Today’s TTT is our ten most recent acquisitions, but I’m going to be wicked and do my top ten favorite films watched for this year, instead. But first, the Teaseday Tues!

[Tyler] was an Old Republican who pledged fealty to the states’ rights bible of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, but beyond that it was difficult to pin him down. He became a Jacksonian Democrat but consistently opposed President Jackson. He became a Whig but usually opposed the party’s nationalistic agenda. When he did so in the White House, party members banished him, making him a president without a party. Charges of partisan disloyalty never troubled Tyler. In fact, he seemed to enjoy his reputation as a political renegade.” PRESIDENT WITHOUT A PARTY

I have watched well over a hundred movies this year, going on tangents like “John Grisham movies” and “movies with James Gandolfini” in them. Can I manage to pick ten favorites? Rewatches like Gettysburg are disqualified. I will paste in my original notes and supplement them as appropriate.

(1) Wonka, 2023. A Charlie and the Chocolate Factory prequel that surprised me both in terms of general quality and sheer delightedness. I loved the musical numbers.

(2) The Straight Story, 1999. Excellent film about an old retired farmer who, upon learning his brother had a stroke, decides their ten-year silence after a bitter argument needs to be ended. Since he is old and prideful, he decides to visit said brother on….a lawnmower. Phenom acting.

(3) 10 Cloverfield Lane . Horror-suspense film.  A young woman is hit in a car wreck and wakes up chained in a basement, and soon meets her captor, John Goodman, who alleges that the United States has been attacked and that the outside air is now toxic. Although she’s dubious and tries to escape,  she becomes convinced after seeing evidence of an attack outside – but  that doesn’t mean Goodman’s character still isn’t unhinged and and dangerous.  Very effective.

(4) Men in Black III.   I watched the original movie when it came out, of course, and tolerated the second one, but it wasn’t until that I saw Josh Brolin’s Tommy Lee Jones impersonation –  which he does throughout this film – that I thought, holy WOW do I need to see this.  Will Smith is “J” and is thrown back in time to 1969 to help his partner K (Tommy Lee Jones/Josh Bronlin) knock off an alien who wants to destroy Earth.  This involves manhandling Andy Warhol and putting a thingy on the Apollo 11 Saturn-10.  Such a good film, between the acting and the raygun gothic tech. 

(5) Carnage, 2011.   I have only watched Inglorious Basterds one time since its release, but I have rewatched every single Christoph Waltz scene more times than I can remember.  I asked ChatGPT for movies where Waltz was a similarly dominant presence, and it recommended this – a comedy wherein he features alongside JODIE FOSTER!!, Kate Winslet, and that guy from Step-Brothers who isn’t Will Ferrell.  Four parents meet in a room to discuss what to do after their respective children get in a fight that ends with broken teeth. They get into a lot of side discussions and there’s interesting shifting character dynamics: different characters side with one another in different scenes depending on where the conversation is going. (This gets…more interesting after a bottle of 18 year old single-malt Scotch is uncorked.)  This is a difficult movie to summarize, but if you’re into character drama like myself it’s quite a treat, especially with heavyweights like Waltz and Foster aboard. A plausible drinking game could be composed of the times that Waltz and Winslet take on or take off their coats and attempt to leave.  

(6) Zero Day (2003). AColumbine-inspired  found footage documentary, in which we witness two friends with violent fantasies collude and plan a school shooting.  What makes Zero Day so utterly disturbing is the nature of the production itself, the “found footage” approach: the film is presented as a series of clips taken from consumer video recorders,  some purposely filmed by the future shooters as a record for the future, some simply documenting their lives as-lived. We get a sense of the boys as people, with utterly normal social circles and lives, though they do have resentments toward certain parties at school. One such person is “Brad Huff”, a jerk jock whose house they pelt with rotten eggs after arriving at his home to find his SUV nowhere in sight.  The found footage is eerily weird, with expect amounts of outtakes, muffed lines, and “teenagers mugging for the camera” that you’d expect.  It avoids the poor widdle buwwied story completely: we see two teenagers with unhealthy interior lives and an uncanny awareness of how they’d be perceived afterwards ratcheting each other into a course of destruction, where they will escape a world and a school they hate by turning it into a bloody mess.  Zero Day is far more unsettlingthan Elephant for its approach, though I will admit to being partial toward found footage.(See my affection for The Blair Witch Project, which continues to disappoint my film buddies.)

