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The A.V. Club had a feature asking a bunch of people I've never heard of the question "what's your most-rewatched movie?" Their responses were interesting—and would be more so if I were familiar with the individuals—so I thought I'd share my answer.

I've thought about the subject a lot because my favorite movies aren't necessarily the ones I watch regularly. It's a crucial distinction because there are several movies that I don't think are good or great by any stretch but I enjoy watching a lot. My favorite movies aren't necessarily those that I can (or do) watch regularly but they really resonate with me whenever I do.

My all-time most re-watched movie has to be Happy Gilmore, which I think most people who know me would be surprised to find out. I watch this at least once a month and sometimes more, I can quote from it liberally and extensively. My favorite scenes are definitely the ones with Ben Stiller as a nursing home orderly. It makes me laugh every time.

Aside from that, I like The Italian Job, Dumb and Dumber, and Back to the Future. I must say that getting rid of satellite and the three-at-a-time plan from Netflix have cut into the time I have to re-watch movies: I could have made a much more extensive list two years ago, for example.

Time for some more Netflix queue reviewin' (long overdue from the looks of it):

• Pride and Prejudice (Netflix): a great adaptation of Austen's most famous novel. Keira Knightley is pretty good, but I was most impressed with Donald Sutherland's acting.
• Baby Mama (Netflix): I really liked this movie, but I'm predisposed to that on account of being a huge Tina Fey fan. Amy Poehler was much better than I expected and I found myself actually caring about the characters.
• Kiss the Girls (Netflix): good enough thriller. The plot was interesting but there were many distracting (and glaring) holes. Like, who allows a victim to participate in apprehending a serial killer? Come on.
• City Lights (Netflix): Charlie Chaplin's last silent film. I know plenty of people will defend silent movies as just as good as talkies—I'm not one of them. I've watched enough of them to have an informed disdain—except Buster Keaton, who gets a pass because his films are still hilarious.
• The List (Netflix): I like Wayne Brady. Wait, I liked Wayne Brady. This piece of crap belongs on Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel. The acting is terrible, the plot is predictable, and the characters are shallow. Awful—but seriously worth buying through my Amazon affiliate link.
• Shenandoah (Netflix): James Stewart is a Virginia farmer who vigorously tries to avoid the Civil War occurring around him. But then one of his five boys gets taken prisoner mistakenly and he's one pissed off actor. Very good, maybe a little slow, but plenty of wonderful lines.
• Trust the Man (Netflix): David Duchovny plays a sex addict—hmm—in this relationship movie. It wasn't bad though rather pointless. I did like Maggie Gyllenhaal's character.
• Hairspray (Netflix): excellent movie irrevocably marred by John Travolta in drag and fat suit. Seriously, I have no idea why they cast him as the wife of Christopher Walken. He was painful to watch and would have been perfect without him.
• Balls of Fury (Netflix): I had extremely low expectations going into this movie. I hoped that Christopher Walken would be funny—he was—but I found myself laughing hysterically often and drawn into the story. It's lowbrow, don't get me wrong, but high-quality slapstick.
• Mad Men Season 1 (Netflix): this came highly recommended from a number of sources. I watched one disc worth and had enough. The first couple episodes found me really wanting to like Don Draper, but then it got slimy and smarmy. Maybe a 60s advertising agency was like that, but it left me cold. I'm not a prude; I just don't like watching affair after affair after affair.
• Gone Baby Gone (Netflix): decent thriller about the kidnapping of a four-year-old that ends up being a lot more complicated than at first. I liked it but I don't need to ever watch it again.
• Be Kind Rewind (Netflix): Terrible. The preview made it look stupid but I thought it would be one of those "so stupid it's funny" movies. Nope, just stupid.
• Sunshine (Netflix): unique science fiction movie about a mission to re-light the sun, which is nearing burnout. I love the premise but then they had to mess it up with a horror twist that was wholly unnecessary. The race against time and technological limitation was compelling enough as it was.
• Sex and the City Season 1 (Netflix): entertaining fluff to watch. I can see why so many adored the show, but it didn't grab me. Again, maybe I just don't enjoy watching whiny, promiscuous women.
• Raise the Red Lantern (Netflix): incredible and beautiful film about polygamy and arranged marriages in China. The period is ambiguous. It focused on the interplay between the wives; I would have liked to see more about the master.
• Deadwood Season 1 (Netflix): I rented this once before and never got into it, which is surprising since I will watch any Western that crosses my transom. It's gritty and vile, making it perhaps more authentic to the real Deadwood.
• Assume the Position with Mr. Wuhl (Netflix): comedian Robert Wuhl channels Howard Zinn for the benefit of some NYU students. There's definitely a liberal slant here, but it is funny as hell nonetheless.
• Mrs. Henderson Presents (Netflix): Judi Dench decides to invest in a theater in World War II-era London, hiring Bob Hoskins as the manager. They turn the show into a continuous burlesque while conforming to the strict standards of the time and become a sensation. Hoskins is great and the movie is worth watching.
• August Rush (Netflix): This one was just a little too pat for my tastes with a resolution that was both utterly predictable and a horrible groaner. It could have been so much better, but they blew it.
• P.S. I Love You (Netflix): a husband finds out he has a brain tumor and writes a series of letters to his wife in an posthumous effort to help her through the grief. Very sweet, tender, and believable movie. I'd recommend it.

