Rented Alex & Emma over the weekend, and didn't get more than 20 minutes into the film before ejecting it. Dumb plot and absolutely terrible acting.

I give this movie a -338 out of 5 stars.

Watched the first 2/3 of The Aristocrats last night. I had really, really been looking forward to seeing this movie. Who wouldn't be excited to see Hank Azaria, Eddie Izzard, Robin Williams, Eric Idle, Bill Maher, and a horde of other funny people in one film? Needless to say, I'm not impressed, and I somewhat regret watching it at all.

Parts of it were funny and/or a little bit interesting, but good grief there was a lot of swearing. Personally, I think raunchy humor has its place and can be extremely funny, but this movie went way past humor pretty early on. Maybe within 5 or 10 minutes. My wife fell asleep part-way through (she didn't miss much), and I eventually stopped watching to go do something (anything) else.

The next time you're at the video store, skip The Aristocrats. It's just not worth it.

We rang in the new year by watching They Came Back with friends. Very interesting concept, average cinematography, completely sub-par plot resolution. Way too little dialog, too many unanswered questions (to be clear, all questions remain unanswered throughout the entire film). It started out strong and just degraded into a bucket of mush by the end. For what it's worth, this movie was made by French people.

My summary: Do not watch this movie. Go outside and watch cars drive by, or call a friend on the phone, or go take a nap. None of these is particularly entertaining, but you almost certainly will not be annoyed and confused afterward as you would if you watched They Came Back.

Here is my review of King Kong:

THIS MOVIE F***ING BLOWS

To say a little more...

This film is proof that Peter Jackson is extremely boring, because this piece of crap dragged on way past the point of entertainment. It could have ended at 1h30m and been somewhat alright (not great, but not bad either). But it was twice as long as it should have been. THREE HOURS LONG. (Plus time to drive to/from the theater. Plus standing in line to buy tickets. Plus arriving early to get a seat. The overall experience is easily 4 hours roundtrip.)

Do you have 4 hours sitting around, waiting to be flushed down the toilet for a crap film? Don't you have anything better to do with your time?

In all seriousness, I would have enjoyed watching anything else over this. It would have been more rewarding to watch Spanish soap operas, or Home Shopping Network, or even 4 hours of The Weather Channel. But not this.

Boring, boring, boring.

And for what? So we can sit through a bajillion dramatic close-ups of a computer-generated gorilla. Shit. There is easily 10 minutes of footage where we're looking straight up that damn gorilla's nose. Did I need to see any of that? Hell no. Did it add anything to the storyline? Hell no. Is Peter Jackson obsessed with being boring and dull? You bet he is.

I repeat, do NOT see this movie.

Yikes. This review (In Spielberg's 'Munich,' the thriller is gone) calls Munich a "thoroughly lifeless movie". I haven't seen it, but with that kind of description I can't say I'm excited about seeing it.

This is a fun movie that I hadn't seen in a long time. After Saturday Night Live, Mike Myers got into movies with Wayne's World in 1992 and then Axe Murderer. You never know if it will still be entertaining 12 years after you first saw it, but I think So I Married An Axe Murderer held up pretty well. Alan Arkin was hilarious, even though his screen time wasn't more than a few minutes.

I finally saw Donnie Brasco for the first time, and really liked it. And since the movie is based on real people and real events, I spent some time reading a few things about the real life Joseph Pistone (aka, "Donnie Brasco"). Among the coolest things out there are three interviews with Pistone where he talks about the mafia and lots of other stuff.

All of these interviews are available online as streaming audio (here, here, and here). But I'm not into the streaming audio thing, I'd rather have a copy I can put on my iPod and listen while driving around somewhere. So I made an mp3 version of the first two interviews (the third interview is already non-streaming), and I'm posting all three interviews here in case anyone else is interested.

• Joseph Pistone interviewed by Bryant Gumbel
  date: April 2000
  time: about 5 minutes

• Joseph Pistone and Bill Bonanno interviewed by Glenn Jones
  date: January 6, 2003
  time: 1 hour, 3 minutes

• Joseph Pistone and Bill Bonanno interviewed on KNBR radio show
  date: 2004
  time: about 9 minutes

I like Adam Sandler, but Spanglish has got to be one of least enjoyable films I've ever seen. It's more than 2 hours long, and really could have been shortened to about 1h15m.

Watched Fog of War last night, Errol Morris' academy award winning documentary. Very interesting movie. Robert McNamara is quite impressive, even though he's nearly 90 years old. I found the entire transcript for the movie on Errol Morris' website here.

