Feb's Movies List

1. Megamind (2010) - Daughter number two and I, both stricken with flu, needed that. Great fun.
2. Teenagers from Outer Space.
3. The Snow Beast - a creature feature double bill of rewatches with daughter number one. Much hilarity.
4. Frankenstein General Hospital ( 1988 ) - 90 minutes. One almost decent joke and that was very very crappily delivered. An awful film. I seriously hope I see nothing as bad as this for the rest of the year.
5. Rise of the Guardians (2012) - Once I'd realised I was watching an off-the-shelf Superhero movie featuring the The Tooth Fairy, Father Christmas, the Easter Bunny, and the Sandman as The Justice League of Childhood with the Boogie-man as the super-villain of the piece I almost enjoyed it. The ending (as is so often the case these days) was far too long. (It's over already!) Some great set design though. Loved the set design.
6. Rage in Harlem (1991) - I think I need to see that again. And not on a crappy VHS. From what I remember of the book this stayed pretty close to the mood, pacing, violence and the very dark (I nearly said 'black') humour of the original - though I did kind of miss that one of the central male conmen characters dresses as a preacher and not a nun as he did in the book.
7. Kika (1993) - another Pedro Almodóvar under my belt. Not sure I liked it as much as some of his others - to be honest I don't think I liked it full stop - but it does confirm one of my rules of thumb for choosing what to watch. Any film with music by Ennio Morricone or costume design by Jean Paul Gaultier is worth a look.
8. Repo Man (1984) - for the umpteenth time and loved it even more than I have ever loved it before - though if anyone knows where I can find a cut containing the 'Dorito' scene I would appreciate it. I miss that scene every time I watch it.
   
   'Food - Meat Flavored'. Goddamn mellon-farmers....
9. A Dirty Little Business (aka Merchants of Venus 1998 ) - in which Michael York plays a Russian immigrant to the USA working in a dildo factory. Not very good. Obviously cheaply made (the sound in particular was very variable) it's one of those fascinating films where you spend more time wondering what it must be like to be a jobbing actor (like Michael York, Michael Cox, and Beverly D'Angelo) doing crap like this one day, a cartoon voice-over the next. (Cox and D'Angelo have worked on episodes of Scooby-do, and York on Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!) And how did Michel J Pollard, Troy Donahue and Arthur Hiller, director of Love Story, get involved with such a flaccid script?.
   Another one of those films where the story of the making was probably more interesting than the final product.
10. Cat Women of the Moon (1953) - Rubber Spider Attack research disguised as Friday Night Movie Fun with the kids. They loved it. We laughed all the way through it. I confirmed rubberyness of spiders.
11. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian ( 2008 ) During the film Aslan tells Lucy twice that he's not going to come and save the day. "The same thing doesn't happen." Then he just comes back and saves the day. Is this going to happen in all of these? Everything gets desperate and then Aslan comes back, roars and saves the day, breathes on people and does magic shit while Lucy brings characters back to life with magic potion? Long time since I read the books but it seems possible. Well 'this could get uninteresting real quick'...
12. The Naked Truth (1957) - mildly amusing British comedy with Terry Thomas, Peter Sellars etc.
13. Rigged (1985) - a weird one. Started off awfully. I mean really really awful in that way only films from the 80s can: our utterly bland, pudding faced producer/lead (playing a tough Texas oilman) wears a fashion crime pastel blue suit in the first act and a lot of the dialogue is delivered in an unintelligible Texan mumble. The lighting is weird too. The whole thing is shot with that diffuse, backlit, soft-focus glow that Penthouse magazine used to shoot their centrefolds, back in the days when tan lines were in fashion and pubic hair a novelty. But somewhere on the way it almost gets good. Nothing much seems to happen for a long time; everything takes ages to set up. It was like watching a very soft porn version of Dallas. Then it neatly changes gear (almost literally) and our pudding faced hero is suddenly trying to fight his corner in a very soft porn version of Body Heat - but without any of the steamy eroticism. Somehow, despite the rotten start, I found myself quite engaged. A lot better than our utterly bland, pudding faced producer/lead's only other feature film. Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold. Boy, did that stink! I wish I still had a copy....
14. Three Colours White (1994) - my second Krzysztof Kieslowski and, though lauded by grown up critics I'd heard of, I was somewhat disappointed. Maybe my expectations were too high I don't know but The Double life of Veronique I though beautiful, elegiac, and utterly captivating. This was just another film. And I hated the last but one shot of Julie Delpy redeeming her character, giving hope to the protagonist and all that other happy ending bullshit. It was - I learned from watching the extras on the disc - added much later, it looks like it. The shot stands out like a sore thumb and just sinks the end of the film for me.
15. Howl's Moving Castle - second time of watching and I still don't really like it. It doesn't gel.
16. Running Man (1987) - an SF 'TV is evil' satire which passes the time with a couple of halfway jokes (the condemned contestants in a rigged duel to the death TV show get court-appointed theatrical agents) but was mostly meh. Probably the only film ever to feature two future governors of American states hitting each other while wearing Spandex.