So I decided to make another Top 5 list for this year, but can't think of enough that I liked.

my Top 3 Movies (2002, to date) (in order of preference, descending)
Signs
Ring, The
Spider-Man

Maybe The Two Towers will find its way on the list after I see it a second time...

from www.badinagoodway.com

"So Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson travel to merry old England and they get to make fun of English people. That is the best storyline ever."

my Top 5 Movies (2001) (in alphabetical order)
Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, Le
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
Memento
Moulin Rouge!
Royal Tenenbaums, The

SPIDER-MAN (PG-13)
A few minutes into it, I was picking this movie apart. A scientist in the film itemized "insanity" among a list of side-effects, and that just really got under my skin. Insanity is a legal term, my friends, and even beyond that, it's such an umbrella of a term that it would hardly serve as a description of a side-effect. It's almost like someone asking, "what's it like ouside?" and getting the answer: "weather."

Twenty minutes further into the film, I hadn't encountered any other problems. It was good. But that remark was still under my skin. I remember, sitting there in the theatre, thinking, "jeez, that's just the sort of crap that they'd put in an old comic book or something." When I realized what I'd thought, I loved this movie whole-heartedly.

Way into the movie, I realized that this movie had brought something back to me, and that was a love of super-heroes. I've spent years focused on the wonderfulness of reality-tinged heroes. (e.g., Batman can't fly - he uses ropes and hooks.) I loved that about the comics - they made it more real, more likely, easier to believe that if someone jumped out at you from around a corner, someone could actually come along and save you. Or you could do it yourself.

But here, director Sam Raimi puts it in your face. Don't worry about imagining it - Spider-Man is swinging around just like you'd want to. He's hanging upside down and webbing the guns out of bad guys' hands, just like you'd want to. He's making money off it - morally! - and getting the girl (marvelously played by Kirsten Dunst's breasts), just like you'd want to.

If there was one thing I'd change about it, it would be the end. It was a good end. Nothing wrong with it at all. But there was so much that could have been said, that wanted to be said... that wasn't said. It was an excellent opportunity missed. but I won't go into that, because I'd have to describe the whole movie leading up to it to do that.

And you wouldn't want that, would you?

TRAINING DAY (R, 120)
[DO NOT read this if you've not seen it; I give away the ending.]
You know, I can't think of anything cynical to say. I liked this movie a whole lot. I wish it had been nominated for Best Picture - and yes, I'm saying this fully aware of the fact that Moulin Rouge and LotR were nominated for it. I think it deserves to go up against them.

If it weren't for a sense of social responsibility, I'd have named this movie A Big Fuck You. Especially with the [better] extended ending on the DVD.
Because basically the movie runs like this: Denzel Washington tells Ethan Hawk, "Fuck you!" And then Ethan tells Denzel, "No, fuck you!" (In the extended ending, Hawke tells Denzel, Tom Berenger, Harry Yulin, and Raymond J Barry, "No, fuck all y'all!" and that's just great.)

And even though you'll hear me say I'm a sucker for a good unhappy ending, what I love more is an end where the one good guy tells all the bad guys, hey, fuck all y'all.

RESIDENT EVIL (R, 100 minutes)
Everyone that saw it told me it was worth watching, so I took their word for it. And it was fun. There's a lot of problems with it, but it was no Tomb Raider - i.e., it was not abysmal.

So. Poor character development. For the first part of the film, the Guy With the Gun only seems to exist to make the Girl with the Gun look tough, and there doesn't really seem to be any reason to make her look tough at all, storywise. They do actually make her a strong person without being objectified or cliche, and so it was a good idea... wasted. Once the first GuyWTG is out, a new GuyWTG comes to the front, and he's a whiny little guy. That was also done well, except that it dragged on. He became the Guy That Freaked Out and Cried in Every Scene, also for no use.

Milla Jovovich managed to do with her hands and feet what an entire army could not, which is kill everybody, and so that was silly. They covered dogs in Nickelodeon Gak^® to make them look as though they'd been flayed - also silly. And one of my biggest pet peeves in movies, CGI that is not believable, ran around killing things, too.

Alice in Wonderland symbolism ran rampant, and was horrible. I couldn't avoid the impression that they only used Alice symbols (such as the Red Queen and a white rabbit) on the advice that "cool movies do that." But I've got news for them: even The Matrix was clumsy with its Alice references, but I forgave it because it was THE MATRIX. (Which reminds me, there was also a useless shot of a bullet in slow motion... why?!?) This movie also tried to be Cube at one point. The attempt was obvious and sad (even with Cube's small budget, it was much more believable), but the fact that they referenced (I prefer to think of it as "referenced," rather than "ripped off") the film more than made up for it in my eyes.

The sequel set-up was good (although drawn out - it felt like they added 10 minutes onto the movie just to make it), and it made it look like the next one will be better than the first, and more true to the video games: one person, alone in a city, with a shotgun, and wearing nothing more than a dentist's bib.
Let's just hope they spend more time on the CGI.

PS, Milla is pushing for the lead role in the movie adaptation of American McGee's Alice (if they screw up Alice symbolism in that, there's no hope), which could leave her typecast if they follow this up with Nemesis. Just a thought...

I watched Life (starring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence) over the last few days, and I've just got to say that I love that movie. Yeah, I know, I hate Martin Lawrence, but I just can't help it.

I remember the first time I saw it; I don't remember how (some Film Com. perk?), but some of my friends and I wound up with a few free passes, so we checked it out. We were in a theatre full of people that laughed their asses off all through the movie, because they were black and therefore unselfconscious. (I'm not sure what the one has to do with the other, but it's a connection I often notice.)
Now audience appreciation has the ability to make or break a movie, and it really made this one. But it wasn't until I saw it again several months later that I realized just how good it is.

In case you don't know, the story concerns two guys - a pickpocket and a banker - who are framed by the local sheriff to take the fall for the murder he committed, and wind up with twin life sentences in prison. It spans the time from their arrival in prison in the 1930s to the late 1990s, when they finally "get out." It's narrated by a friend at their funeral.

Why do I like it? Well the simplest answer is that the comedy really works. Both Murphy and Lawrence give genuinely good performances, based on a genuinely good comedy script (I specify that it's a comedy script because it's got holes and completely unbelievable bits). And it's not only them. The entire supporting cast contributes to a job-well-done. Somebody appreciate casting director Margery Simkin! This movie is the reason I love Anthony Anderson, Bokeem Woodbine, and Bernie Mac. (To date, there is no other reason that I love Bernie Mac.)

But the real reason that I've seen this movie more than two or three times is this: I'm fascinated by the idea of institutionalization, the way that it is described by Morgan Freeman's Red in The Shawshank Redemption - the idea of being in a prison so long that you're afraid to face the world that's sprung up around it, the idea of a tiny little world the size of a bed and a yard. And you see that in this movie. Once they're accustomed to all the picking and digging that is the punishment side of the experience, you see that they are sitting around with their friends. They almost forget that life exists any other way. And you certainly see it in the scene where a seventy-year-old Martin Lawrence drives the superintendant into town to meet the new warden. Martin gets out of the car, and looks at the 1970s, and then at a mirror at himself, and then he goes back to the car to find out that he'll never be "Out Here."