Movies - #1605 - The Day The Earth Stood Still

Good lord, I do enjoy 1950s sci-fi and monster movies. This is an outstanding example of the genre. It's immensely entertaining, and a lot smarter than some others (IE. Them). It's actually unusual in some ways.

Actually, the poster above makes it look like a different movie than it is. There are no half nude screaming blondes (much as we would like there to be.) Sure, that big robot is pretty intimidating, but it doesn't really do any rampaging, and it's under the control of the alien, who is actually the hero of the piece. The bad guys are the military and government bureaucrats.

Michel Rennie is excellent as the alien. He doesn't over-act it as you might expect from the cast of a 50s sci-fi movie. There are even a few very impressive, very subtle choices. There is one particularly good scene where he comes across a music box in another character's home. Him looking and the music box is incidental to what is taking place in the scene, but his momentary reaction to the discovery of this cute device, a thing of beauty in a world that has thus far seemed mostly ignorant and warlike, is the sort of moment I love to see an actor put into a performance.

I thought Leslie Nielsen was in this movie. I don't know why I thought Leslie Nielsen was in this movie. Leslie Nielsen is not in this movie. The whole movie happened and no Leslie Nielsen. Leslie Nielsen is in Forbidden Planet, though. That's probably what I was thinking of. You know, because they're both mentioned in that song in Rocky Horror. Yeah. That's probably it. Yup.

And then there's the monologue at the end. This was back in that period where, if a movie had an important political message, a character had to give a big monologue at the end. It's a pretty damn good monologue. It sure made me want to stop having a cold war. And nuclear weapons.

Also, as somebody who's into some fairly nerdy things (video games and Army of Darkness) it's nice to see the movie from whence originally came the phrase "Klaatu Barada Nikto". If you've seen Army of Darkness, you totally get where I'm coming from on this.

A lot of Movies

Since my last post, I've seen six movies, and broken the 1600 mark. Here are what the movies were, and mini-entries on them.



#1599 - The Last Emperor (1987). Which was very good. An enjoyable, huge, sprawling epic. A compelling portrait of a man who never actually has any power, over a country or even his own life, ever. Great performances. Peter O'Toole, of course, is always great.



#1600 - Toy Story 3 (2010). Why is it that i can see the most depressing, heartwrenching adult movie and never cry, but once per Pixar Movie, I start to tear up a little? A lot of fun. It feels genuinely in the spirit of the series and not like an attempt to cash in on old successes, so many sequels and remakes lately do. It's also surprisingly dark for a kids movie.



#1601 - House of Games (1987). A good psychological thriller, and David Mamet's directorial debut. It's one of those classic "An innocent person gets drawn into the criminal underworld" stories. And of course it's David Mamet, so thirty seconds in I said "Okay, who's conning who?" You know it's coming, but it's fun to watch the twists and turns that lead there.



#1602 - Zombieland (2009). Very entertaining, if not a great movie. I love the part with Bill Murray. I... don't really have much else to say about this one.



#1603 - Slacker (1991). This movie is so odd, but very interesting. It doesn't have a plot, or even a story. No character is in it for more than five minutes. It's just a series of conversations connected only by physical proximity. The participants in one will briefly interact with those having the next. Or even just pass them on the street. What really ties them together is that the vast majority of these people don't do anything except talk. No jobs. They just hang around and try to impress each other with their intelligence and original (read: pretentious) ideas. I say "conversations", but a lot of the time it's just one person monologuing at another. Frequently the second person tells them how full of shit they are. Like Linklater's next movie after it, Dazed and Confused (1993), which I love, this film captures a state of mind and a point in one's life.



#1604 - Le Corbeau (1943) A thriller from the French director Henri-Georges Clouzot. I tend to enjoy his work, and this is no exception. It's about a town being terrorized by a mysterious person calling themself "Le Corbeau"(The Raven), who is sending everyone slanderous letters about each other. It has a fun whodunit feel and has some fairly exciting bits, including a particularly tence sequence featuring a suspect fleeing an angry mob of townspeople.