Night at the Museum: very silly, and probably littered with historical inaccuracies, but I really enjoyed it and found it to be very amusing.

Jesus Camp: it was a little disturbing to see children so immersed and intensely involved in their religion. I'm a Christian, but the people in this movie were Christian like WHOA. I didn't like how the woman in charge of the camp pretty much insinuated that the children didn't have any free will.

I love Bill Nighy but my favorite role of his will always be in Still Crazy, the scene at his daughter's wedding where he recites the lyrics from his horrific 80s solo song? Hilarious.

I just rented this over the holiday weekend, and I was greatly entertained by the soapy trashiness of the whole thing. Cate Blanchett is gorgeous in crazy smoky punk make-up. My mother, who watched it with me, commented that she thought the actor cast as the 15 year-old looked too young, which amused me far too much for far too long. I hadn't been drinking, either. I thought Bill Nighy did alright, though I tend to think of him as a literal scenery chewing zombie these days, so figurative scenery chewing seems kind of low-key for him.

My mother rented The Night Listener a few days ago and I just watched it. Not bad! The pacing could have been better- there could've been more buildup to the first twist- but I thought both Robin Williams' and Toni Collette's performances were really good.

The only problem was that the cinematography was so effing dark that I could barely tell what was going on half the time because the room I was in was too bright.

I loved The Fountain. I'm a nut for comparative religion, so the intertwining of Buddha, Jesus, the First Father, the Tree of Knowledge, Yggdrasil, etc. made me a very happy viewer. The marketing of the film suggests some kind of transformative love story, but that isn't this movie at all, which I think explains a lot of the disappointment with the film. Once I realized that the love story was tangential to everything else, I was completely hooked.

I loved that film mainly because the dreams were all based on 1960s and 1970s British children's puppets tv programmes rather than being CGIed to the nth degree. Which was nice.

Devil Wears Prada. I had mistakenly assumed it was a comedy but someone seemed to have surgically removed all the jokes except in the (all-too-short) montage sequences. Utter tosh.

So how to sum up Oliver Stone's Alexander? Let's make a list:

GOOD:
Rosario Dawson's full-frontal.

BAD:
Every other goddamn thing in this fucking movie.

Is it the sloppy script, which relies entirely on flashbacks in flash-forwards that lead to flashbacks within flash-forwards? Is it Angelina Jolie's Moose-and-Squirrel accent? Or that she plays Alexander's mother yet stays exactly the same age throughout the entire film? Is it that, for a 3-hour film about a renowned conqueror, there are only 2 meager battle scenes, both shot and edited so confusingly that it's impossible to understand what's happening? Is it that Colin Farrell is badly, badly miscast? And that Stone compounds his error by forcing Val Kilmer, who plays Alexander's father, to speak in an Irish brogue just so Farrell doesn't sound so hilariously out of place?

Well, there's that. But really, what brought it all home was that the film takes a good 10 minutes to get started, and ends 15 minutes before it's over. All so we can get some pointless blathering by Anthony Hopkins. Shut your damn piehole, Anthony Hopkins. And never, ever, ever wear a toga onscreen again.

Gosford Park:

If you ever want to know the meaning of the phrase “the devil is in the details”, listen to the commentary track of Gosford Park. Robert Altman and Bob Ballaban go on and on about how intricate the place settings had to be or what the boot black room in the 20’s British Estate looked like it took on the same tone as Bill O’Reilly describing a Caribbean shower.

Dear god they go on at length about a Charlie Chan in London being produced at the time and mentioned in the movie, which would be a throwaway for any other director… even Uwe Boll. Wow you logged onto IMDB, congrats guys! (There really needs to be a punctionation mark for eyerolling and making the jerk off motion)
And every shot of GP is Altman’s trademark delivery of the obvious as something incisive on his part. ZOMG! Did you know England had a rigid class system enforced by pedantic etiquette!!!!!

Even on the commentary track Altman admits to shamelessly aping Rules of the Game, Upstairs Downstairs, Brideshead Revisited, Agatha Christie. They all did it much better. And all things I could have been watching instead.

For someone who notoriously eschews story in favor of characters… paper thin, one note, unlikeable characters, Altman helming something as story driven as a murder mystery is a square peg. Given his swooping camera movement and bitchslap sensibility towards detail there’s little mystery. THE KNIFE IS MISSING!!!! But then again Altman wasn’t afraid of trying and failing at any genre.

Couple of other things regarding the flare gun that is Altman directing. Either Ryan Phillpe’s bad accent was a rationalization after the fact or just plain sloppy to begin and end with, but everyone knew he was an imposter. A better director might have gotten a convincing brogue and you know surprised everybody.

Helen Mirren’s rant has got to be the most painful Oscar clip in recent memory. If you had put Rod Steiger in a maid’s uniform it wouldn’t have been any less hammy.

Mr. Ebert? Is that you?

...I love Gosford Park. Really. Like a lot.

Me too. The Dude crossed over from bemusing to being a little dead to me now.

Mrs. I. makes fun of me for *sighing* every time Emily Watson or Kristin Scott Thomas is on screen. Of course, she does the same thing whenever Jeremy Northam or Clive Owen appear, so it's a wash in the teasing department.

And I'll even say I thought Ryan Phillipe did a really good job, the accent was meh but I thought the point was that his character was just a bad actor.

And I thought the Clive Owen/Helen Mirren storyline was poignant. Plus that kiss with him and Kelly McDonald is HOT.

I used to run a posh book group and when Gosford Park came out I had to listen to some rants about how parlour maids would never have served at dinner while there were footmen available which made it impossible to take the film seriously. Apparently. Of course, as any fule know, what really makes it hard to take seriously is having Ivor Novello sing in public (which he never did after his voice broke). Of course, only an idiot cares about historical accuracy when it might mean missing Jeremy Northam singing but I had to shut them up somehow.

While The Dude is not dead to me, he ain't getting no cookies from me any time soon.
Of course I would pay to watch Clive Owen fold laundry.

Lessee... we watched Marie Antoinette earlier this week. It wasn't bad but it wasn't amazing. It was very beautiful to watch and I think I got what the director was trying to do. It just didn't quite deliver. But the pretty distracted me enough.

Tonight it is Mr. Jenner's choice so we are watching The Fountain.

With the way Altman directs, how could you tell.

Really after listening to them prattle on about the byzantine details of the dinner table even Martha Stewart would run Altman down and gut him with the desert fork.

As for a mystery it works better if you don't make the close up of the cook in Red October look discrete.

Then this is the movie for you.