A movie a day

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I spend so much time every day, online and off, doing absolutely nothing – reading the WP forums (no disrespect), reading humor websites, watching stupid YouTube videos, playing with my dogs and cat, lying in bed watching TV episodes that I've seen 38 times before, eating too much junk food – that I always feel like I've wasted my day, aside from the real reading (novels, history, biography, criticism) that I get done at night.

I realize that I'm surrounded by movies out the ass – movies from Netflix, movies on YouTube, and the DVDs that I own, including one of those stupid "50 movie packs" that contains a bunch of old public domain crap that nobody cared enough about to renew the copyright. I usually watch a movie every few days when a disc arrives in the mail from Netflix, but I'm stepping this up. I'm going to watch a movie every day, and see how long I can keep it up, just so I can feel like I'm not completely wasting my free time.

I'll post here every day so I won't fall behind. I watched one yesterday and another today, so I'll start with yesterday.

1 Sept 2011: Screamers: The Hunting (2009)

Screamers is a sci-fi/action/horror movie from 1995 that me and about five other people liked. Screamers: The Hunting is a direct-to-video sequel that I can't really imagine anyone liking. Soldiers are sent on a rescue mission to a planet infested with killing machines that have evolved to look human. (SPOILER: People die.) The effects are surprisingly good but the acting sucks and the characters are so bland that I couldn't possibly tell you anything about them, including their names. The black guy with the do-rag dies early, of course. Fortunately, he never once says, "Aww, sheeit, Nee-gro!" since Michael Bay did not direct this movie. Better than a typical Syfy Channel movie, but nothing that anyone would pay to see in a theatre. My rating: ** out of **** (Watch it here, legally and free.)

2 Sept 2011: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

The greatest silent horror film ever made, according to a bunch of people who have apparently never seen Nosferatu. Very good movie, though. Hypnotist Dr. Caligari arrives in town with sleepwalker Cesare, and hilarity ensues. Murder, I mean. The plot moves along quickly and the bizarre architecture is fascinating. German expressionists were gloriously insane. The twist ending must have blown everyone's mind in 1920. They probably wrote angry telegrams to the director, saying: "ur movie is teh suck ur gay lol." Observation: Horror films should not be watched on a computer in daylight hours in a room with open windows. It kind of kills the vibe. ***½ (Watch it here, legally and free.)

Philip K. Dick seems to be a Butt Monkey for cinema.

It's a mixed bag. If you judge the films as adaptations of their source material, none of them are satisfying. Not even A Scanner Darkly, which is 95% faithful to the details of the book, since it doesn't pack the same punch. (The book is devastating. The movie is just kind of sad.) Separated from Dick's writing, though, it's not all that bad. Blade Runner is probably the best science fiction film ever made, and Total Recall is terrific entertainment. Screamers, Impostor, and Minority Report are decent thrillers. Paycheck, Next, Screamers 2, and The Adjustment Bureau, on the other hand, are only worth watching if you're a huge Philip K. Dick fan or just someone who likes watching cinematic garbage.

Fortunately (unfortunately?), I'm both.

I absolutely adore total recall.

Hi Jory. I think that is a grea idea! I do have a lot of things to do. I have a full-time job, I am a full-time mom, I am a wife, I take care or the house, I cook 3 meals a day + lunch pack + snacks, and I am learning Python, but I just LOVE cinema, and also try to watch one movie each day. Today we (me and my husband, who shares my hobbie) watched two:

1. Bronson (2008): Drama about the life of Charles Bronson, one of the United Kingdom's most dangerous criminals, known for having spent almost his entire adult life in solitary confinement. The movie explores the brutality and state of mind of this character. The movie is specially reknown because of Tom Hardy's physical transformation to play Bronson. It's amazing. He is irrecognizable. Very good performance.

2. Oranges and sunshine (2010): The real life story of social worker Margaret Humphreys, who uncovered one of the most significant social scandals in recent times: the forced migration of children from the United Kingdom to commonwealth countries, where they got hard labour and life in institutions. Almost singlehandedly, and risking her own well-being, Margaret helped this people, reunited thousands of families, and brought authorities to account and worldwide attention to this extraordinary miscarriage of justice. With Emily Watson and a wonderful Hugo Weaving.

...I gotta ask.... Python like, the snake?

But yea totally a good idea, I'd do the same but I just can't ever make myself sit through a movie unless I'm REALLY interested....