Donnie Darko is a cool, creepy and weird movie. The ending was a bit confusing at first, and I had to think about it to piece things together. The cast was good (except for Drew Barrymore, who pretty much blows in anything other than a silly/goofy/dumb role), the cinematography was cool, and story was just plain odd. Watch this movie tonight.

Awful, awful, awful. This movie sucked hard. Don't watch it, don't think about watching it, and don't ask anyone about it. Just pretend it doesn't exist.

As a guy, I was braced for a sappy "chick flick", but it turned out to be more than bearable. This movie was fun and worth watching (especially if you're into romantic comedies).

Ugh, I was somewhat interested in seeing this movie, if only to finish off the story line from the first two films. But now that it's over, I wish I hadn't bothered watching it at all. Plot resolution? Yes. Could they have cut the running time by an hour or so, and still resolved the plot? Yes. Could somebody have summarized the plot resolution sufficiently well in a few minutes time, saving me from watching the movie? You bet. Was the story unnecessarily complicated? Yes. As good as the first Matrix? No way. Worth seeing? Barely.

Pretty good footage of big wave surfing all around the world. Even though I've seen big wave surfing before (the IMAX footage is a great piece), I never tire of watching surfers fly down the face of a 5-story wave. This film includes footage of guys eating it, bad, while surfing a monster wave. Fortunately, everyone turns out fine, but the crashes look bad. The waves are so enormous that it's nearly impossible to believe that anyone could survive a mishap, yet somehow they usually do.

The Happiness of the Katakuris is categorized as "Musical, Comedy, Horror". The comments posted at ILuvVideo (where we rented it) said things like totally crazy and fun, and you should definitely watch this movie. So we did, and it was just as expected, crazy and fun.

This is a kind of biography/documentary of one of the most famous skateboards of all time, Mark "Gator" Rogowski. The film was well done, and interesting to watch. Being an ex-skater myself, it was ultra-cool to see all the old footage and advertisements, and a bunch of the old skaters. Bonus: the dvd has extra footage and clips, including a long, unedited pool session with Gator and Jason Jessee.

Here's a good review from the Austin Chronicle (it got 3.5 out of 5 stars).

Well, we finally watched this movie, what with all the hype and hoopla surrounding the release of Volume 2. What can I say? Not my thing. Parts of it were funny, parts of it were entertaining, but it came off like a martial arts version of Pulp Fiction. For all its supposed originality, it's just another edition of canned, formulaic Tarantino.

What a film! Just watched Matchstick Men, and after it was over I spent 20 minutes going over the film in my head to piece it all together. During the movie, I kept wondering where the plot was going. Finally, things resolved, and in a big way. Totally entertaining movie, well worth watching.

After it was over, I watched the first 15 minutes again, this time with the director's commentary soundtrack turned on -- good stuff. If I hadn't just watched it tonight, I'd probably watch the whole thing again with the commentary on.

We saw Touching the Void last night. I knew the story going into it and still thought the movie was powerful. Probably not the kind of movie for everyone due to the topic (mountaineering), I felt like they didn't really do much to make the audience feel like mountaineering was something important. When we left, my wife and I both kept wondering, "why the hell would anyone have gotten themselves psyched to try what they tried?"

It's hard to relate to their struggle. Most people would never have made the choices these guys made, and thus most people would never have landed themselves into their particular predicament. Anyway, this is one more story for me to remember if I ever lose my mind and consider taking a turn as a mountaineer.

I read about this story a few months ago, but didn't realize it had been made into a movie. Well it has, and Touching the Void looks like a pretty good movie.

Coming from the same guy who did The Last Emperor (a movie I really like), I expected to like this movie more than I did. As it turns out, I didn't like it at all. It had the feel of a stage production, and just dragged through the storyline in a painful way.

Afterward, it was interesting to watch the trailer (on the dvd) to see how it portrayed the film. Basically, the trailer completely misrepresented the movie, and I would have been even more disappointed with this movie had I seen the trailer beforehand.

The trailer is out for Starsky & Hutch, the movie is supposed to open March 5.

Spider-man II won't be released until July 2004, but the trailer is out.

I had heard a number of different things about Bowling for Columbine before finally watching it myself. I didn't expect it to be what it ended up being. Like any documentary/expose on a touchy subject, there are many people and opinions that challenge, criticize and reject parts (or even all) of the movie. I think that's to be expected. Nowhere do we see the precedent established that an individual can take a stand on something controversial and find an entirely captive, willing, non-critical, non-challenging audience. It's not normal for everyone to simply listen to what another person has to say, accepting their words as total truth. Sure, some people, maybe even many, might be content to believe what another says, but there are always those who will challenge and question what they hear. And so it is with this movie.

