Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid- 1/27/10

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Tim (3.5 stars) - I think I liked this movie a little more than Liz, but I still wasn't absolutely thrilled with a few parts in it. First of all, the soundtrack was terrible. Burt Bacharack's "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" was completely out of place and the whole scene that played out over that song could have been completely cut and we wouldn't have missed anything from the film. What I liked about the movie was the relationship that played out between Paul Newman (Butch Cassidy) and Robert Redford (Sundance Kid) as they aged and started to realize that times had changed and they couldn't continue the life that they had been living for so many years. They contemplate what else they can do and don't really come up with any other ideas so they go to Bolivia and continue the life they couldn't in the US until even the Bolivians catch up with them.

Liz (3 1/2 stars *mainly due to the actors) Okay, let me just say first off that I LOVE Paul Newman. I was not a huge fan of this movie, however. I don't think it had anything to do with Paul Newman or Robert Redford though. I think a lot of it had to do with the story, the way it was filmed and the choices the director made. What I disliked the most was the music. I know a lot of people are Burt Bacharach fans, but I just thought the music was totally distracting. "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" seemed so absurd during that bicycle scene and some of the music that played while they were in Bolivia was just annoying. So much of the cinematography and look of the movie was so authentic to a classic western, why throw it off with a very 60s sounding score? What works for this movie is the relationship between Butch Cassidy (Newman) and the Sundance Kid (Redford). The two actors really created a sense of kinship and some of their moments together were really memorable. The scene where they are being chased and have to decide whether or not to jump into the river is great and the last scene in the movie is a great example of how Newman and Redford created characters that you felt you knew by the end. All of their dialogue and nuances seemed exactly true to their characters.

On Golden Pond- 1/26/10

On Golden Pond (1981)

Tim (4.5 stars) - We weren't able to watch a movie yesterday so now we've got to catch up this weekend. I had seen On Golden Pond several times as a kid and all I remembered about it was that I thought it was a really sad. Watching it again, I was impressed with how funny it was, the clever dialog (you can tell it was a play) and the powerful performances by Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda and Jane Fonda. It is just so touching that I didn't want it to end and it definitely made me long for summer vacation on the beach of Maine.

Liz (5 stars) How have I never seen this movie?! I loved it! The performances, writing, direction and plot were great. I knew it was originally a play and it's amazing how you can really tell when a movie was written as a play originally. The characters are so developed and in this case the playwright, Ernest Thompson, also wrote the screenplay, so you know everything is true to the original form. I had made the assumption that this movie was just sad and depressing, and it certainly has its sad moments, but it was also really funny. Henry Fonda was amazing as Norman Thayer Jr. and of course Katherine Hepburn wasn't too shabby as Ethel Thayer either. The setting made me long for summer days in Maine and just the idea of a simpler life where you can enjoy your surroundings instead of just trying to get through the day. I will have to make a point of reading this play now.

August Rush- 1/24/10

August Rush (2007)

Tim (2 stars) - On a two day rough streak with movies. I had seen previous for this movie and had hopes that it would be good. I was sadly disappointed. The whole movie is based on the premise that music can bring people together and the music that August has a Mozart-like gift for will lead him to his parents. His mother (Keri Russell) thought he had died when he was born, but her father actually put the child up for adoption because he didn't want to interrupt her career as a classical cellist. How someone can be allowed to put a baby up for adoption without the mother knowing is beyond me, but then so are a lot of other things in this movie. Robin Williams is horribly, horribly miscast as this sleazy man who commands a group of talented parentless children who work the streets of NYC playing songs and bring him home the profits. He is basically their pimp and a lot of the movie centers around how the young prodigy, August, can get away from him after he has escaped from a boarding school and no one seems to be that concerned about where he his. Along the way, he inexplicably gets accepted to the Julliard School of Music and is chosen to compose a piece in the summer concert that his mother is also playing at. The rest, as they say, is history.

