Now on to Febs (February):
February 1: Snowpiercer-No better decision was made on Superbowl Sunday, as far as I'm concerned. I'd just gotten back from an unnecessarily long road trip from Wisconsin that took three hours longer than usual, due to a mini-blizzard and I needed something, anything. My roommate and I kept clicking through HBO and Netflix, a fairly common activity here until I initiated martial law and decided to knock something off the ol' queue. It was a great decision. One of the best I've ever made. I'm mad at myself for just now getting on the Snowpiercer, urm, train (of fandom), but least I'm on it. It's awesome and if you've ever craved, like, a Bio-Shock movie, then I'd say Piercer fits that bill. Or if you just want a solid dystopian action flick, it's
February 2: Magnolia-And what better follow up to Snowpiercer than the biggest bummer of a PTA movie. I suppose this was a weird way for me to remember Philip Seymour Hoffman, because it was the anniversary of his passing and Phil Parma was just a heart-warming character that he played. It'd also been close to two and a half years and it's really good. Having a new PTA movie (Inherent Vice) being out also increases the likelihood of watching his movies.
February 5: 10 Things I Hate About You-I have no shame. This movie's way better than it has any right to be. Heath Ledger's charming as could be (those dimples could cut diamonds, probably), Joseph Gordon Levitt's great, really there's no weak link in this movie. Sure, there's a magical black person who pulls a Yo Teach ("MC Shakespeare"), but you get over it. I also noticed I appreciate Julia Stiles more than I did when I watched this movie a bunch in high school (never the full thing, always bits and pieces, because it was on probably every other weekend). Maybe it's because I got sick of her schtick (her schtick consisting of being in any and every modernized Shakespeare adaptation), but I'm all for it now. More Stiles, I say. Get her in more stuff. Same goes for David Krumholtz. It'd also be fun for Grantland to do a Bragging Rights on this cast. Someone make that happen.
February 6: Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince-It's gotten to a point, I've realized where I can watch some of these movies detached from the source material. That doesn't justify this really bad adaptation, but if yer looking at it as some kind of weird teen love comedy where they know magic and make jokes at the sight of where the main character's mentor dies twelve hours after he's been killed, then yeh, it's pretty good. Doesn't justify Movie-Ginny by any means, but yeh, whatever. It's fine.
February 6: MacGruber-Severly underrated. My goodness, I forgot about the genius of MacGruber. Is it a comedy for everyone's enjoyment? God no. It's disgustingly raunchy, violently gruesome and an ode to 80's action movies starring the genius Will Forte and a not-annoying Kristen Wiig plus a pretty decent Ryan Philippe. It'd pair well with a screening of Hot Rod if you're looking for a comparison. Like the older, cooler, smokes behind the middle school brother to Hot Rod. Classic MacGruber.
February 7: Archer & Bob's Burgers-This might be the season of Tina for Bob's. There have been six Tina-centric or prominently focused Tina episodes and each one finds a way to match the one before it in quality. Or even surpassing it. Usually when a show, cartoons in particular, finds their pocket of gold from a side character and writes episodes for them, they get to be a little much (Futurama with Bender always comes to mind-love Bender as a side, but his episodes tend to be not all that great). Not so much with Tina effing Belcher. Tina's been my favorite since season 2 and I'm glad she's getting the air time and episodes she deserves. But my love for Bob's Burgers runs far and wide and the more episodes we get of it, the happier I am. Especially living in a post-Parks And Recreation world.
Archer's been pretty great this season, per usual. I never finished Archer Vice and am not caught up at the moment, but Archer, sometimes, lends itself to be missed and you can store a bunch of episodes in the bank for later. If I miss episodes, then I miss episodes. They'll end up on Netflix eventually and they'll be watched there.
February 10: Twin Peaks-What started out as a class assignment, turned into casual watching. I'd watched the first two episodes a couple of years ago, but didn't have it in me to continue. I dug it back then, just...I mean I was in high school; I didn't know how to manage shows back then cut me some slack! I'm really enjoying it now, though the first season more than the second (I'm only two episodes into the second season). It doesn't help going into this show knowing that it loses steam really quick as soon as that second season hits, but it does. I understand why people love it as much as they do, but I don't think it'll ever be anything I get really excited to talk about with people. Maybe the new installment will help its conquest to my heart. I dunno. Though I do know that that Kyle MacLachlan was one cool dude, way back in the day...Ah heck, he's still cool. I'll never be that cool. DAMN THESE HANDS OF MINE!