Whether the listener challenges one detail or the entire movie, it is likely that it will stir up questions or criticisms. I think that's the what the director wanted, to get people thinking and talking about the subject material. In any case, there are certain, specific facts about the behavior of people living in the United States of America, and I think the film tries to shed light on some of this. There are certain things that people in this country do that people in other countries do not. Whatever the reason, whether you blame it on this group or that individual, or some other person's political persuasion, there are certain things that just are in the U.S. and quite simply aren't in other countries.

Of the many interesting things this movie tries to communicate, I found that one of the most interesting points came from a short interview with Marilyn Manson. He said that we live in a country of fear and consumption, that we're afraid our breath will stink so we buy Colgate, that the boys are afraid they won't be attractive to the girls if they've got pimples so they buy zit cream. Manson says we're afraid of many things, and the solution is to buy products. That got me thinking about all kinds of other things that we (collectively speaking) are afraid of - death, theft, car accidents, gaining weight, losing your hair, being un-cool, looking too trendy, settling on a career, losing your job, finding a job, buying a house, dealing with retirement, etc. What are you afraid of? What about the people you know?

I just threw those out off the top of my head, but I realize there are many others, some of which sound totally strange and kind of silly. For instance, there are parents who won't let their kids wear backpacks (because backpacks might cause back problems), and instead make the kids bend over while pulling small rolling luggage bags filled with books. Or the parents who won't let the kid wear clothes with holes in the knees because it makes them look poor. But who really cares? If your kid is rough in his clothes and gets holes in the knees, so what? If you're poor, you're poor; if you're not, then what are you worried about? And who had the idea that it's a good thing for a kid to drag a suitcase filled with books? Having seen kids walking (clumsily, I might add) home from school, bent over, wheeling a suitcase instead of wearing a backpack, I cannot imagine that those kids will be any more immune to back problems than if they were wearing backpacks. Here's a bright idea: why not leave the heavy textbooks at home or at school? If the kid has to get the books to and from school every day, buy him a bicycle with a rack and let him pedal himself to and from school (statistically, that kid could use the extra caloric expenditure anyway).

Whatever the issue, whatever the topic, there's something to be afraid of. The funny thing is, Marilyn Manson is onto something, because all of the "concerns" and "fears" we live with on a daily basis all have quick solutions that we can pay for.

Here's an interview with the director on the Charlie Rose Show.

I have heard that The Italian Job was a good movie that shouldn't be missed, but it's taken us several months to finally get around to watching it. You never really know how a movie endorsement is going to turn out (don't even get me started on what a bad movie The Crying Game was, made all the more shocking by the number of people who said it was a good movie...).

Back to the present. The Italian Job is a fun, fast-paced action/crime movie that's pretty darn entertaining to watch. So entertaining that we ended up watching it several times before returning it to the video store.

The original version from 1969 is supposedly a decent film, though one reviewer said it wasn't as good as the 2003 remake. Could be fun to watch Michael Caine and Benny Hill as younger guys.

This documentary is one of the strangest, most thought-provoking films I've ever seen. It gives you a raw, unbiased look into the world of the wannabe, a person who believes he cannot become whole until one of his limbs is removed. Some of the people in the film fantasize candidly about removing a specific limb, how they might go about it, and what the removal would accomplish. Other people in the film already are amputees, either through surgery or a self-inflicted wound. What kind of thing would a wannabe do to his own body? One man removed his lower leg by blowing it off with a shotgun, all the while making it look like an accident. Another man, after repeatedly being denied surgery in England (since he had no health problems or other medical condition that would require an amputation), carefully constructed a way to place part of his leg in dry ice until it was completely frozen, then he went to the emergency room and sought the removal of his leg.

While the topic is shocking and the stories are nearly unbelievable, the movie portrays these people in a way that almost leaves you rooting for them. I certainly can't relate to their desires or impulses, but this film left me feeling like I understand them. It's clear that they're plagued by the need of becoming an amputee, and I walked out of the theater hoping that these people would someday find peace by becoming amputees.

Relevant links:

• a group of Columbia University clinicians set up a site about Body Integrity Identity Disorder, which is what these folks live with
  
• fighting-it, a mailing list started by one of the people featured in the movie. The list description says, "For people who want or need to be an amputee, to be disabled, or who are attracted to amputees or people with disabilities. This group is for discussion and support for living with or reducing this need and understanding its origins."
  
• this article is well written and provides a good overview
  
• I found this review of the movie, it's both well written and fair
  
• brief summary from the Alamo Drafthouse (the theater where I watched the movie)
  
• try a Google search yourself and see what you find about this movie