If you want in on my Netflix friendship (hey, buddy!), feel free.

In my off-the-cuff quick review of The Dark Knight, I said that I would write up a lengthier one after I had seen it a second time and could focus on a couple of points that confused me originally. I saw it again a couple of weeks ago and it really didn't hold up well the second time.

Most intriguing the second go round were The Joker's villainous experiments in game theory. The one involving Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes tied up in warehouses full of explosives but on opposite sides of town didn't originally strike me as anything special originally, but it was more obvious this time that Batman actually went to save Rachel and that The Joker had consciously switched the addresses. That meant that picking one over the other meant that the one chosen is the one that dies. Much more dastardly than I had originally thought and it also made it understandable why Batman "chose" to save Harvey Dent.

The ferry experiment, in which The Joker loaded two ferries with explosives and then gave the other boat's detonator to each set of passengers, was much more disgusting the second time. Originally, I thought that the convict's taking of the detonator and throwing it out the window was a moral statement that they should have refused to play The Joker's twisted game. Further, I thought that the other ferry's wavering and refusal to push the button at the last minute was a wrestling with a difficult decision and opting to not partake of it.

However, I'm now convinced that it was a sacrificial act and very repulsive. By waiting, they had effectively doomed both boats to destruction by The Joker—they did not know that Batman would save them. In the face of a serious emergency, they chose to forfeit the responsibility of a decision. It is possible that The Joker would have wired each detonator to blow up the ferry that it was on or blow them both up—it's certainly feasible that there was a nihilistic trick up The Joker's sleeve—but they had no way of knowing. Either way, both groups clearly did not value their own lives.

The biggest revelation with the second viewing was that it's not nearly as good of a movie as I thought. The disjointed subplots first felt like the painful inhalation when you come up for air before being dragged down: one concluded and then another one immediately began. This time, though, I could see how they just extended the movie into discomfort. It's as if there were a brainstorming meeting prior to the start of the script and they couldn't decide on a single, coherent plot so they just took the top three ideas and went with them. This time, it was just tedious.

I still think it was a good movie, just not as great as I had thought.

I saw The Dark Knight on Friday morning but I don't feel comfortable reviewing it just yet. I want to see it again just to make sure of a few salient points. I plan to see it again in a week or so at an IMAX theater to get the full experience. Until then, let me just say that I think it is the best Batman film ever. I loved Batman Begins and this one was much, much better.

Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker was amazing. He played the nihilism perfectly. Michael Caine as Alfred describes him thus: "Some men just like to watch the world burn." Ledger makes you believe that that is his exact motivation. I think he really stole the show and would deserve any Oscar that he'll surely be nominated for—even though the Academy would just do it because of his untimely death.

In the end, I highly recommend that you see this movie if you like Batman at all. It's audacious, visually stunning, and exceedingly well-acted. I'm seeing it twice and I can't remember the last movie I saw twice at the theaters.

I expected Wall-E to be an anti-materialist, anti-capitalist, and environmentalist piece of tripe that I was going to regret seeing or exposing my children to. But I have not found a Pixar movie yet that I didn't enjoy to some degree. (The Incredibles was my favorite followed by Ratatouille and A Bug's Life. Least favorites: Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo.) I had these expectations because the liberals I follow raved about it and the conservatives I follow despised it. I think that means that the actual meaning of the movie is deeper than it appears, which allows viewers to see on the surface what they would like.

The movie, in case you're not familiar with the basic story, is about a small robot that's been left on Earth to clean up its trash for the last 700 years. The robot, Wall-E (who is given voice by Ben Burtt, the same guy who did R2-D2), develops something of a personality as he scours the trash for interesting items. One day, a spaceship lands and emits another robot called Eve, a probe robot (designed by Jonathan Ive, the guy behind the iPod), who is on Earth looking for signs of plant life. She was sent there by the captain of a ship containing the entire population of Earth. The humans, having consumed Earth right into inhospitableness, abandoned the planet and left robots to clean up the mess in preparation for their eventual return.

So you can see why both groups see the movie as they do. For the liberals, it's a parable of humanity's future if we don't Do Something. For conservatives, it's a propaganda piece put out by Hollywood liberals completely out of touch with reality. On a superficial level, I think they're both right. The future in the movie is run by a single corporation that provides everything for the people; the luxury spaceship that they live in is completely automated and they needn't lift a finger; and the Earth is so uninhabitable that nothing grows there for centuries. That's pretty damning stuff, a sort of hyperbolic An Inconvenient Truth.

But it's not the central theme of the movie. For me, the core idea of the movie is summed up by the captain, who exclaims "I'm tired of surviving, I want to live" when faced with a choice between continuing life aboard the ship or returning to Earth and starting a new Jamestown without all of the resources or helpful Indians. In that moment, the captain has realized that life is about values and the struggle to achieve them. By having everything handed to him and letting his life be run on autopilot (literally in his case), he's missed out on a life proper to a human being. Furthermore, in a deliciously ironic twist, the robot is the value pursuer and it inspires the captain to reclaim his dignity.

For me then, the movie was about working for what you want and accepting responsibility for your life. There is always a temptation for us to take the easy way out: to let others do our thinking for us, to let others pander to us and become our masters, to let others provide for us. But that is not the good life: it is a betrayal of our very humanity. Sometimes it takes an unusual source to remind us of that.

(NOTE: It was Jennifer Snow's review that made me decide to give the movie a shot. Thank you, Jennifer!)

