Movie watching has become more of a pasttime for me in the last year or so, so I suspect posting a list at the end of the year would be….ungainly. A buddy of mine and I have been watching 2 movies a week for the last few months. Bold titles were particular favorites.

The Graduate, 1969.  Dustin Hoffman doesn’t know what he wants until the mother of what he wants seduces him.  I was not prepared for pool-casual Mr. Feeny. Mr. Feeny? Mr. F-f-f-f-f-eeeny?!

Midnight in Paris, 2011. A beautiful film about an American writer who goes to Paris to socialize with his shallow fiance’s  materialist parents. (His fiance is Regina George, which is like, so fetch?)   He falls in love with the city and wants to be a novelist living there, like his literary heroes Hemingway and Stein.  As the gulf in values between him and his fiance becomes more and more obvious, he begins going on walks in the Paris night and finds himself welcomed into 1920s Paris,  talking with members of the Lost Generation.  

Un Chien Andalou, 1929.  One of the characters in Midnight was an avante-garde filmmaker. I forget his name, but this is one of his films. There were no subtitles so I have no idea what this movie was about, but its camera work reminded me a little bit of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. There were no Andalusian dogs despite the title, and I for one felt cheated. However, the film year nicely brings my average down. (Minimum goal: keep average film year under 2000. Ideal: keep it under 1985.) 

Repo Man, 1984. Emilio Estevez plays a frustrated punk who takes on a job repossessing vehicles, and then there are aliens. Fun early eighties period piece.

Margin Call, 2011.   Unexpectedly compelling for a movie that takes place over the course of two days, all of which involve men in suits staring at computer screens and talking about the bubble popping that will lead to the Great Recession.   Great acting by Jeremy Irons, Kevin Spacey, and Zachary  Quinto.

Moneyball, 2011.    Brad Pitt is Billy Beane, a player-turned-scout-turned-manager, who hires a real number-cruncher to make the most of a limited budget for the Oakland A’s  – and has an amazing, record-breaking season. Lots of actual baseball people in the casting, along with Hollywood types like Pitt and Jonah Hill.

Before Sunrise, 1995. Interesting movie about two young people who meet on a train, hit it off, and decide to throw their plans out the window and spent the day and night exploring Vienna and falling deeply in love.

Airplane, 1980. Yes, I’d truly never seen this before – but so many lines of it have permeated into pop culture that I felt like I’d heard half the dialogue already.  Thoroughly entertaining.

Go Back to China, 2019.   A trust-fund baby with a serious spending problem has her cards cut off after her father in China realizes she’s blown through half of her fund. He forces her to return to China and learn the family business (toymaking), where she grows as a person, meets her family, learns to appreciate Shenzhen etc.  Enjoyable, if predictable.

Love and Death, 1974. Woody Allen has relationship problems. Napoleon invades Russia. 

Ayaneh, 2019. Short film (15 minus) about a young Afghan woman who meets a young Swedish woman while swimming and develops feelings for her. The feelings prompt Ayaneh to begin pushing back against her family’s strict customs – wearing a western-style swimming suit in the pool instead of a full-body one –  and begin growing into herself. I liked that aspect of the film, but her family is treated as stock villains instead of people who would be wrestling with their own complicated feelings – loving Ayaneh, but not knowing what to do with how she is acting.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, 2022.  Raj Kuthrapali has left the world of physics to run a bookstore with his wife, but now she’s dead and he has a drinking problem. Then, his most valuable book is stolen and someone deposits a toddler in his store.  An enjoyable adaptation of the novel, though it has pacing/development issues, and Amelia is miscast as a standard-issue romcom hottie and not as a hippie with a mop of unruly hair and a passion for wearing rain boots in all weathers like she was in the book.   The use of David Arquette as the police chief was unintentionally hilarious, though, given that he was a easy-going and slightly bumbling sheriff’s deputy in Scream. 

The Seven Samurai, 1954. A very influential Japanese film in which a village frequently raided by bandits hires seven samurai to defend them. The  version I saw was the full, close to four hour edition.   It’s a very memorable film – visually striking, well acted,  and well directed. Lots of strong characters.

Fallen Leaves (  Kuolleet lehde, 2023), a Finnish film about two depressed people who meet and decide to become an item despite being repeatedly fired and demoralized by the Russo-Ukrainian war. Interesting visuals  and storytelling, especially the nature of time– -costumes and props make this seem like a film Out of Time, with antique clocks, jukeboxes, and films in use, and a deliberate contradiction between the official calendar date and the news broadcasts, which varied by two years –  but it was not exactly exciting and inspiring.  I have never seen a Finnish film before. 

National Lampoon’s European Vacation, 1985. Entertaining enough.  Will remember it chiefly for the guest stars like Eric Idle, The Major from Fawlty Towers, and Gladhand from West Side Story. 

It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, 1963.   A dying man tells some people where he buried some money. Absolute insanity ensues with cameos from the Three Stooges, Jerry Lewis, and Don Knotts.   

Wall Street. Charlie Sheen is a young broker who wants to make it big, and discovers opportunity by working with the ruthless Gordan Gekko, played expertly by Michael Douglas. Charlie’s faith in Gordan is shattered when he realizes that Gordan is playing him and will destroy the lives of the working men he grew up with by liquidating their company for a quick buck.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, 1976. A night club owner celebrates his final mortgage payment by a night on the town in which he incurs significant gambling debts that the mob makes him clear by knocking off  some high-ranking Chinese bookie.  

Red Heat, 1988. Ahhhnold is a Soviet cop sent to America to chase a Russian who has been selling cocaine in the Soviet Union. He teams up with John Belushi’s brother and a lot of people are shot.  (They were going to use John Belushi himself, but nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!)

Red, 2010. Bruce Willis is a retired CIA agent who is targeted for lethal retirement but survives. After discovering that several of his former colleagues have also been retired by bullet,  he and a few of the old guard team up to figure out what the hell is going on and return fire.  Turns out the CIA is being used to knock off people who could shed light on the vice president’s participation in a wee massacre down in Guatamala a few years back. Refreshingly cynical, with the CIA and FBI goonie boys being the villain for almost the entirety of the film.  In addition to the main cast (Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman),   Richard Dreyfuss appears as a corrupt defense contractor.  Quite funny, too. 

Tokyo Drifter, 1966.   A crime/action movie about a yakuza hitman who, with his boss, is trying to go legitimate. Unfortunately, their former yakuza rivals won’t let them retire so easily, and the former hitman Tetsu is forced to roam from city to city singing his own theme song. The camera work & visuals are very interesting, especially at the beginning where saturation and contrast are played with for artistic effect.