(7) Terminator 2: Judgement Day, 1991.    I watched Terminator some years ago, enough that I’ve forgotten most everything but the basic premise and the haunting percussive soundtrack.  Bottom line: in the future,  sentient machines are waging war on humanity and they want to destroy the leader of the resistance by knocking off his mother.  Terminator 2 reintroduces Arnie as The Terminator, a killing machine, but now his former target (the future human rebellion leader John Connor) has reprogrammed some iteration of him to protect John Connor in the past. This is necessary because the machines waging war on humanity have sent back another terminator, this one a shapeshifter,   I didn’t realize how much of this movie has saturated pop culture: I recognized line after line.  While going in I had some doubts – movies that are just chase scenes and supermen bashing the hell out of each other and destroying property bore me, hence why I watch very few superhero movies – this proved far more compelling than predicted. There was one scene where I thought “WOW!  What a great finale!” and then realized – wait a minute, there’s twenty minutes left in this film. Nice twist.  The special effects are crazy for 1991, and it’s replete with  badass reloads. 

(8) St. Vincent, 2014. Bill Murray is a broke misanthropic ….widower? with a drinking problem.  Then the house next door to him gets a single mom and her kid, Oliver.  Insert Man Called Ove plot, only instead of being a very functional grump, Bill is more of a dysfunctional lush whose bond with Oliver no one understands. I love almost any movie Bill is in, and of course readers know I am an absolute sucker for the “curmudgeon is recalled to life” trope. This one is more gritty than Ove or say, Frank and Red:   Murray’s character is deep in hock to loan sharks and has gambling, prostitution, drinking and cigarette addictions.  However….as the movie progresses, we realize there’s more to Bill’s story than meets the eye: it’s a tough, tear-terking tale that turns out wonderfully sweet.  A very me movie, I will say. 

(9) The Last Castle, 2001. Superb drama with James Gandfolini, Robert Redford, and a young Mark Ruffalo.  A general (Redford)  with a legendary reputation – who was famously tortured in Hanoi but refused early release to remain with his men – is the newest prisoner of a military prison.   Gandolfini, the commandant, is immediately torn with admiration for the man, plus his professional need to treat him like any other prison – including abject humiliation. Redford, though, is something of a Stoic, and I am certain Admiral James Stockdale was the inspiration for him.  Redford, by personal example and admonition, urges the men to be true to the best in themselves, to comport themselves with dignity.  There’s a moving scene where the men gather in formation and sing the USMC fight song in honor of a prisoner who stood on principle and was shot down in cold-blooded murder. Disgusted by Gandfolini’s treatment of the men, Redford moves to take over the prison in an effort have Gandfolini removed from his post as per the Military Code of Justice. (Losing control of your prison =  update your resume, sport.)  I don’t think I’ve seen Redford in anything else, but I believe I will now.  I do have….questions, like HOW DID PRISONERS BUILD A TREBUCHET?     One of ending scenes – of Old Glory rising above fire and ruins – gave me shudders. This came out five weeks after September 11, when similar shots could have been taken at Ground Zero. 

(10) The Lincoln Lawyer, 2011. Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei!, William Macy, and – – BRYAN CRANSTON?   Oh, and Bob Gunton, who played Captain Maxwell in ST TNG’s “The Cardassians”.  Matthew McConaughey plays a ‘street lawyer’ of sorts  –  representing all sorts of genuine criminals who are scattered so widely across greater LA that he spends his days in Lincoln towncar. A potentially lucrative case has an uncanny resemblance of one of his earlier cases, and M.M. begins wondering if he isn’t actually defending a monster.