A.I. - Artificial Intelligence

By gosh, does that logo bring back a lot of memories. A project/script begun by Mr. Stanley Kubrick, handed off to Steven Spielberg (the ultimate de-humanizer handing something off to the ultimate humanist... an epic scenario from the outset). The movie in itself is a mesmerizing piece, truly awesome and great in so many ways. But Kubrick and Spielberg exist on differing planes, have differing expertise. The disconnect between their world-views showed in the very premise of the movie. Treating a robot's "feelings" with sincerity (and not a single tinge of irony) was Spielberg's M.O., whereas Kubrick's take would have been something much more cynical, cold and bleak. All that aside, I must say I was VERY in to the viral marketing campaign of this movie at the time. It all started with a credit for a "Sentient Machine Therapist" named Jeanine Salla on the movie poster... and ended with a sea-life creature growing itself into a brain the size of the earth's oceans and needing to be lazered to "death" from space. "Cook it! Cook it from space!" was one of the haunting last lines of one of the first and largest online viral/game/marketing thingies ever! I don't think I've seen this since the theatre in 2001.

Also, there is a scene that sticks out in my head above all others in this movie. The owner of the child robot, played by Haley-Joel Osment, must read aloud 7 words to "David" in order for him to become attached to his owner. In a certainly more abstract way, I think we humans need to be assured of and hear, from another and from ourselves, certain things before we're there, we're game, we're all in. I darted my eyes with a half-smirk at that scene at the time, but its stuck in my head ever since and, I guess, it makes sense.

A sorta confusing site about the online "game": http://www.cloudmakers.org/

A better synopsis: http://www.42entertainment.com/beast.html

Stroszek - 1977 (9 of 334)

An odd character and his companions find their way from Berlin (yes, Germany) to the ruralities of deep-woods Wisconsin. Having spent several years of my life living in this state, it adds a viscerality to the proceedings. Trailer parks. Rural Wisconsin. Dells. 1970s. Germans. It all adds up to a song rather than a movie. The BEST part is the (iconic) dancing-chicken scene at the end. A close fellow film-buff and I always rate movies, essentially, on their "stickiness"... (if you are mid-shower the next day after seeing a movie, and scenes, etc. are populating your thoughts still, the movie is said to have "salient stickyness"). The final scene in Stroszek is one of, in my personal experience, the stickiest of all-time.

25th Hour - 2002 (8 of 334)

"Criminally Underrated" are the first words that come to mind. Ed Norton is a New-Yorker busted for dealing pot and facing 7 years in the clink. We follow the story of how that happened through the final 24 hours before he reports for his prison sentence. Cool, strong, real... tender, especially in the final drive-to-prison sequence narrated by Brian Cox (one of the best character actors out there). His speech is on par with Morgan Freeman's in Shawshank. No lie. Also, features a standard epic-awesome turn by Mr. Phillip Seymour Hoffman. I'd pay $10.50 to watch that guy take a shit.

The Rules of The Game - 1939 (7 of 334)

Watched this sometime in the early part of last decade - I don't remember a whole lot about it... but it was during a time when I was really into my movie nerdness and after reading several articles praising it as one of the best of all time, rather than renting it I bought the $50 Criterion double-disk edition. I do remember enjoying it, but really need to dig it up and give it another rogering before I feel ok about posting about it.

Au Revior Les Enfants - 1987 (6 of 334)

Completely engaging rumination on friendship at a tough age in an impossible time.

Taxi Driver - 1976 (5 of 334)

Recently caught this again on AMC... it doesn't get any easier. Bickle is already so far gone by the time we meet him, it's blissful torture watching this play out. A favorite subtle scene is when he calls Cybil Shepard on the payphone and stammers and stumbles and begs her to go out with him again... it's so painful, the camera drifts away to a shot of an empty hallway... paraphrasing Scorsese: "It was so painful, even the camera has to look away..."

SAW IT BEFORE...AND LAST WEEK!

Annie Hall - 1977 (4 of 334)

Utterly timeless. I rewatch this once a year. Very, very funny.

Favorite lines...

- "There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. The... the other important joke, for me, is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx; but, I think it appears originally in Freud's "Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious," and it goes like this - I'm paraphrasing - um, "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." That's the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women."

- "Annie, there's a big lobster behind the refrigerator. I can't get it out. This thing's heavy. Maybe if I put a little dish of butter sauce here with a nutcracker, it will run out the other side."

- "After that it got pretty late, and we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again. I... I realized what a terrific person she was, and... and how much fun it was just knowing her; and I... I, I thought of that old joke, y'know, the, this... this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and... but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us... need the eggs."

SAW IT BEFORE! MANY, MANY TIMES...