Tuesday, January 05, 2010

December movies/2009 year stats soon

It was a busy month with twenty-three films on the docket. I saw back-to-back five stars too with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (one of my all-time favorites) and Vertigo. Blu-ray inspired me to re-watch a couple of films I hadn't seen in a while that I love in Full Metal Jacket and Say Anything. Awh, wonderful blu-ray player. I also went on a Scandinavian binge with four films from Denmark and one each from Sweden and Norway.

In a post or two I'll publish the much anticipated yearly stats for 2009. It includes everything from amount of films I saw in a theatre to every place I saw a film and every person I was with when I saw it. I love the yearly stats!


The Five Obstructions---2004---denmark   ****
The Rocker---2008---usa   **1/2
Full Metal Jacket---1987---usa   ****1/2
Brothers---2009---usa   **1/2
Songs from the Second Floor---2000---sweden   ****1/2
Allegro---2005---denmark   ***
Taken---2008---usa   ***
Invictus---2009---usa   ***1/2
Reconstruction---2003---denmark   ***1/2
Close Encounters of the Third Kind---1977---usa   *****!
Vertigo---1958---usa   *****!
Me and Orson Welles---2009---usa   ***1/2
Avatar---2009---usa    ****
Body of Lies---2008---usa   ***
The Road---2009---usa   ****
Carny---1980---usa   ***1/2
Say Anything---1989---usa   ****1/2
Futureworld---1976---usa   **
Monster Thursday---2004---norway   ***
Chinaman---2005---denmark   ***1/2
Up In the Air---2009---usa   ****
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans---2009---usa   ***1/2
It's Complicated---2009---usa   ***

2 comments:

Tatermash said...

More thoughts on The Road? I read the book and have to say that they got the visuals down perfect. There were three moments in the book that I thought were the most intense, but they only included one, but I can see reasons why the other two were left out. All in all, I thought it was an excellent adaptation.

Joshua Blevins Peck said...

Bart: The movie version of THE ROAD was much better than I was expecting. Much, much better. The tone and the visuals of the film were perfect, as was Viggo Mortenson as the father--perfect casting. This was a post-apocalyptic world that was terrifying, brutal and unrelenting (the way ALL post-apocalyptic films should be but sadly aren't).

On the negative side, I wish the flashback stuff with Charlize Theron would not have been in there as that was not needed in my opinion. I would have been fine if there would have been NO scenes with the wife at all in the entire film--just open with the boy and the dad on the empty, desolate road and let it go from there. Now that would have been really great. I guess the filmmakers felt they had to humanize the film in some way since it was such an unrelenting downer.

I still preferred the novel as it was as flawless a piece of literature as you'll find but the film more than held its own and I think will go down as one of the all-time post-apocalyptic films at some point.