Liz (2 stars) The concept for this movie sounded strange to me when it first came out- an orphan finds his birth-parents through the power of music... It sounded strange and it was strange...

Two musicians, (Keri Russell) a cellist and (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) a rocker, meet on one fateful night, fall in love, conceive a child, and then somehow never see each other again. For her, because her father won't let her and for him- I'm not sure why... He's too busy with his band and being depressed about not being with her?

Anyway, their son, that he doesn't know about and she thinks died is now about 11 and is an orphan musical prodigy. He decides to run away to NYC where he will use music to find his parents. In the meantime, he meets a creepy man named "Wizard" (played by Robin Williams) who takes in runaway kids that are musically talented and makes them play for money on the streets and then takes their money. The Robin Williams character was truly bizarre.

August, (who's real name is Evan, but Robin Williams changes it to August Rush?) can play every instrument he picks up and eventually somehow even attends Julliard. He is desperate to find his parents through his music, even though he has no idea that his parents are even musicians. Of course the mother has found out he is alive and is looking for him, and his father is looking for his mother... SPOILER ALERT: Will they find each other? Perhaps during August's Julliard concert? Hmmm, that would tie it up nicely... I've read that this movie was supposed to be like a modern day fairy tale. It didn't work. Trust me, I like a good romantic fairytale, but something in this just didn't click.

Stage Beauty- 1/23/10

Stage Beauty (2004)

Tim
(2.5 stars) - Another movie that came out in 2004, but didn't get nearly the critical acclaim of Million Dollar Baby, and with good reason. Liz and I had only heard about this movie in passing and were very interested in it because we both love Claire Danes and both think that Billy Crudup is a very under-rated actor. Well, in this film neither actor really lived up to my expectations, but it may not have been entirely their faults. Billy Crudup is an actor who makes his living playing female Shakespeare characters at a time when women are not allowed to act on stage. Ned (Billy Crudup) has been training his who life to be able to convincingly act like a woman and everyone talks about his beauty and how feminine he is. The problem was that Billy Crudup is just not that womanly looking so the whole thing looks awkward on the screen. The plot is very contrived in many parts and is hard to fully get a handle on, including the fact that Ned is gay at the beginning, but then sleeps with Maria even though they never seem to like each other very much before then. The sets looked kind of cheap and undetailed; you could definitely tell it was done on a tight budget. All in all it definitely left me wanting more.


Liz
(2 stars) I should have loved this movie... Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Shakespeare, the life of an actor... What more could I ask for? This just proves that a movie can have some of your favorite actors and be about a subject you are very interested in, but still be terrible. The plot focuses on the time in history when only men were allowed to act and certain male actors were renowned for playing female roles. Billy Crudup plays an actor who is one of the most famous actors who only portrays woman. Claire Danes is his dresser who secretly wants to be an actress herself, and essentially is the one who brings women playing women into fashion. What keeps this movie from working is its total lack of character development. What was Crudup and Danes' relationship like before she starts taking his parts? At one point it seems like they really care for each other, and then at another point, it seems like he never paid much attention to her at all. All in all, it seems like it might have been an interesting concept and an interesting time in theater history, but the story never really comes together and you find yourself not really caring about what happens to the characters.

On a side note- this is the movie where Crudup and Danes become involved with each other, prompting him to leave his pregnant girlfriend, Mary Louise Parker. Scandalous!

Million Dollar Baby- 1/22/10

Million Dollar Baby (2004)

ATTENTION: Spoiler Alert!

Tim (4.5 stars) - I thought I knew what to expect from this, but was pleasantly surprised. Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, and Hillary Swank were all wonderful in their roles. The movie was way more heart-wrenching then I thought it would be. And although I knew that Maggie died at the end, I was surprised that I hadn't heard exactly how she dies.