[UPDATE: My wife reminded me of one of the best parts of the movie. Whenever Wall-E, who was solar-powered, got his morning charge and started up, the chime is the Mac startup sound. I'm so proud of her!]

Here's the latest installment of my quick reviews, slightly larger than normal because I had forgotten to do this sooner. For a change, let's limit the review to a maximum of 140 characters—à la Twitter:

• Duck, You Sucker (Netflix): Proof that even Sergio Leone made stinkers. I wouldn't have thought so had I not seen this. Absolute waste of James Coburn.
• The Lives of Others (Netflix): Absolutely great movie about the corrupting influence of the Stasi, for both the people and the Stasi themselves. Five stars, two thumbs up.
• Tom Green: Inside & Outside the Box (Netflix): Do not consume too much in one sitting. It will seriously distort your perspective. If you don't already like Tom Green, sit this one out.
• Sullivan's Travels (Netflix): Hokey 40s movie about whiny director who wants to get in touch with the common man. Best part: reminded me how far we've come in movies.
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Netflix): Rambling, dawdling, meandering, and self-important epic that concentrates too much on Jesse James as folk hero and Robert Ford as idolator.
• The Siege (Netflix): FBI can't stop terrorism. Army seals off Manhattan and imposes martial law. This is how Hollywood views us: chomping to intern them Muslims.
• The Onion Movie (Netflix): The Onion cashes out. Watch the podcast, it's better. This generation's Kentucky Fried Movie? Perhaps. Best part: http://xrl.us/Cockpuncher
• The Bucket List (Netflix): Damn it, you made me enjoy Jack Nicholson. Maudlin but mesmerizing. Sappy but sentimental. Ending is dreadfully, utterly predictable.
• Death at a Funeral (Netflix): At funeral, kids find out dad was having an affair with a midget, who wants money to keep quiet but gets killed. You-know-what ensues.
• My Beautiful Laundrette (Netflix): Ambitious guy steals drug money to renovate laundromat. Hires school chum turned tough. Screws same in back room. Why did I rent this?
• Mad About You: Season 1 (Netflix): This is the reason why Helen Hunt was on my list for so long (and why I own Twister). Mercifully M.A.B.E.L.-free.
• Duck Soup (Netflix): "Marx Brothers at their sidesplitting best." I'd hate to see their worst. Making fun of Hitler shouldn't be this bad. Couldn't finish.
• Pacific Heights (Netflix): Michael Keaton rocks as a creepy renter who just won't leave. Good subplot involves oppressive San Francisco government and cost of housing.
• Battle Royale (Netflix): Japanese bad kids dropped on island with weapons and only one can survive. I wouldn't be surprised if it were a true story, which it isn't.
• The Americanization of Emily (Netflix): James Garner and Julie Andrews. That was enough for me, but the wacky plot kept it interesting and the anti-war rant wasn't overblown.

If you're interested in being Netflix buddies, feel free to follow me. I've rated a lot of movies.

I just got back from a midnight showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Overall, I liked it. It is primarily action-oriented and Shia LeBoeuf wasn't nearly as bad as I feared. By the time the credits started rolling, I was decidedly ambivalent.

I get that Indiana Jones is larger-than-life, that he's a swashbuckling professor/explorer. I think the first three movies did a great job of situating him squarely within our reality—though it varied slightly from movie to movie. This latest version borders on the preposterous a few too many times: Dr. Jones isn't a superhero and the Amazon isn't a fantasy land. Now I know that this isn't supposed to be accurate or even possible, but previous installments were realistic except for (maybe even in spite of) their fantastic central premises: the Ark of the Covenant, an underground cult, and the Holy Grail.

And it didn't have to be this way. Amazonian ants that carry people away? Come on. KGB agents seemingly swarming throughout America at will? Give me a break. Indiana surviving a nuclear bomb test by hiding in a refrigerator? Nuts. An ancient temple that reconfigures itself as if the monumental blocks were Legos? Puh-leez. Shia LeBouef swinging through vast swathes of jungle on vines? No way. But in each of those situations, Spielberg (or the writer) could have opted for a more realistic resolution. That he didn't is perhaps a Spielberg touch.

The ending, which I will not detail here, was very rushed and very unsatisfying. I don't know why they chose to do it that way. They were obviously shooting for spectacular, but fell short and ended up at puzzling. This issue doesn't detract too much, however. I would recommend seeing it as it does follow in the tradition of the heretofore trilogy.

[UPDATE (6/18/2008): Matthew Baldwin just saw it and basically agrees, though he was much more amusing.]

