left my jaw hanging. The Big CG Battle Scenes are impressive as hell; while there are tactical idiocies to be ridiculed, they're huge improvements on those of Verhoeven and Lucas, and the architectural background for the battles is also much more visually exciting. Yeah, sure, the movie has flaws, there's no way around it, but it's exciting and fun, and just like the first one, you're ready to sit through another three hours as soon as it's over. Damn you, Peter Jackson! Damn you to hell!
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Y Tu Mamá También - Alfonso Cuarón (2001, DVD)
I didn't know anything about this movie going into it, and loved it. This is the best road trip movie I can remember seeing. It's also the most honest (and graphic) depiction of teenage male sexuality I've ever seen, simultaneously illustrating both its intensity and its absurdity. It's alternately melancholy and hysterically funny, and leaves you aching for more when it has to end. Every sixteen-year-old should see it.
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Notorious C.H.O. - Lorene Machado (DVD, 2002)
Margaret Cho's second stand-up performance film isn't as funny or as deeply personal as her first, but gets some pretty good laughs. As with many high-profile comedians, she gets mileage out of being willing to say things that no one else will, and unlike some others, she seems to really mean it. Openly — no, make that exhibitionistically — bisexual, she goes into pretty explicit detail about her sex life in a way that's the polar opposite of coy or flirtatious, with remarks like "don't Sharon Stone me to death! I want a big bull dyke who looks like John Goodman!"; I can't emphasize enough how eye-opening and refreshing this can be, particularly to those of us who participate in or are exposed to, uh, alternative sexual practices. On the down side, some of her riffs go on a bit too long in one vein, and she spends a little too much time holding her "funny faces" and repeating punch lines that got particularly good reactions from the audience; there's actually not all that much real material here.
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