Liz (5 stars) For some reason, when Million Dollar Baby came out in the theaters, I had no interest in seeing it. I'm not sure why, but I guess I just didn't think I'd like it for some reason. Also, someone told me what happened in the end, so it felt pointless to watch. I'm glad I finally watched it, because it was a really good movie. It was well written, well acted and well directed. Hilary Swank is just one of those actresses that completely becomes the character she is playing, and I had no problem believing she was a boxer. Her body completely transformed into an athlete's body and it was absolutely her in the ring during the fight scenes and not a body double. Although I had been told the ending, what I had been told was vague, so I didn't really know that whole ending. Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman were great as usual and were well cast in their parts. Everything in the storyline tied in so nicely with everything else and I can see why it won so many awards. I would definitely recommend this to others. You don't need to be a fan of boxing to really enjoy this movie and care for the characters. Until watching Million Dollar Baby, I had forgotten how much boxing I used to watch with my dad when I was younger. It can seem like it's just people beating each other up, but boxing is really a sport that takes a lot of training and this movie really showcases that. The story was heart breaking and sad, but so worth watching.

Avatar- 1/21/10

Avatar (2009)

Tim (5 stars) - I will say right at the beginning that I didn't really have high expectations for this movie. The previews made it look weird and I thought the blue people were going to be super strange and annoying. But I had been hearing so many great reviews of this movie that Liz and I decided that we should see it. And if we were going to see it we definitely wanted to see it in 3D. There was only one place near us showing the movie in 3D, the beautiful Beacon Cinema in Pittsfield, Mass. First of all, the movie started and I immediately noticed that the 3D experience was going to be amazing. I had seen some 3D imax documentary-type movies but I had never experienced a feature film in a quality 3D and it was like nothing else I had ever seen before. It was so cool to see the characters literally popping off the screen. On the whole, I was thoroughly entertained by the storyline and just the sheer grand-ness of the movie. Liz pointed out to me that there were some really cheesy one-liners, which when I thought back on agreed that there were, but it definitely didn't distract me at the time.

Liz (4 1/2 stars) When this movie first came out, I didn't think I'd have any interest in seeing it. Slowly, I kept hearing more and more people talking about it, and more and more people raving about it. I figured I needed to see what all the hype was for myself, so we bundled up and headed to the Beacon Theater in Pittsfield. We decided to go to the Beacon because it was the only local theater that had it in 3D and we figured we might as well see it the way it was meant to be seen. First of all, we had never been to the Beacon, so that was a new experience too. It was very nice and the staff was very friendly. The theater was clean and comfortable. I would definitely go there again. As we walked in, we were handed our 3D glasses and basically told to not even try to take them home with us. This was said in a nice way, but let me tell you, they were serious about those glasses. If you wanted to go into the bathroom, you had to turn your glasses over to the usher until you came back. Now this might seem a little extreme, but these were not your typical 3D glasses with the red and blue plastic. These glasses were fancy and almost felt like sunglasses when you put them on. They were made out of hard plastic and had an anti-theft device installed in them. Serious stuff.

I did not realize that the whole movie was in 3D- not just the parts in the other world, not just occasional things jumping out at you- EVERYTHING the whole way through. I have to say, it was pretty amazing during the first few minutes when you are first getting used to it. It was truly unlike anything I've ever seen. The scenes that took place in the forest of Pandora were beautiful and the night scenes were gorgeous. It's hard to explain, it's just something you have to see. I'm definitely glad we saw it in 3D. I did not get a headache like I was worried about, but the almost 3 hour run time of constant 3D action did make my eyes feel tired. I'm still tired as I sit here writing this the next day!

This review is a little bit more about the experience than it is about the movie. The movie and the story were epic to say the least. Some of the writing wasn't the best, but James Cameron definitely fully created a whole other world and society that the audience was transported into. The messages of equality, racism and environmentalism might have been a little heavy handed, but that worked for Avatar. Being an actor in this movie and seeing yourself as an Avatar or a Na'vi must have been so weird, because you can really see the person in the creature. It's not like animation where you are just voicing something. Having just seen the same actress (Zoe Saldana) in Star Trek, I could really see her in her part, even though we never see her human form in Avatar. It must have been a completely surreal experience. Not everyone is going to love this movie, but I think everyone could at least be remotely interested in the story. It is absolutely innovative and the experience of watching it is not like any other movie viewing experience I've had.