February 13: Her-Whatever. I only clicked play because my roommate wanted to watch it. He left to go to bed with like an forty-five minutes left in the movie and I'd already put in however much time before that into it. It wasn't totally annoying, not all the way through at least. Joaquin was good, and Scar Jo was actually really enchanting. People could talk her performance down, because it was a voice acting gig, but that'd be foolish, because she does some really impressive things in this movie. Jonze also shot a really gorgeous movie too, it's almost sensory overload. It's fine but nowhere near essential, I'd say. Needed more Rooney Mara, less Amy Adams as is life.
February 13: The Jinx-Fascinating and disturbing HBO true crime doc series. Though, I find myself less interested in it than I should. This could be some Serial fatigue, and I'm fairly certain it is. Each episode could probably use a re-watch, there've only been four episodes so far and I'm sure I'll do it soon. The second episode was probably my favorite one, followed by the fourth one. I haven't given up and I shan't! I just need to reassess (I should probably not watch it after the Girls and Togetherness back-to-back, but sometimes when the party starts it's hard to stop. The HBO party. It isn't TV.)(NOTE: The finale aired last night, and I wrote this before the last two episodes, and holy moly; there's been a lot of buzz around it for the last 24-hrs or so, because of Durst's arrest in New Orleans, but it was heart racing. I was also off of twitter last night, but did anyone notice that at one point Durst was dressed like this when he went to his brother's townhouse?)
February 14: Can't Hardly Wait-Another case of 10 Things I Hate About You? Way better than it should be? I guess it's easy to throw that claim around on movies centered around teens set during the 90s, isn't it? I'd liken it to Dazed And Confused but nowhere near as good or meaningful. It zigs where you think it's going to zag and has legitimately funny jokes and moments in it. Unfortunately it was just taken off of Netflix, but I'm sure it'll get back on there sometime and don't let the really bad and misleading poster guide your decision. Let the wonderful Jason Segel cameo guide ya.
February 16: The Royal Tenenbaums-A couple of years ago I made the mistake of double featuring Rushmore and then followed it immediately with Royal and that was a mistake. The two are in such different realms of the Wes Anderson spectrum and Rushmore's my favorite Anderson movie, it made me almost resentful of Tenenbaums. Like it was too Wes Anderson-y (I'd say it held that title until Grand Budapest moseyed on in). And it is, no doubt about it. But it's such a special kind of wonderful, being dark and touching and tremendously funny, I hope to never feel ill will towards this picture again. How could I say no to one of the funniest things ever said by a human, more specifically, Owen Wilson? God, I miss him writing, he needs to go back to that.
February 17: Mystic River-Had to watch this one for one of my classes. It's a very 2003 movie which is a fairly generic thing to say about something, but it just is; it reeks of it. If yer gonna watch a movie based off a Dennis Lehane book, I'd go with Gone Baby Gone. It's more interesting, less on the nose with the themes it hits and just better altogether. Shmeh.
February 20: The 40-Year-Old Virgin-The best movie Apatow has directed? Yes. The best movie Steve Carell has been in? As much as I love the human cartoon that is Brick Tamland, Andy is a better example of showing how sweet Carell can be and probably is. Also, this movie turns ten this year. What better way to commemorate such a birthday than recanting the time I wrote a paper on 40-Year-Old Virgin when I was a junior in high-school for an English class. Or maybe I was a senior? Either way, I'm sure it was incredibly insightful and wouldn't be embarrassing to read at all today. Sorry, Mrs. Allen.
February 20: Team America: World Police-A mid-2000s comedy double feature? This was the night after Harris Wittels had passed away and I figured some laughs were needed and both were there for the watching so I decided to indulge. It'd been a couple of years since seeing Team America and while it certainly still is funny I don't know if it's aged quite as well as certain episodes of South Park has. It's ridiculous beyond compare, but there were moments of what felt like obligatory laughs. Then again, I was watching it on my own and it is a comedy that lends itself to being watched with a crowd. So I hope you learned your lesson here, Wieland. Yes sir.
February 21: Curb Your Enthusiasm-Parks was coming to an end and we all knew it. This was the Saturday before it happened so I was buffering the loss I was about to experience with a show that falls on the polar end of the scale of positivity of Parks. I was really terrible about watching Curb in the past, probably because it's just so cynical and there are times where I feel like I relate a little too much to Larry David or Jeff Green. I was in the middle of season 4 at this point when I started re-watching, The Producers season and it was good. It's followed by the Richard Lewis kidney and Larry might be adopted season, which was fine. Season 6 brings in The Blacks, which means J.B. Smoove and it's like the show took that leap it knows so well from being good to great. You can see that David was getting tired of stirring the same pot and decided to mix it up a little bit (and also have the show mimic parts of his actual life) and it's pantheon material. And it's only followed by the greatness of the Seinfeld reunion season, which takes a backseat like most season arcs on this show, but why complain?