Here's the latest crop from the Queue, capsule-style:

• Becoming Jane (Netflix): Anne Hathaway stars as Jane Austen in this biopic. I'm not sure of Austen's real life, but I can easily see where she got her source material after watching. I'm a big fan of Hathaway's and her portrayal of Austen as a strong, independent woman was compelling. It made me want to read a biography of Jane Austen—that's a good indication of my recommendation.
• Rush Hour 3 (Netflix): I had very low expectations of this third pairing of the aging Jackie Chan and the one-note Chris Tucker. It didn't disappoint along those lines. My emotions at watching this flick ran the gamut: cringing, disbelief, disappointment, resentment, boredom, and even a touch of hostility.
• Dan in Real Life (Netflix): Steve Carrell is excellently cast in this role, but he plays Dan as a little inept—a little too much Michael Scott and not enough Andy Stitzer. He's a widower who finally meets the lady of his dreams but discovers that his brother is already dating her. Most of the movie is very uncomfortable in that you just know what's coming. It turns out okay in the end, but there's plenty of spots where you're left thinking, "This guy's a trainwreck!"
• How to Steal a Million (Netflix): Audrey Hepburn plays the exasperated daughter of a master (and recidivist) art forger. He's lent his master work to a museum to increase its value, but they need to bring in an expert to examine it for insurance purposes. So Hepburn enlists the aid of an art thief to steal it from the museum before her father is exposed. It's pretty clever with the twists and turns.
• The Usual Suspects (Netflix): done in flashback, this heist movie is a little too predictable for me. In fact, I'm getting a little tired of the flashback format. The film recounts the events that led up to the sole survival of the least-likely member of a gang during the commission of their big crime.
• To Be or Not To Be (Netflix): "screwball comedy" set in Warsaw at the beginning of the Nazi occupation. I've never been a fan of Jack Benny, but he's pretty good in this one. I think three years later they wouldn't have been so apt to use "concentration camp" as a joke. I laughed more than I expected and the twists and turns in the plot are engrossing.
• Kings Row (Netflix): rightly called Ronald Reagan's best performance. It's a psychological drama about an Everytown, U.S.A. at the turn of the last century where things are not as they seem. Apparently, the book was even more scandalous—I've already got it requested at the local library. It reminds me very much of Little Children, which I also liked a lot.
• Witness for the Prosecution (Netflix): an adaptation of an Agatha Christie play that really throws you in the end. A possibly-philandering man is accused of murdering what seems to be his sugar mama. It seems pretty open and shut but he convincingly asserts his innocence. His only alibi is his wife, who ends up as a witness for the prosecution. I think it compares favorably to any modern courtroom drama.
• Lifeboat (Netflix): set in the early days of World War II, a ship is sunk by a U-boat and a group of survivors are cast adrift in one of the lifeboats. Their prospects are bleak due to lack of supplies and they discover that the German they saved is the captain of the U-boat that got sunk at the same time. It's directed by Alfred Hitchcock, but it belongs squarely in his early work.
• Alvin and the Chipmunks (Netflix): gah. It's a desecration of the famous cartoon trio, which wasn't all that great to begin with. Littered with bathroom humor and topical references, the movie really isn't appropriate for the young children that represent its target audience. But anyone older than that is far too mature to want to watch this tripe.
• Amistad (Netflix): excellent movie about the real-life court case argued before the Supreme Court by John Quincy Adams involving a slave ship overrun at sea by the slaves. It does an adequate job of covering the case itself and a tremendous job of showing the barbarism of the slave trade. Hard to watch, but very worthwhile.

With credit to Diana Hsieh for the inspiration, here's some quick reviews of movies I've recently watched:

• Bee Movie (Netflix): dreadful. We didn't watch the whole thing, which is exactly what we set out to do in order to make sure it was appropriate for our daughters. It's not, but only because it is so mind-numbing that we wouldn't inflict it upon them.
• The Browning Version (Netflix): excellent! Michael Redgrave gives an exemplary performance. I'm a fan of Rattigan's work, so I must locate the play version of this.
• Real Women Have Curves (Netflix): passable fare about the struggle between what you want and what others want for you.
• Persuasion (Netflix): I'm a sucker for Jane Austen and this was a great production. I like the plot and theme immensely.
• Enchanted (Netflix): Amy Adams is wonderful in this clever film. The songs, though improbable, are catchy. My girls loved it from the get-go and I can't say that I blame them. Not at all schmaltzy, it offers a more sane version of the princess mania that's raging right now.
• The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (Netflix): 70s camp and utterly ludicrous. I honestly can't remember why I added this to my queue.
• Premonition (Netflix): a little confusing and I'm pretty sure that it's internally inconsistent as well. I fell asleep a couple times during it but woke up enough to catch the deeply unsatisfying ending. Sorry, but I'm not a big fan of fatalism.
• Eight Below (Netflix): I'll admit it—I added this to my queue because it was a drama with Jason Biggs. I wanted to see whether he could pull it off. Not particularly, but he's supporting cast. Eight sled dogs are left to fend for themselves in Antarctica when a huge storm hits. Their sled guy feels really bad about it. Several months later, they are rescued. This one rates an "enh."
• Control Room (Netflix): documentary about Al-Jazeera and the second Iraq war. I thought it let the network off too easily; they are clearly fomenting anti-American sentiment.
• Scotland, PA (Netflix): Christopher Walken is great, but I'm a little tired of Shakespearean adaptations set in modern times. This time, it's Hamlet set in a 70s burger joint. Uh yeah. Maura Tierney is lovely, but a little hard to bear in this one.
• In the Heat of the Night (Netflix): good look at Southern racism. Poitier seems a little wooden in this role as a northern homicide detective drafted into the investigation of a murder in Mississippi. I'm happy to have finally seen "They call me Mr. Tibbs!" in context.
• One, Two, Three (Netflix): a real groaner. They pulled out all the stereotypes for this one. Cagney plays a fast-talking Coca-Cola executive in Berlin. Horst Buchholz, magnificent in a later movie, is horrible as a card-carrying East German Communist.
• The Name of the Rose (Netflix): exciting enough medieval thriller set in a monastery. Monks are dying and only Sean Connery has the guts to claim that it might not be demonic possession to blame. Great if you're into asceticism, which I am not.
• Payback (Netflix): I avoided this Mel Gibson flick when it came out, but I was surprisingly captivated by its twists and turns. Nothing here but dark fun.
• District B13 (Netflix): notable only because a) it stars David Belle, creator of parkour and b) it's a French action film. If you like Jackie Chan movies for the action, you stand a good chance of being able to sit through this.
• GoodFellas (Netflix): gritty, hard-to-watch mob movie. There's really no point to the film other than maybe anti-recruitment for the mafia. Good if you like mob movies, which I sometimes do.
• Fido (Netflix): I absolutely adore the alternate universe posited by this movie—nuclear war has created millions of zombies and an inventor has developed a collar that renders them obedient (as in not out to eat your gray matter). These newly-useful zombies become free labor for those who survived. Fido, in this case, is the companion to a lonely boy. It's thinly-veiled social commentary but the premise is novel.
• The Ref (Netflix): I can't stand Denis Leary. I decided to give him one last chance on this one, but he blew it. Leary stars as a burglar who holds a dysfunctional family hostage and becomes their mediator and therapist. Oh, and he makes snide, facile comments non-stop.
• Saving Private Ryan (Netflix): I avoided this movie in reaction to the hype and fawning. I deeply regret it. It suffers the same fate as nearly every Spielberg movie, but damn if this isn't the best-looking war movie I've ever seen. Glory runs a close second.
• The Prince and Me (Netflix): prosaic comedy about a girl who falls in love with a guy who turns out to be royalty. It follows all the standard sequences and revelations, but it's cute and worth it if you want something light and fluffy.
• After Innocence (Netflix): documentary about people serving life sentences exonerated by DNA evidence. It changed my mind about capital punishment. No, really. Like I was on the fence about the matter before watching it and wholeheartedly against it afterwards. The problem with capital punishment is that there's no restitution if you're wrong. And the death penalty then becomes murder.