Star Trek- 1/20/10

Star Trek (2009)

Tim (4 stars) - I'm not a Trekkie by any stretch of the imagination but I really liked this "prequel" to the Star Trek series. JJ Abrams has done a really good job of weaving a plausible plot of how this crew came together. Obviously, the special effects are far superior to the original television shows, but they were really cool effects. I wasn't annoyed by other actors filling the classic roles of the people from the original Trek. It was a very enjoyable movie.

Liz (4 stars) I have to say I really enjoyed this movie! I think it was a combination of having watched a lot of Star Trek when I was younger, plus the fact that JJ Abrams directed this version. The action kept you engaged, the character development was good, and it was fun to see the characters as their younger selves. I had really forgotten how much I like Star Trek. I am not a big Star Wars fan and apparently if you like one, you don't like the other was much. (Someone on the dvd extras said this) So maybe that explains it. Anyway, it had a very JJ Abrams feel (ex: a big action scene right in the beginning that end abruptly and then goes into the credits) and I really liked how it felt modern but also had the same feeling of the old Star Trek. I also loved the colorful glares that happened throughout the movie. It was a really interesting idea for the cinematography. Seeing Leonard Nimoy was a treat and it seems like it was set up for a sequel, which I would definitely see. (Or would it be another prequel?)

Brokedown Palace- 1/19/10

Brokedown Palace (1999)

Tim (4 stars) - Brokedown Palace is a move that I had seen several times before and although I liked it, I didn't really feel like I needed to see it again. Claire Danes is lovely, but when we pulled out the DVD to watch it, I was thinking "been there, done that." But when we actually started watching the movie I realized that there was a lot of the movie that I didn't really remember and I found myself thoroughly enjoying it again. I remember my dad always talking about his failing memory and saying that it was a good thing because he could watch anything again and not realized that he had watched it before. I am not yet at the point where I don't even remember if I've watched something but I definitely didn't remember as much of the story as I thought I did. It is truly terrible to get old. Anyway, if you haven't seen Brokedown Palace, you just have to see it because it is a very well done film. It is a fairly simple storyline about 2 friends that travel to Thailand and through a series of unfortunate events find themselves in a Thai prison, fighting for their release. The complexities come in to the story in the fact that these are two childhood friends who have been friends forever, but come from different sides of the socio-economic "tracks". The girl played by Kate Beckinsale is from a wealthy family with a mother and father; Claire's character only has her father to support her and times are rough for him. This is the kind of bridge in society that is fine in normal day life but plays out very dramatically when put into the pressure cooker situation of the Thai prison. Kate's father comes to visit them and secretly tells Claire that he never liked her and always knew she was trouble. There are moments when each girl blames the other for being put in their situation, but the reality is that they were set up to take a fall from the beginning. I was pleasantly surprised by this movie seeing it again after several years. It has aged well.

Liz (3 1/2 stars) This was a second or maybe third viewing of this movie for me. I had originally seen it when it came out in the theaters. The story follows two girls who are best friends who have just graduated from high school. Despite having been friends since they were young, their lives are going in two different directions. Darlene, played by Kate Beckensale has always been the good one and has a nice family. She is going off to college and leaving behind Alice, played by Claire Danes. Alice is a little more rough around the edges and lives with her father who is pretty much absent from her life. Both girls know that their friendship will probably never be the same, so they decide to take a trip together before their lives change. Telling their families they are going to Hawaii, they actually take a trip to Thailand. Once in Thailand, they become involved with a man who charms them, but is actually setting them up so he can smuggle drugs out of the country. This gets them thrown into a Thai prison for women. They cal upon the services of an American lawyer who practices in Thailand, played by Bill Pulman. In trying to secure their freedom, questions arise about who knew what about the drugs and their friendship is tested. This might not be the greatest movie, but the performances are good and the story doesn't lag anywhere. Also, if this movie doesn't make you think twice about doing anything criminal in a foreign country, I don't know what will! It certainly didn't make me want to visit Thailand anytime soon!

