#76 Sound of My Voice (2011)

By Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling.

#61 Street of Chance (1942)

Directed by Jack Hively. Production: Paramount Studios.

This was an old Film Noir picture that was OK. It was clear that this was a B movie. It didn't have too interesting a story behind it. But a lot of typical Noir attributes. A man gets hit on the head, suffers an episode in which his memory suddenly changes and he doesn't know anything about his current life but only about the previous life that he disappeared from suddenly a year before. His knew (unfamiliar) life involves an attractive feisty blonde and a police detective pursuing him in regards to the murder of two wealthy associates. How the story unravels itself involves a bed-ridden mute grandmother who seems to know all the secrets and a femme fatale. A good picture to catch in the theater on a rainy day. It stars Burgess Meredith thirty years before his more famous role as Mickey, the old trainer of Rocky Balboa.

#40 Side Effects (2013)

Another Steven Soderbergh experience.

                                Emily is depressed.  .....Or is she...?

I am a fan of many of the Soderbergh movies. I haven't seen his most recent movies like Contagion or really most of the others. But I do remember liking Traffic and especially liking Bubble. This movie both did it for me and didn't do it for me. At times during the picture, I found myself very entertained trying to follow the interesting and rapid storyline, while also having the sense that something just didn't seem right. There were a few drawbacks to this movie that I saw. First, I strongly believe that this story could have been just as credibly told with "normal" looking people. I mean at a certain point you can't help thinking, is it really necessary for these beautiful people to be constantly forced down my throat. Can't I get a little bit of William H. Macy and Tilda Swinton and John Hawkes for crissake. Jude Law was as precise and professional in his acting performance as his boring psychiatrist character is with his work. Neither Mara Rooney or Rooney Mara or whatever her name is nor Zeta-jones are really very good, in my opinion. And the Tatum guy played a pretty good prick, although I don't know if his character really was meant to be one. He was the kind of guy you wouldn't want to hang out at the bar you like to frequent. The second annoyance was why the hell do so many hollywood movies and LA television shows assume that "regular" people are all rich as hell? I'm finding it harder and harder to be empathetic with the characters' plights when they all belong to a socio-economic class that also contains around 0% of the people that I know or interact with on a regular basis.

Anyway, as far as thrillers go, this one requires your brain at least a little bit. Probably better than most. 3 stars.

#14 Django Unchained (2012)

Quentin Tarantino.

Definitely the best Tarantino movie I've seen in just about 18 years. Yes, I rank this one above Inglorious Basterds. Jaime Foxx plays Django Freeman the best bad-ass since Jules Winnfield. The return of Samuel Jackson to a Tarantino movie was another great highlight. DiCaprio is very good. Christoph Waltz is excellent. The story is well-written and the soundtrack is awesome. At numerous points in the movie, Tarantino's control over the tension between slave-owner and former slave, overseer and free man, slave and black slaver highlighted with the right music at just the right time made me feel shivers down my back. A feeling I hadn't had in a movie for a long time. There are too many good things about this movie to write about. 5 stars. 

#13 Winter's Bone (2010)

By Debra Granik.

I decided to watch this one after we had made plans to see Silver Linings, since I hadn't ever seen Jennifer Lawrence in anything, and since she appears to be the current talk-of-the-town (or "the most talented young actress in America" according to Rolling Stone), I wanted to do a bit more investigation.

This movie is much better than Silver Linings, and the actress is much better in this one, even though according to some, Silver Linings is a "career-defining performance." This movie (Winter's Bone) kind of does give her all the prerequisites to get a best actress nomination. She plays the teenage poverty-stricken girl with the crazy mom, meth-cooking dad, taking care of her younger brother and sister by hunting squirrels, bringing them up right or at least as best she can, being too proud to beg, but is forced to track her missing dad in the underworld of hillbilly meth-cookers so she can save their house since he put it up for bond. You know what that takes? That takes courage. And she's got it. Oh, and then she unfairly gets her ass kicked so she gets the opportunity to be all bloody and then still look like a bad-ass with a swollen up face while still being beautiful in her grittiness. Honestly, I don't know how she didn't get the oscar. (I guess Portman was just more rawer.) Anyway, I could go on and on, but the movie is good. My ranting is more to complain about the Academy Awards than about this movie. I liked this movie a lot. I give it 4 stars. And Jennifer Lawrence was good. You should watch it.

#5 - Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

By Alfred Hitchcock. Starring the lovely Teresa Wright who is rapidly becoming my favorite actress. I've only also seen her in The Best Years of Our Lives, which I saw sometime last year and was instantly captivated by her. After seeing Shadow of a Doubt, I didn't realize it was the same actress even though the character definitely reminded me of someone I had seen in a similar movie. Once I looked her up and saw her filmography, I was instantly reminded of how I had fallen for her in the Best Years. Quite an interesting Hollywood persona, as well. One of the only actors (if not the only) to be nominated for an academy award for her role in each of her first three films.

"Are they? Are they, Charlie? Are they human or are they fat, wheezing animals, hm? And what happens to animals when they get too fat and too old?"

#2 - The Lady Vanishes (1938)

I was very impressed by the political connotations of this Hitchcock comedy. Made during the era of the British and French policies of "Appeasement" of Hitler and the Nazis, it is made clear the director's opinions on this matter. He shows the outright futility of the silly British "pacificist" in his belief that the Germans won't do anything to harm them as, "We are British citizens!" As in the 39 steps, it entails a playful love story between a couple that initially have a strong dislike for each other. I am quite more drawn to the burgeoning romance between the two main characters than I was with the 39 steps, as Margaret Lockwood is a much more interesting actress and the Michael Redgrave-played Gilbert is a playful musician with a good deal of audacity and spunk, and quite not your typical leading male from 30s/40s era films.

#1 - The 39 Steps (1935)

Naturally getting started off with one by a master, Alfred Hitchcock.

I had wanted to watch this and had it waiting on the computer when I got home from my trip. Then I realized while I was away that it appears in my favorite book Catcher in the Rye (which I try to read every year around Christmas time), as one of the few movies the Holden can tolerate and in particular because Phoebe has the whole movie memorized.

I mean if you tell old Phoebe something she knows exactly what the hell you’re talking about. I mean you can even take her anywhere with you. If you take her to a lousy movie, for instance, she knows it’s a lousy movie. If you take her to a pretty good movie, she knows it’s a pretty good movie. D.B. and I took her to see this French movie, The Baker’s Wife, with Raimu in it. It killed her. Her favourite is The 39 Steps, though, with Robert Donat. She knows the whole goddamn movie by heart, because I’ve taken her to see it about ten times. When old Donat comes up from this Scotch farmhouse, for instance, when he’s running away from the cops and all, Pheobe’ll say right out loud in the movie – right when the Scotch guy in the picture says it – ‘Can you eat the herring?’ She knows all the talk by heart. And when this professor in the picture, that really jolly German spy, sticks up his little finger with part of the middle joint missing, to show Robert Donat, old Pheobe beats him to it – she holds up her little finger at me in the dark, right in front of my face.