I'll try to make the next installment considerably shorter. If you're a Netflix customer and want to be my friend, I'm game.

Frequently, I find myself shaking my head at kids today. I'm not quite to the point of requesting them to stay off my yard, but it's getting closer and closer. The females dress more and more risqué, the males more punky. The music seems insipid, though I know that that's always been the case. In my more reasonable moments, I consider that there have always been elements of banality and senselessness in every generation.

But then I see a movie like High School Musical and I think that maybe things are getting worse. It makes Mean Girls look like high culture. It trades in every stereotype in the book and wraps its plot (such as it is) in tired bromides. And it is totally lacking in character development. The leads are a consummate bookworm who can't be bothered to put the book down during a New Year's Eve party and a basketball jock who spends his whole vacation practicing.

But then they're paired at the party for a random karaoke and suddenly it's as if they've been on the Mickey Mouse Club their entire childhoods. They don't need the karaoke machine, their voices are pitch perfect, and they riff off each other as if they'd practiced. But alas their vacations are concluding and they'll likely never see each other again. Except, lo and behold, she's just transferred to his school in Albuquerque!

I won't spoil the rest of the movie because a) I kind of have already forgot a lot of it and b) you shouldn't really care. I generally agree with Kathy Sierra's admonition but there's only so much you can take. I think it's safe to say that HSM is the Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure of this generation.

Last night was the Mr. Conservative screening at the Goldwater Institute and I had an absolute blast!

First, the Goldwater really knows how to put on an event. They had great snacks before the show (including beers, a wide variety of sodas, and bottled water) and movie concession stand snacks for during the show (including bags of popcorn!). For the Q&A after the show, they had the producer of the documentary (and granddaughter of Goldwater) CC Goldwater and Barry Goldwater Jr. The sizable hall was packed as well!

Between the Q&A and the documentary itself, I really got a feel for what was going on back in 1964 as well as what kind of man Barry Goldwater was. There really hasn't been anyone like him on the political scene since he left it, though some have been pretty close. He spoke his mind and, more importantly, his was a principled political philosophy. Some of the things he said seemed inconceivable (and they probably were then too) but they shouldn't be. Far too much of politics today is posturing and it truly sickens me.

His son made an excellent point about the seeming contradiction between his conservatism and his late-in-life support of gays in the military, abortion, and the separation of church and state. He said that his father never changed his views, only the agenda changed. If they had been issues in the sixties, he would have came out just as he did. I desperately wanted to ask his son about Goldwater's statements against the religious right and his views on Ronald Reagan, but I never got the chance.

I met with a few of the Institute people and they were very impressive. These people get the Institute's message of "limited government, individual responsibility, economic freedom." They weren't dismissive of Objectivism and viewed its adherents as fellow travellers at worst. What was most refreshing was their explicit distancing from the religious right. That is what's needed if we're ever going to take back the GOP from the neocons and the fundies. That is why the Goldwater Institute has my support. They, like their namesake, are the vanguard of conservatism—I say that only in the Goldwater sense as I prefer to identify myself as a capitalist (or libertarian if I have to).

Money quote from the documentary: "Barry said, 'If I had won, you wouldn't have spent those years in a Vietnamese prison.' I told him, 'You're right. It would have been a Chinese prison.'" — John McCain

Bourne Ultimatum was a big disappointment. One reviewer that I generally enjoy lauded it, so I had some good expectations that it definitely didn't meet.

