Twice over this week, I was reminded that I’m pretty lucky.

There were two screenings lined up this week, and in each case the selection was a film I’d seen before. Where the luck comes in is in the social atmosphere they brought with them. Co-incidentally, both nights had me going to The Lightbox (I should start charging them for advertising); first on Tuesday for A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, then again last night for SAY ANYTHING. In each instance, I found myself flanked by four or five of my film-loving friends.

I realize that all of this time I dedicate to talking about film must make me seem like an anti-social hermit who spends night after night saying “Sorry, I can’t come to the bar – I just bought EASY RIDER on blu-ray and will be watching that tonight”. The truth is, the fact that I’ve made so many friends who are devoted film-lovers as well is what has stoked my passion for watching and going.

Years ago, when it was usually just Lindsay and I going out to these things – sometimes with the odd friend or two tagging along – I’d have shaken my head at the thought of films easily found on dvd being cause for a half dozen friends to get together…let alone twice in a week.

Yep, I’m pretty lucky. Don’t ever let me forget that okay?

Here’s The Week at Hand…

Screenings
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE – I’ve spent much of this week with a strange urge to download some Beethoven.
SAY ANYTHING – I swear up until last night, I’d never noticed that the rooster is in the crowd during the graduation ceremony.

Blu-Rays/DVD’s I’ve Never Seen
EVIL DEAD II – So that’s what all the fuss is about.
THE DESCENT – Many thanks to Steve for suggesting this. It was certainly one of the highlights of the horror syllabus, and one of the freakier modern films I’ve seen.
DRIVE, HE SAID – An inclusion in the BBS box. Directed by Jack Nicholson, the film is pretty  – though terribly uneven.

Boxscore for The Year
213 First-Timers, 142 Re-Watched
355 Movies in Total

How’s about you – seen anything good?

29 Replies to “Days of The Week (Films Watched 10/29 – 11/4)”

  1. You have no idea how jealous I am of a screening of A Clockwork Orange in a theater. All I can counter with is that a month ago, I saw a free screening of The Maltese Falcon in a 1920s-era movie palace.

    Anyway…

    Amores Perros: Brilliant, but a hard watch. I don’t like seeing dogs getting wounded.
    Scream: Great. Meta-slasher fun. Not scary, and really entertaining.
    Halloween: The grandaddy of slasher films for a reason.
    Planet of the Apes: Despite its silly premise, it’s a lot of fun.
    A Ma Soeur!: Reprehensible and oily. Made me want to shower.
    Moon: One of my favorites of the last few years.
    The Social Network: Dense and excellent. I understand why many people picked it as the best film of last year, but I disagree.
    A Place in the Sun: An ugly story well acted.

          1. Well, I’m right in line with you, then, because I haven’t seen either of those. Based on conversation this weekend, this is a fact that irritates Sam Fragoso to no end. Not that I haven’t seen those films, but that I rarely go to the theater, and thus am always playing catchup.

          2. 127 is a bit more personal preference, I only know one other person who called it best of the year. Do track down WINTER’S BONE – It’s beautifully chilling.

            Out of curiosity, why don’t you go to the theatre much?

          3. It’s mostly a time thing. My kids are incredibly busy right now, and that means evenings spent outside their dance class waiting for them to be done. Crazy schedule. It means that it’s difficult to find a solid two consecutive hours I can specifically dedicate to one thing. It means that even in my home viewing, it tends to be a bit piecemeal.

          4. I guessed it was something of the sort. S’alright man, the films all come to DVD and blu-ray eventually. There’s much more to life than just watching and writing about the newest releases.

    1. HIGH FIDELITY is of course an all-time fave of mine, and makes a nice counter-piece to my experience with SAY ANYTHING this week. And not to give too much away, but HIGH FIDELITY also comes up in Episode 45 of The Matineecast which posts tomorrow!

      Lookin’ forward to reading your TAKE SHELTER post.

    1. They just had a screening of CRONOS here at the Lightbox with Del Toro on hand to introduce it. Woulda gone, but decided to go listen to his conversation instead.

