11/22
The Hole (1998, Tsai Ming-Liang, dvd) - 3
There's some sickness going around in Taiwan, and it rains all the time, and there's an apartment complex that is quarantined I guess, and a hole ends up between two tenants' apartments, and this brings them together or something. It's not really boring, but it's closer to that than entertaining. I was glad there weren't any in-your-face watermelon metaphors like in The Wayward Cloud, and that the musical sequences actually seemed to pertain to the movie.
11/27
All That Heaven Allows (1955, Douglas Sirk, dvd) - 8.5
A woman falls in love with her much younger gardener, and all her peers and her children disapprove, so she breaks it off, and then regrets it. It's really good. I liked the daughter a lot. She was pretty horrible to her mother in one scene, but otherwise she was really awesome. And the leads were good, too. This is the first Rock Hudson movie I've seen.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987, John Hughes, dvd) - 9
Steve Martin is trying to get home for Thanksgiving, but has a lot of bad luck on the way, much of it being the fault of John Candy. I didn't find it all that funny, but the characters were likable and it was easy to get invested in the story, and it meshed comedy and drama really well, in a way that recent comedies tend to fail at.
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (short, 1973, Bill Melendez & Phil Roman, dvd) - 7.5
Peppermint Patty invites herself and others over to Charlie Brown's house for Thanksgiving, and Snoopy makes dinner, and it's a disaster. It was good.
The Mayflower Voyagers (short, 1988, Evert Brown, dvd) - 3
Tells the story of the origin of Thanksgiving, and some of the Peanuts characters appear throughout. The adults talk in it. It's pretty bad.
12/10
Hardware Wars (short, 1977, Ernie Fosselius, projected dvd) - 4
Extended fake trailer that parodies Star Wars. The funniest part was whenever Ham Salad would talk, and there was no sound, yet the characters still reacted to him, but it turned out there was just a sound problem with the digital projector. It was ok, I guess, and I liked it's homemade feel, but I didn't laugh at all.
12/13
Back to the Future (rewatch, 1985, Robert Zemeckis, 35mm) - 10
Christopher Lloyd builds a time machine, and Michael J. Fox ends up in the 50's, where he fucks up his parents meeting each other, so he has to try to bring them together, but it's hard work because his mom has the hots only for him. I didn't remember very much about this movie, and I definitely didn't remember just how badly Lea Thompson wants to fuck the shit out of her own son, nor did I remember how hilarious Crispin Glover is in it, but yeah, this movie is completely fucking amazing.
12/15
Scream Queens Season 1 (2008, vh1) - 8
Some aspiring actresses competed to be cast in Saw VI, with Shawnee Smith and James Gunn as two of the judges. It was a pretty good show, and I was happy with the winner.
12/16
Planet Earth (2006, Alastair Fothergill, blu-ray) - 9
David Attenborough's documentary series about some animals and plants and shit all over the Earth, filmed in high definition. Some pretty crazy stuff, and looked amazing on blu-ray.
12/20
Viva Las Vegas (1964, George Sidney, 35mm) - 9
Elvis is a racecar driver who wins a bunch of money while gambling, but then loses it when he's pushed into a pool, and so he can't afford a new engine, and then he meets Ann-Margret, and they eventually fall in love. Ann-Margret's dancing is absurd. I don't know how else to even describe it, other than amazing, I guess.
Showgirls (rewatch, 1995, Paul Verhoeven, 35mm) - ∞
This played at the SF Museum of Modern Art, which is pretty incredible. A girl came out before the movie to do an introduction, and said some positive things about it, and encouraged people to just let themselves be taken in, and to feel free to laugh or marvel or react in anyway they saw fit. Nothing about why it deserves to be shown in a museum, but that's fine. Just the fact that it was shown at all is plenty satisfying. Overall, I don't think the setting really made any difference to my own viewing of it. But maybe it never could, just because I've seen it so many times. After it was over, the people behind us said something like "Well, what do you expect from the director of Starship Troopers?" So obviously, some of the people there still didn't get it. Omar got really upset when they said it, and looked like he was about to punch them in the face.
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