Now, let me preface the following by saying that I don't expect much from mindless action movies. I myself am a big fan of nearly-everything Jackie Chan has done—and it's often hard to speak of a plot existing in those movies. I enjoyed The Bourne Identity and didn't care for the second one. I wasn't looking for anything great, but I wasn't prepared for how awful it was.

The best word to describe this movie was ridiculous. The plot had gaping holes that required the audience to leave their minds with their ticket stubs. For example, I thought that Bourne was pardoned in one of the previous movies. Why are they still after him in this go-round? And I'm willing to accept that the government sometimes operates in secret shadows that mere mortals such as myself couldn't comprehend, but since when has the CIA effectively done so? And don't even get me started about the sophistication of the surveillance equipment they were using.

That was all peripheral complaints though. For me, the worst part of the movie was the cinematography. Whenever any conversation was taking place (and sadly there were quite a few moments of lingering, monosyllabic dialog), the camera got a bad case of the jitters. It was as if the cameraman had Parkinson's or had just invented a new camera rig called the (Un)Steadicam. I know that steady framing if passé nowadays but that jerkiness is usually reserved for action shots.

And those action shots took the spasms to unprecedented levels. I'm used to action scenes being difficult to follow—it's an effective way to cover up the stunt work—but this is the first time in my memory where I gave up trying to focus on what was happening. It was as if the director took his visual cues from Looney Tunes fighting. All that was missing was the inexplicable smoke and punctuation marks flying around.

Sadly, the "ultimatum" in the title wasn't present. The ending left a clear opening for the next sure-to-be-overhyped installment. This is one of the few times when I would have preferred the main character to have died after being shot as he was jumping from a 10-story building into the East River. Note to Universal Pictures: if you must do another sequel, please please please name it Bourne Again. It's such a bad pun, yes, but it absolutely cracks me up.

Mike Judge's new movie, Idiocracy, is a dystopic comedy about two completely normal, average people who are forgotten in a top-secret Army hibernation experiment gone awry. Instead of the one year that they signed up for, they find themselves awaking in an America five hundred years in the future. Expecting an advanced civilization, they quickly discover that the dumbing down of American culture has left succeeding generations dumber and dumber. In that climate, they are hailed as the smartest people in the world and quickly placed in the service of resuscitating the degenerating American economy.

I was eagerly awaiting this movie's release since it had had a very limited run in theaters. As you may know, Mike Judge is the man behind Office Space, Beavis and Butthead, and King of the Hill. Like each of these works, Idiocracy is a mixed result that is more good than bad.

The premise is rife with possibility since it represents an excellent opportunity to make fun of current events and culture using slippery slope. Given 500 years to play out, nearly any penchant or fashion in our culture could lead to the most bizarre and fantastic conclusions. There are times in Idiocracy when this is used to great effect, such as with the most popular show on television, Ow My Balls!, and the most popular movie in theaters, Ass—which is just 90 minutes of footage of someone's behind along with accompanying flatulence. But there are times when it just falls flat, such as when the Rock Army plays electric guitar in the House of Representing or a Carl's Jr. ATM-like device calls the police to take custody of a woman's child because she can't afford the large fries. To my recollection, the ratio of biting satire to eye-rolling groaners is about 40-60. That's acceptable and consistent with Judge's other works.

I would recommend this movie keeping in mind that it is a light comedy.

This looks to be a pretty cool package for Reservoir Dogs, a movie that I've never seen. Apparently, I'm the only one who hasn't, a fact made painfully clear to me in an awkward interchange with our president. It was like Lord of the Rings all over again.

[UPDATE: In case that last sentence was unclear, I have never seen Lord of the Rings. Every time I've ever mentioned that fact I have been met with open-mouth, wide-eyed stares, as if I had just said that cancer survivors should just shut up and move on. (I don't believe that, it was just an example.) I have never seen It's a Wonderful Life, Goodfellas, or The Godfather Part II either. I did finally cave in and watch Citizen Kane, Pulp Fiction, and The Godfather recently. Sucked, sucked, and ho hum. Sorry.]

[UPDATE 2 (7/5/2007): I did finally see Reservoir Dogs and I have approximately the same opinion of it that I did of Pulp Fiction. I didn't care for it: there was some egregious violence and the flashback style is so played out. Maybe it was great at the time, which I doubt, but it's tired now.]

[The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]

Wow, Angelina Jolie has officially signed on to the movie version of Atlas Shrugged to bring Dagny Taggart to life. The rumors were true!

Jolie is exactly how I would have wanted Dagny to look. She claims to be a big fan, so maybe she'll give a great performance. I certainly hope so.

It's not often that I find a movie that is irredeemable. Normally, I can eke out some pleasure or positive out of just about any movie. Strangely, I've encountered two utterly worthless movies in one week: Mr. and Mrs. Smith and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I'll spare you a review of the former—mostly because writing a review of one boring movie is enough.

I was truly looking forward to watching this movie because everyone that's told me about it has been positively effusive in describing its hilarity. And I loves the funny. I watched the movie to the end, hoping minute by minute that I would at last encounter something beyond raunchy, over-the-top drivel and being disappointed each time. I don't mind raunchy and over-the-top so long as it's not drivel. The 40-Year-Old Virgin, however, was not well-executed, completely unsubtle, and rarely clever.

