Less Than Detailed Movie Discussion

So hey, I'm sick. I'm not sure what's the matter, whether it's an allergic reaction to all the pet dander around here or something more severe. Either way, I wanted to do another little post, since I've had the opportunity to see some flicks I hadn't previously, though I wouldn't say that the time spent watching them was being put to good use. I probably should wait for tomorrow, since Alex wants to go see Run Fat Boy Run, but I've been trying to put this post up since yesterday evening, and the only computer I have access to hasn't been cooperative. Besides, Alex and I have a tendency to make plans that never come to fruition, so who knows if we'll make it to theaters tomorrow?

Balls of Fury: I'm sure I laughed at something, I just can't remember specifically what it was. I like lowbrow humor just fine (Which is why I can watch Dodgeball so many times. Well, that and I prefer Ben Stiller to play imbecilic jerks, as opposed to goofball losers) but the movie didn't really connect. I couldn't seem to muster up much concern for the characters. Then again, I'm not sure the creators were shooting for that. Things seemed to develop a tad too abruptly, like everyone was in a hurry to get out of there. Clearly though, I've watched too many sports movies, because I was disappointed when Randy Daytona didn't get his rmeatch with his adversary from the '88 Olympics. I wanted to see it, and I'm not sure it would have mattered whether he got his revenge, or tasted bitter defeat again. The most disconcerting thing was that I didn't feel amused by any of Christopher Walken's antics, which is abnormal for me. Perhaps that was the first sign of my current illness.

Click: Hey speaking of me not laughing at Christopher Walken (again, a troubling sign), here's another movie. I would like to have a remote control that could do all the neat stuff demonstrated in this film, but I'm probably not high on the list of people who would get one if they were available (you have to figure there'd be regulation on who could have one, right? Why am I thinking about that? The illness is strengthening its grip). I found the film to be a bit darker than I expected. I figured that Adam Sandler would have some fun with the remote, then learn a valuable lesson about abusing its power, but the way the last part of the film just beats down on us about how he's ignored his family, that was more of a downer than I expected.

Wild Hogs: Why did I put this in the DVD player? Oh yeah, Alex was having a power nap (one moving into its fifth hour by this point), and he didn't have any other films I was even remotely interested in. Plus, I'd heard some less than positive things about it, and the car wreck mentality took over. That mentality will be the death of me, or at least whatever ability I had to critically judge films. But I could easily have gone my whole life without seeing William H. Macy's hind end. He was the reason I had some glimmer of hope for the film, as I've usually enjoyed his works. And did there seem to be a lot of jokes about homosexuality to anyone else (especially early in the film)? I'm not sure what we were supposed to be getting out of that (yes, we were supposed to laugh, but I'm not entirely sure why). I am surprised that one cop didn't reappear during the final conflict between the Hogs and the "real" bikers. He seemed like such a big deal early on, I figured he would have gone ahead and followed them across state lines.

Number 23: To be fair to this movie, I was only half watching. The rest of the time was spent going through Alex' comics, several of which he got from me, and reading the ones I was feeling nostalgic for. This movie reminds me of the Michael Douglas movie, The Game, because it seems to go from pointing to one conclusion to another (though The Game seemed to just bounce back and forth between two conclusions, whether this was real or not). I wasn't all that surprised by the reveal of the author's identity, and the movie struggled with me, largely because I had a hard time buying into this obsession with the number 23. Which is odd, given that the number 13 seems to have some odd hold on me, in the sense that when I'm by myself trying to sort something out, and I can't think of the next word I want, "thirteen" is the one that comes to my lips, even though it never has any relation to what it is I was trying to work through. Anyway, the parts of the movie that were ostensibly pages from the book were the most interesting parts to me, just based on the way the world, and the people in it, looked. Very stylized, with the bright whites and very dark shadows, and the fact that they rarely seemed to intermingle. Those parts were the kind of thing I might have enjoyed sitting down and dissecting for the film classes I took.

Oh, one last thing before I wrap this up. Alex' dad was watching The Village on Wednesday, and I was thinking how I kind of like the movie, if you leave out the whole reveal at the end, and I started to think about what kind of story they could have done other than that. I thought about a story of people who cut themselves off from larger society, just not to such an extremist degree (in other words, if you want them to appear colonial, have it set closer to that time). Then, based on the idea these people cut themselves off to get away from the darker elements of society, just do a story about someone in the village becoming a serial killer (or some sort of moderately violent criminal) who's adopted the visiage of a childhood boogeyman, and the townspeople have to discern their identity. You can still have the love story set around that, I would think, and it could probably serve that story in some way.

Now, I think I'm going to lie down, at least until one of the dogs demands to be let outside, which should be about five minutes after I fall alseep. Nah, that's too pessimistic. It'll be two hours, or thereabouts, if the last few days are any indication.