Moon- 1/18/10

Moon (2009)

Tim

(3 stars) - Sam Rockwell gives a good performance but there is just something about this movie that seems a little underwhelming. I liked the concept of it, but the storyline moved along kind of slowly. Also, I was very tired when I watched it, so this may have had an effect on my opinion of it. The story is that the lead character, Sam, played by Sam Rockwell, is at the helm of a one-man mining operation on the moon. They have discovered a material on the moon that has the ability to provide energy to earth so they set up these moon stations with automated mining machines that go out and dig up the earth. Sam has to travel out to the "harvesters" every once and a while and collect the material and then shoot it back down to earth. As the movie opens, we learn that he is almost finished with a 3 year stint at the station and will soon return to his wife and children. A problem arises when he gets into an accident while he is going out to his harvester. The next shot we see is of him waking up at his base's infirmary wing, but we quickly come to realize that it is a different Sam that has woken up. It turns out that all the Sams are cloned and when they all think they are getting home, they are actually just being destroyed and replaced by a new one.

You could see some of the film as a commentary on how a large corporation/industry can commoditize human life for their own purposes. The industry has found that it is less expensive to clone 30 Sams and keep them in a hidden room on the moon base then to actually bring new people in an train them. Sam's realization that he is just a tool to be used up and manipulated by his employer leads to his final act of rebellion, which I won't give away here, but is sufficiently uplifting. I think one of the reasons I wasn't completely engaged with the film is that Sam was the only character, besides a computer that he talked to, and we didn't get the sense that he was all that surprised or saddened to find out that he wasn't, in fact, a real person. It turns out that the clones are only meant to last about 3 years and as Sams body starts to break down beyond repair, we realize that the machine will keep turning with another Sam and it becomes a little hard to feel all that bad for him. I guess, in the end, it is hard to love a clone.

Liz (3 stars) I had wanted to see this movie, just because Sam Rockwell is in it and I think he is a very interesting actor. I didn't really know much about it (which seems to be becoming a theme with me lately...). The movie tells the story of a man named Sam who is coming to the end of his 3 year contract to work on a space station on the moon. His job is to man the station and equipment that is collecting moon rocks(?) from the moon that is somehow solving our energy crisis on Earth. Sam's only other "co-worker" is a computer named Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey) who is very much like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Same monotone voice, same lighted dot eye, but as an interesting addition, Gerty also sports a small computer screen that shows a typical yellow smiley face that smiles, frowns, looks confused and even cries depending on the emotion of what is going on. I thought that was an interesting choice and made the concept of the computer being Sam's friend even more compelling. As I said before, Sam is at the end of his 3 year contract, and is really starting to feel the effects of being without human contact. His live feed with the base on Earth is down and the only way he can communicate is through videos he records and sends to his wife or videos she sends to him. Essentially he is alone, or so he thinks... That's all I'm going to say about the plot so I don't give things away. I will say the pacing of the movie is fairly slow. It took a while to get to the mystery and once it did, there was a period of time where I was very confused. Things eventually start to make sense, and I don't mind having to figure things out, but I think that period of confusion went on a little too long. This movie had a big concept that was done on a small scale. It definitely won't be for everyone, but if you are a Sam Rockwell fan, it's worth it for his performance alone. He is literally playing off of himself pretty much through the whole movie, but is still interesting to watch. I also love the score to this movie. It perfectly projected a feeling of loneliness, fear and desolation.

1/17/10- My Sister's Keeper

Tim
1/17/10: My Sister's Keeper (3 stars) - Not a terrible movie, though a bit sappy. The performance by the lead girl was good. Cameron Diaz's performance was a bit one note, but had some nice moments towards the end. The twist to the film was not all that much of a shocker, but it was a nice movie. There were some sad ruminations about a life cut too short and on the whole the movie was heartwarming. There were one or two swells of emotion that were nice.