The story—and it's really a one-trick pony—is about a guy named Andy who has not had sex at the ripe old age of 40. Some of his co-workers take it upon themselves to end his dry patch. Hilarity ensues. Or, rather, hilarity was supposed to ensue.

At every opportunity, the movie took the vulgar route—the road sadly more travelled. It could have been a touching and funny look at the kind of guy that lives his whole life wanting but never knowing the touch of a woman. Instead, it revels in all the nerd and awkward geek stereotypes it can think of.

I hated this movie.

Waiting for the movie to start. we're going to see it in the Valley's only DLP theater. I hope this is good.

[UPDATE: Ho hum. I'm not sure that the DLP experience really added anything to the movie. That said, the movie was uneven.

Pluses:

• The special effects were incredible. Fantastic. Breathtaking. There was one scene where a spaceship is landing somewhere or another and I found myself thinking that that is exactly how a spaceship landing would look in reality.
• The original Star Wars now makes a lot more sense. I can see why Darth Vader said "we meet again, at last" when he fought Obi-Wan Kenobi on the Death Star.
• Jar-Jar Binks never spoke.
• Ewan McGregor played Obi-Wan Kenobi perfectly.
• Mitichlorians are only mentioned once.
• Yoda rocks!
• Mace Windu dies.

Minuses:

• The special effects were overused, overdone, and frenetic. What good is amazing detail when it's impossible to follow. The spaceship scene mentioned as a plus was only intelligble because it was given time to play out.
• Many of the loose ends tied seem very forced. The whole motivation of Anakin Skywalker doesn't really work. It's a long leap from being upset that the Jedi Council isn't taking you seriously to actively killing Jedi. And don't even get me started on him going to the Dark Side to save Padmé. Their romance didn't seem to matter to him enough that he should cast everything aside and join forces with a dictator. His wife was a freaking senator, for crying out loud. Unless he was completely stupid, he should have realized that he was putting her out of work.
• Jar-Jar Binks was still in the movie.
• George Lucas still thinks that the stupid Force philosophy crap is important enough to mention. It's enough that the Force is a mysterious power that can used for good or evil. We get it. It's science fiction: no one really cares about the backstory.
• The acting of Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen was unbelievably wooden. Anakin Skywalker is transformed from a brash, headstrong young Jedi (umm, parallels to Luke) into the most evil villain this side of the Emperor and the extent of his acting evil is a glimmer in his eye and a frowny face? Uhh, Darth Maul was a better villain.
• The pacing was very odd. Fight scenes take seconds, while the utterly inane staring off into space of Padmé and Anakin lingered for 20 seconds or so. It's like George Lucas hamhandedly tried to cram in as many action sequences as possible, realized that he had some more time and extended some scenes that didn't need it. Like the first two of this prequel series, I found myself being very conscious of how long this movie was. I never had that feeling with the three in the first trilogy.

Okay, so I guess it's a little more than uneven. I think it was far better than the last two in that it seems truer to the first trilogy, but it still pales next to them. There were supposedly some subtle jabs at conservatives, but I for one didn't see it. They may certainly have been there, but everything was happening so quick that my mind was overloaded. Things slipped by. I could do an entire entry on just the oddities of the plot itself, but I've spent enough time on this matter already.]

[UPDATE (5/22/05): Lessons Learned]

[UPDATE 2 (5/22/05): Reason wonders whether the separatists might have been on a libertarian track. I found myself thinking that as well.]

[UPDATE (5/23/05): Howstuffworks explains the Sith. If you just rolled your eyes, perhaps this guide to Episode III for non-geeks is more your speed.]

[UPDATE (5/24/05): Wow, I knew things were whizzing by and I missed a lot, but I can't believe I missed these goofs.]

[UPDATE (5/26/05): Here's an excellent rant about RotS and George Lucas' constant tinkering with the first trilogy.]

[UPDATE 2 (5/26/05): And here's more commentary.]

[UPDATE (5/30/05): Episode III Easter Egg Guide.]

Well, I now own the right for two to sit in the Harkins Arrowhead 18 theater with the digital projector on Saturday, May 21th at 8:50 am. What am I going to see? Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Oh yeah!

[UPDATE (5/20/05): Through a fortuitous Netflix return, I got Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones this afternoon. Refreshed my memory, I have.]

If Kill Bill vol. 1 and Kill Bill vol. 2 were released as a single movie as originally intended, then it would have had a lock on the best movie I've ever seen. Bifurcated at the request of the studio, each half is less than the difference of their sum and neither, individually considered, could be heralded as the pinnacle of cinema. Each handily represents the best movie of the year it was released, though.

The second half continues along the same inexorable path started in the first. The Bride (Uma Thurman) seeks revenge on those who nearly murdered her and definitely murdered her unborn—she believes—child. Having dispensed with Vivica Fox and Lucy Liu in spectacular fashion, she must now kill Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, and (inevitably) David Carradine. Though the conclusion is a foregone conclusion, it is easy to forget the outcome while watching this movie. There were parts when I thought that the Bride was a goner—that's how powerful this movie is.

That's the plot and the denouement. If I breezed over it casually, it's because the plot was supremely indicated in the first part and every event and action in the second installment follows logically from the premises thus established. It is a simple story of revenge. The wonder that is the Kill Bill franchise takes place in character development, action scenes, dialogue, and visual composition.