February 22: Zodiac (Director's Cut)-This was my first journey embarking on the Director's Cut of one of my favorite movies and ya know. It was good. I wouldn't say it severely moved the needle on how I feel about Zodiac, because it's already such a tightly put together masterpiece. I think there were maybe two scenes in there that aren't in the theatrical cut, so the run time isn't really effected all too much and it's not like there was some key moment to the solving the identity of the Zodiac killer that Fincher left out. Fincher's not about that with this movie, because that would be a betrayal of one of its biggest themes: obsession with closure. Also, I'm remembering that in the back nine of my senior year, I convinced my English teacher to let us start watching Zodiac in, sure enough, English class, because it was May and we had maybe a week of school left. I watched this movie so many times while I was in high school that I forgot how gruesome it is and oof, don't let me be a high school teacher, society. Also, sorry to any fellow students who I might've scarred with suggesting that we watch it. I guess.
February 23: Fright Night-This was one of the rare ball-dropped moments for my dad, because he let me watch it when I was way younger than I should've. Actually, that's not that true, because there's really nothing all that bad in it (other than the very high sexual aura in the air during this movie, it's almost non-stop). I'd had it in our queue for a while and the dreaded expiration date appeared under it, so I decided to take it out back and put it out of its misery. It's a classic, ridiculous 80s horror flick that was close to hitting the marks it wanted to (think Evil Dead II) but was held back by trying to maintain that notion of some seriousness; it wanted and should've embraced its campiness better, but just couldn't. The re-make that came out a couple of years ago is quite good and we'd be without it, if not for this.
February 25: Little Shop Of Horrors-Shelved under "too weird" and said with a face like she just bit out of a lemon, my dear sweet mom never let me watch this musical as a child, depraving me of school yard conversations about skid row and being a dentist (Pee Wee's Big Adventure accompanied it on that shelf as well, yet American Tale: Fievel Goes West was fair game). The songs were catchy and it was fun playing Eye Spy with cameos, though I think we can all agree that the Bill Murray one was the best of them, especially because we were finally given a scene with both Steve Martin and Bill Murray in it. Actually, if they wanted to remake it, not that remakes are always okay, I've got a duet in mind who'd gladly fit the bill.
February 27: Band Of Brothers-This is my cat-nip. I'll never not love Band Of Brothers and I can always rely on it (via the finale) for a good cry. Sometimes you need that.
February 28: Fault In Our Stars-There's a lot I could say about this movie. I could say that the guy, Gus(?) is the guy I hate in these movies, because deep down I'm a Scott Pilgrim or Rob Gordon. I could say what my initial reaction was when I first saw the trailer, a statement so ridiculous I shouldn't be allowed to live in normal society. Instead, I'll air out the biggest eyebrow raise I had from watching this movie, with no shame: why did people start applauding the two kids when they started making out in the Anne Frank house? This is a very real thing that happens that was close to shore-circuiting my brain. Thank God Willem Dafoe was there to bring sanity back to the movie (though in a too-little-too-late capacity).
February 28: Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets & Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban-I used to really hate Chamber Of Secrets and that seems to be the general consent when you talk to someone who has read Harry Potter. I used to also believe that the movie was just as dismal as the book. And while it's been years since I plunged into that book like Harry to Tom Riddle's memories (boom), re-watching this movie isn't terrible. I was talking with a friend the other night at dinner about this and he kind of agreed (he's in a class at our school that's centered around the books) and made the point that its beats are identical to Sorcerer's Stone (which is just the Chris Columbus way). It's kind of a funny movie, though that could just be the Kenneth Branagh effect-he's so damn charming. My take away is that it's pretty content with itself and might be better than Goblet Of Fire or at the very least is better than the worst parts of Goblet Of Fire which is a high percentage of that book. Don't even get me started on the movie (or do, it's really glum).
As for Prisoner Of Azkaban. Best Potter movie and I'll fight you on that one, Jack! Did it not expand on some of the more fun exposition sections of the book? Yeh, but it's the closest a Potter movie ever got to matching the book in tone.
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