Liz
My Sister’s Keeper (2009) 3.5 stars
This movie is based on a Jodi Picoult novel, and I have read many of her books, so I had a good sense of what this movie would be like. I also knew it would be very sad, so I had a box of tissues ready. Jodi Picoult is a master of taking some sort of social issue and creating a whole story around this. In this case, the issue is parents having a child so that child can be an organ donor for her sister who has cancer. Sophia Vassilieva plays the sister with cancer and Abigail Breslin plays her donor sister. I thought they were both good and I’ve liked them in other things, so it’s interesting to see them growing up and taking on more challenging acting roles. I guess I was less convinced of Cameron Diaz as their mother, but she had some good moments. The main conflict of the story was Breslin’s character trying to medically emancipate herself from her parents so she would no longer have to be a donor to her sister without her permission. It definitely had a Jodi Picoult feel, with flashbacks and different parts of the story seen from different character’s perspectives. I had heard that the ending of the movie was very different from the ending of the book. My Sister’s Keeper is one of the few Jodi Picoult books I haven’t read, so I looked up the differences, and wow- what a big change! I read something that said Picoult was not happy with the change and that it changed the message she was trying to convey. It seems crazy that someone can buy the rights to your story and then drastically change it. I might have to make a point of reading the book, just because I’d like to see the differences.

1/16/10- All That Jazz

Tim 1/16/10: All That Jazz (3.5 stars) - Interesting film about Bob Fosse's life and loves and struggle to balance his busy schedule with his family relationships and toll that his fast-paced life has on him. It was really hard to get into at the beginning because all these different things were happening at once and the Fosse character wasn't really that likeable. The plot jumped back a forth between what was happening in present day and this sort of dream world, which we later find out is a type of limbo world where he can reflect on the life he lived.

Liz- All That Jazz (1979) 3 stars
Going into this movie, I had absolutely no idea what it was about, just that it was a Bob Fosse movie. I didn’t even read the back of the DVD case. I guess I didn’t think I’d need any information going into it, because I LOVE Bob Fosse’s choreography and he’s basically my dance inspiration, so I should just love the movie. Right? Well, not so much. Some background information going into it would have been really great and had I known this was a bit of an autobiographical account of his life, it would have made much more sense. I spent the first half of the movie pretty much lost, and wondering what the point was. I guess I was expecting (from my expectations as well as from the opening scene), the movie to be another A Chorus Line, or something like that. The alternate universe dressing room/death scenes with Jessica Lange were so confusing to me that I almost felt I had missed the memo saying that this film is best viewed when under the influence of heavy drugs. The second half was definitely better and I have to say this movie probably had the best death musical number of all time. I was hoping for more dance, but towards the end, it picked up. Ann Reinking is amazing and I really enjoyed watching her dance. After the movie was over, I did a little research and the more I read about Fosse’s life and what had influenced this movie, the more I liked it. If I had written this review before I took some time to think about it, I probably would have said I hated it, but it’s definitely growing on me. Reading about how the different characters were inspired by real people was interesting and I think I’d like to learn more about Bob Fosse’s life. There was something really self-indulgent about the story and the way it was done though. It reminded me of a time that I was in a play that was written and directed by the same person and it was semi-autobiographical. It was so personal to him that he really couldn’t see where it needed editing or what wasn’t working. I think Bob Fosse might have had the same problem. I did think it was a really interesting message about show business and how people’s lives can become secondary to the success of a show or a movie.