The film shines as art. Every frame, every scene, and every shot has an underlying composition as consciously arrived at as any painting or sculpture. Writer/director Quentin Tarantino has an amazing eye for the essence of a scene. While there is no scene as stunningly beautiful as the confrontation between Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu in a tea garden in the snow, the scope of the filming is just as epic. Tarantino's influences can be seen readily and represent a source of joy for the audience to discover. I particularly enjoyed their discovery, as I am a big fan of the spaghetti westerns and samurai flicks to which Tarantino obviously paid homage.

The dialogue is masterfully crafted. We really get the sense that these people who live in a completely different world speak as if they're otherworldly. When Michael Madsen says "That woman deserves her revenge…and we deserve to die," it makes perfect sense and establishes Madsen as an erstwhile assassin who is prepared to face the consequences of his actions. On the other hand, the line reads like something out of literature. What's more, every line serves a purpose and furthers the plot or character development along.

That character development represents the best part of this movie, like action and visual composition defined the first. It is primarily advanced through flashbacks showing the relationship between Thurman and Carradine, the training of Thurman, or the agony of Thurman trying to extricate herself from her life. By the end, we can see why the Bride does what she does and we can cheer her on. We also come to understand her single-mindedness.

This single-mindedness is the most inspiring part of the movies. Normal people are very often out of focus, drifting through their days avoiding the mental effort required in life. Thurman's Bride possesses a laser-like focus in her quest to exact revenge. In the end, she encounters a temptation to abandon her goal. I found myself expecting her to throw in the towel—a convention well-established in the movies that would have represented a serious character breach. When Tarantino had her shake it off without even deigning to mention the temptation, it made perfect sense and yet it represented a bold, wonderful move.

Many have questioned the appropriateness of revenge as a theme for a movie. I think revenge is an entirely justifiable pursuit given the proper context. Being shot and then put into a coma at your wedding ceremony by your former colleagues and subsequently losing the unborn child you were carrying would qualify as a fitting context. The fact that she was an assassin is troubling, but she was a repentant one. She did not deserve what happened to her and rightfully sought justice.

To be perfectly fair, there is an significant amount of gore, profanity, and violence in these movies. They are appropriate given the genre, the characters, and the plot. Unfortunately, they delay the day that I might share these great movies with my daughters by many, many years. Adults should not have too great a task overlooking the graphic nature of the film so long as they remember that the assassin's life is gritty and rife with violence.

I must preface this review by stating that I am a big Bruce Campbell fan. If you haven't seen Army of Darkness or Evil Dead II, I can't recommend them enough. Bubba Ho-tep is really a showcase for Bruce Campbell's talent more than anything else; the plot is completely absurd.

The action centers around the Shady Rest Nursing Home in east Texas and its most famous resident, Elvis Presley (Campbell). The story is that Elvis tired of his fame and lifestyle and decided to switch places with Seymour Haff, an Elvis impersonator. All was going well in his new life until his trailer caught fire, destroying the contract that could allow him to go back to his previous life, and he fell off a stage during a concert, injuring his hip and sending him into a coma. He's now seventy years old and waiting for the inevitable.

Strange things are afoot at the nursing home as resident after resident dies. The staff, of course, sees nothing strange in these events since the patients are basically transients as far as they're concerned. Elvis and his friend John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis) aim to get to the bottom of things. JFK was sequestered in this rest home after the staged assassination and was "dyed" black to further cover the plotters' tracks.

The dynamic duo come to realize that there is a resurrected Egyptian mummy, nicknamed Bubba Ho-tep since it is dressed in schlocky cowboy duds, loose on the grounds and it must suck souls out the residents' anuses in order to stay allive. They decide to take matters into their own hands because, as Elvis says, they're not going to "let some foreign, graffiti writin', soul suckin', son of a bitch in an oversized cowboy hat and boots take [their] friend's souls and shit 'em down the visitors toilet!"

That's about as weird of a plot as you can get and it really doesn't work well. It's got some really slow parts and it falls apart the more you think about it. There's no overarching theme to the movie: it's simply a vehicle for Bruce Campbell. I'm sure the producer and director would disagree, but that's about the only thing this movie has going for it.

Campbell is at his acting best here. He's playing a 70-year-old geezer who thinks—and probably is as far as the movie goes—he's Elvis Presley. Most of the movie consists of him meandering around hallways in his walker contemplating what his life has become. Fully a third of the movie features the ersatz Elvis laying in his bed. It's a huge bet as an actor to take on that sort of a role and Campbell nails it. I quickly started thinking that I was watching the real Elvis as a senior citizen: he played it exactly as I think an actual down-on-his-luck celebrity would act at the end of his life.

The movie is not particularly worth seeing unless you are a fan of Bruce Campbell. His acting carries the movie and is easily the best (and most nuanced) performance of his career. Without him, the movie simply would not work. The plot is contrived and incredible; there's very little of value besides the excellent performances. Veteran actor Ossie Davis is excellent as the matter-of-fact JFK and Ella Joyce is more than adequate as the resident nurse.

It's a very difficult film to classify, much like Army of Darkness. It's got some very funny moments, but it's not a comedy. There's a mummy that eats souls (and evacuates their residue), but it's not really a horror film. There's a fight sequence, but the participants are a boot-wearing, ambling mummy, an old guy in a motorized wheelchair, and an old guy in a walker. It's hard to say that that's action. There are thrilling moments and dramatic moments. I guess we could call its genre sui generis.