      I’m curious to know what bits of DRIVE, HE SAID had Malick’s influence…

  4. I’ve had a pretty slow week:

    Bitter Harvest
    Perrier’s Bounty
    Retreat
    Watching the Detectives
    The Rum Diary
    Pontypool
    Fast Five
    Green Lantern

    And of course various bits of Sesame Street: Follow That Bird, Gnomeo & Juliet, Snow White and Cinderella.

  5. Nothing says “Back to School” like a depressing dip in my movie-watching. I saw Spirited Away and Submarine. Both were very good, but I can see the latter becoming one of my favourites ever.

    Watching a screening of A Clockwork Orange is soo cool 🙂 Real horrorshow.

    1. OMG so jealous. That film is a masterpiece and I’d kill to hear Burnett speak about it. The films that come with the DVD are equally superb, especially the short “When It Rains,” which captures the beauty and chaos of an ethnic community in America better than any fictive or documentary feature I’ve seen, and with more realist poetry.

      1. As usual with these events the questions were all over the place, but Burnett did talk a lot about the filming and about how his experiences growing up in South Central LA informed the project. One funny thing that came out was that part of the reason the sound is so rough in some scenes is because he had children from the neighborhood working as his sound crew (one of his aims was to demystify filmmaking). He also pointed out a couple of dialogue exchanges that he said he would have gone back and re-worked if he’d ever thought his movie would get a commercial release.

  7. Bit of a busier week now that my workload slackened somewhat, but still no binging

    First times:
    Take Shelter: Completely lived up to the hype. The heartbreaking foil to A Serious Man’s black comedy. Shannon is official one of our greatest living actors.
    The Three Musketeers: For an outlandishly stupid film, it’s hard to hate. Anderson is a competent shooter, and his framing is more comic than the stilted dialogue.
    In Time: Really disappointed by this. Intriguing premise goes nowhere and devolves into weak Bonne & Clyde ripoff.
    Elite Squad: I’m reviewing the sequel for a publication so I rented this. Jesus Christ what a despicable film. Justifies fascistic brutality and mocks any attempt to treat Rio’s crime problem humanely as ivory tower liberalism. It’s also shot incompetently.
    The Phantom Carriage: Not hard at all to see what Bergman saw in this. A naturalistic but technically advanced and supernatural work of psychology and spirituality that finds a happier ending than Bergman’s despairing voids but treads in the same icy waters.

    Rewatch:
    The Battle of Algiers: I still admire the film way more than I’m engaged by it, but I did enjoy it more on the second watch. It’s still one of the most important films ever made and I forgot how easy it is to view it as a documentary despite its clear post-production touches.
    Attack the Block: I mean, just too fucking good for words. I wish the marketing and distribution pattern for this film hadn’t been so shit, because it could have been the highlight of a weak summer or Halloween season.

    1. Actually the distribution pattern for BLOCK was something I wish more films would do. They let it build slowly, gaining word-of-mouth, and never giving up on it. When studios like WI and Paramount Vantage tried to carpet-bomb art films into wide release, *that* was a frustrating release pattern.

  8. Haha Rachel – “I’ve had a pretty so week” …. She watches 8 film.

    Lets see I watched…

    Tower Heist – Murphy being funny. No shit.

    Moon – LAMB Motm is an interesting one, yet again.

    Ghosts of Mississippi – Goldberg and Baldwin, two actors who are under utilized now in days, are quite good here. Moving tale of a black activist getting gun downed by a KKK racist (played by James Woods).

    Love & Other Drugs – Great chemistry between the two leads make for a heartwarming little film.

    Beer Pong Saved My Life – Unquestionably one of the worst films I’ve ever seen.

    It’s been unfortunately a slow week. Today I’ll watch a couple things I’m sure.

    Next weeks screenings: J. Edgar, Jack and Jill, and Happy Feet 2

    2. Considering the amount of films Rachel watches for her podcast, declaring an 8-film week “light” doesn’t surprise me.

      I hope you got paid handsomely for JACK AND JILL.

    3. I’ve pretty much seen most of the films for our next RI actor, so last week was cleaning up the few that slipped through the cracks (mostly Irish films that don’t make it around here).

      But it gave me a chance to catch up on some other 2011 flicks and a “not zombie” zombie movie I’ve been trying to see forever. This looks to be another pretty light week as well, unless I get a jump on the next actor for RI.

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