1/15/10- Inglourious Basterds

Tim
1/15/10: Inglourious Basterds (2009) (3.5 stars) - I probably liked it a little more than Liz, but by no means did I think it was as good as the hype I remember it getting when it came out. It has the mastery tension buildup and release that Tarantino does so well and so dramatically. There is some really nice camera work and really nice visuals, but there are also some things that just don't seem to jive well together, such as the bold 70's era name title that springs up on the German "basterds" name and the strangely modern song choice that plays under the lead female characters preparation for the movie house slaughter night. All of these things could be called "classic" Tarantino but in this more historical setting it seemed a little out of place. The brutal violence can also be called "classic" Tarantino and definitely lives up to the standards he has set in other movies. In the "Kill Bill" series, the violence seemed more cartoony, here it was just brutal, but effective at telling the story. The characters were engaging and enjoyable to watch, despite a definite mis-casting of Mike Myers as a British military general with a horrible fake British accent. The movie seemed to have a bit of a slow pace for an action movie. Overall, I think the biggest problem I had with the movie was that it seemed like a sort of "fan fiction" taking actual historical people and putting them into completely made-up situations. Yes, it would be great if WWII could have ended as swiftly as it ended in Inglourious Basterds, but the truth is even more brutal then in Tarantino's fantastic mind.

Liz

Inglourious Basterds-3 stars

I wanted to see this movie when it first came out, but mainly because I think Quentin Tarantino is a good director and his movies are always interesting to watch. Nevertheless, I have seen enough of his films to know that he is notoriously violent and “Basterds”, which focused on a group of Nazi-killers, was going to be no exception. So, I went into watching the movie, fairly terrified, and pretty much stayed that way the entire time (2 and ½ hours). I don’t like watching extreme violence. I don’t like the sight of blood- real or even something I know isn’t real. I’m extremely squeamish. Now you might say, I was setting myself up to not like this movie from the beginning. I would probably think that was true as well, but I actually really liked Tarantino’s Kill Bill volume 1 & 2 (2 being my favorite), and those were probably the most violent movies I’ve even seen. The big difference between Kill Bill and Basterds for me was the storyline. I found the storyline in Kill Bill, even though it covered a lot of different people, to be much more interesting and a lot less all over the place feeling than Basterds. The different stories felt disjointed to me and left me not really interested in the outcome until about 30 minutes from the end of the film. Having said that, I was probably most interested in Shosanna’s story and really thought the actress who played that part (Melanie Laurant) and the actor who played Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) were standouts in terms of their acting. Most scenes in the movie were filled with intense suspense. You knew something was going to happen and that it was going to be really bad, but the scenes that featured those characters were especially tense. The scene they had together in the restaurant was one of the highlights of the film. Tarantino often adds touches of things that you aren’t expecting, and I’m usually fine with that, but in this film, those quirky touches just came too infrequently and seemed too out of place. Some examples of this were the titles that introduced the Basterds, the infrequent narration by Samuel L. Jackson, and the music that played over Shosanna getting ready for the premiere. So much attention was paid to the details of making the film feel like it took place in the 1940s, and things like this just really took away from it. SPOILER ALERT: My biggest problem with the film was its rewriting of history. It was weird to me to include a well-known historical figure like Hitler, and then almost live out this fantasy of killing him and all his men in a fiery inferno at the end. I’m not quite sure why I feel this way, but it was just weird. It was almost like that weird kind of fan fiction, where people come up with false scenarios for historical figures, but in this case, it is one of the most hated people in history. Just wasn’t what I was expecting… Oh, one more thing- the movie is called Inglourious Basterds, but I felt like I barely saw them in action!

365 Days/ 365 Movies- The Rules

1. We have one year to watch 365 movies. We do not necessarily have to watch one movie a day, as long as we've watched 365 by January 15, 2011.

2. At least 100 of the movies will come from the American Film Institute's Top 100 films. The other 265 will come from a combination of the 400 films nominated for the Top 100 list, new releases in the theater, movies we've always wanted to watch, suggestions from family and friends and anything that comes our way!

3. We can count a movie we have seen before as long as we watch it again during this year long period.

4. We cannot count a movie if we fall asleep during it or don't watch it all. We can pick up where we left off though.

5. We will blog about our thoughts and feelings about the movies as well as the experience.