Hahahaha. No. Python like in the programming language. I heard it was named "Python" after "Monty Python", the British comedy group. I do not like snakes. At all.

Do you have ADHD? I know guy with ADHD and he is incapable of sitting through a whole movie, but it is because his attention span is very small, he gets bored stands up and go do something else (like for 15 minutes before he gets bored again). My mom cannot watch movies either, but it is because she falls sleep.

Lol yes. Exactly haha

I have a hard time with watching more than 10 of a series in a row. Also I have a hard time just sitting through the whole movie or tv episode without pausing.

This is why I never complete watching movies. Atleast TV series are only 30 min or max 1 hr long episodes.

1 Sept 2011: Screamers: The Hunting (2009)
2 Sept 2011: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
3 Sept 2011: Blade Runner (1982) and D.O.A. (1950)

There isn't much to say about Blade Runner that hasn't been said a million times, so I'll skip the critique. A policeman in the future hunts down escaped androids, but you should know that. Shame on you if you haven't seen this movie 15 times already. Parents were away, and I used the opportunity to watch it for the first time on a nice big HDTV (to which my family only recently upgraded) in a darkened room. It looks fantastic, even if it's not a Blu-ray. It's copyrighted, so no free YouTube link, but here's the best scene. D.O.A. is about a man who discovers that he's been poisoned and he tries to solve his own murder before he dies. The first 20 minutes are useless filler and the acting is soap opera melodrama but it's decent enough. (Speaking of which, I don't know if a "decent" movie deserves a **½ or a *** out of ****, so I'm not gonna rate these movies anymore. I'm not a damn critic.) Both movies set their climax at the Bradbury Building, which is always a welcome sight because it looks awesome (Google Image link). (Watch it here, legally and free.)

Jory which Blade Runner do you prefer? In the comcast info it said that the movie that removed the voiceover also removed much of the gory stuff.

this.

sounds like an interesting project. maybe I will make it my goal to watch a movie a day.

The Final Cut from 2007 is the best, and it's the version that I own on DVD. The voiceover narration and happy ending from the 1982 theatrical cut are awful and never belonged in the first place. The 1992 Director's Cut got rid of them both. The Final Cut is basically the Director's Cut with a remastered picture (which looks stunning) and a handful of CGI tweaks to fix some special effects mistakes. As for the gore, it has a couple of seconds more in some scenes and a couple of seconds less in other scenes.

I only watched one movie today:

Raise of the planet of the apes (2011): Pretty lame. John Lithgow was good. Freida Pinto was... beautiful. James Franco was flat liner and beaten by a computer generated monkey. The monkey was just unbelievable. Like in you cannot convince yourself, no matter how hard you try, that the Cesar is real. Increible its selling so good.

1 Sept 2011: Screamers: The Hunting (2009)
2 Sept 2011: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
3 Sept 2011: Blade Runner (1982) and D.O.A. (1950)
4 Sept 2011: eXistenZ (1999)

eXistenZ has been endlessly compared to The Matrix, but aside from the fact that they both involve virtual reality, they're not all that similar. It's hard for me to describe the plot because (A) it's intentionally bizarre and disorienting and (B) Jude Law's sexiness is a constant distraction, but I know that it involves the designer of a virtual reality game called eXistenZ (which plugs directly into the player's spine) going on the run from assassins and confusing reality with the game. Since it's a David Cronenberg film, it's full of really weird sh*t, like game controllers made of skin (or something) that bleed and handguns that shoot human teeth. This guy is kind of messed up.

The more Cronenberg movies I see, the more I'm convinced that he and he alone should be filming Philip K. Dick's writing. (There's a shout-out to Dick when we see that Jude Law's fast food restaurant of choice is called Perky Pat's.) Most movies that rip off Dick's writing simplify him for easy digestion. They reveal the man behind the curtain and the movie ends. But Cronenberg does what Dick did: he reveals the man behind the curtain, then reveals that there's a man behind that man, then reveals that there's yet another man behind them both, then he ends the story leaving you wondering if the final revelation was real or not, because saying for sure would be missing the point.

You can find this movie in its entirety on YouTube (in ten installments of ten minutes each), but I'm assuming it's copyrighted so I won't post a link. I think it's also streaming on Netflix, but I refused to pay their price hike and now I'm without streaming.