I’m going to watch 100 Movies in 100 Days and review them as I go along. There will be no order to the movie watching. Also, I am going through these one-a-day, so none of these reviews are going to be exceptionally well-researched or well thought out. I just don’t have the timeTumblr (3.0; @100movies100days)http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Spider-Man_%282012_film%29"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/02/The_Amazing_Spider-Man_theatrical_poster.jpeg"/></a></p> <p><br/>Yes. The bastard child of the three summer superhero blockbusters, and it&#8217;s a remake of a series that ended only five years ago.</p> <p>In a summer where we have two other amazing superhero movies, The Amazing Spider-Man just doesn&#8217;t stand out from all the other superhero movies that have ever been released. So I went into this with pretty low expectations.</p> <p>It&#8217;s better than the &#8216;02 movie for sure.</p> <p>I enjoyed a lot of things about it. Like that there is no more Tobey Maguire. Instead we&#8217;ve got Andrew Garfield, playing a Peter Parker who is at least still in high school for the entire movie. He&#8217;s entirely more likeable and fitting as Spider-Man, the snarky teenage superhero. Aunt May doesn&#8217;t get much screen time, which I&#8217;d have liked to see her just a little bit more. It&#8217;s implied that she worries about Peter being out all the time because of the death of Uncle Ben (which obviously cuts his screen time), but we don&#8217;t really get so see much of that. Though I did like them in their respective roles.Also, they aren&#8217;t about 80, so that&#8217;s nice.</p> <p>I also like that we finally get Connors to turn into the Lizard, because after three years of setting him up in the background I think everyone just wanted him to turn into a fucking monster already. I like that everyone thinks Willem Dafoe and Dennis Leary are the same person. I really like that Peter invented his own web shooters. I realize it&#8217;s probably a more practical move to give Peter the ability to shoot web, but I think him inventing them is important to show he&#8217;s this smart, geeky kid.</p> <p>But of course, there are things I don&#8217;t like. There&#8217;s Gwen Stacy, played by Emma Stone, who is exactly the same as every other love interest in every other action movie. There is literally nothing distinguishing about her. It&#8217;s not that I don&#8217;t like Emma Stone or think she&#8217;s bad at being Gwen Stacy, it&#8217;s that there isn&#8217;t a Gwen Stacy. I&#8217;m just going to throw this question out there; why&#8217;d there have to be a love interest in the first film? Why not just have Gwen and Peter become friends? Their storyline is the most boring of the movie, and ends on the same (stupid) note. Having them just be friends first would have at least changed things up from the first film series; something this movie should have been trying way harder to do.</p> <p>Also, I don&#8217;t especially like the &#8220;New Yorkers coming together to help Spider-Man!&#8221; thing. Everyone excused that happening ten years ago in the first film because it was right after 9/11. Now, in this one, it just comes across as another way to say &#8220;We rebooted this shit WAY too damn early!&#8221;. Everyone knows this movie, please stop reminding us of it.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0948470/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_amazing_spider_man/">Rotten Tomatoes- 72%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/atCfTRMyjGU?rel=0" width="560"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/26536508751http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/26536508751Wed, 04 Jul 2012 23:50:14 -0400The Amazing Spider-ManAndrew GarfieldEmma Stone<p>I’ve been found out.</p> <p>It’s true. I have no soul. Ancient curse and all. On the up side, I do have wicked-cool x-ray vision, so I generally feel that makes up for the whole soul-lacking thing.</p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25967668998http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25967668998Tue, 26 Jun 2012 21:20:23 -0400<p>So, I&#8217;ve reached the 100 days, gained a few followers, and become better at riffing on most movies.</p> <p>Seriously, I started a blog where all I do is repost gifs and it has more followers and reblogs and likes and whatever-else than this one does- the blog I actually put work and time into (makes sense, actually).</p> <p>Anyways, since I&#8217;m clearly doing this as an exercise for myself, I&#8217;m going to take a few days to figure out a new posting schedule (and a new name).</p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25456375660http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25456375660Tue, 19 Jun 2012 17:05:46 -0400<p><img height="491" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d1/Five_hundred_days_of_summer.jpg" width="318"/></p> <p>I like it a whole lot more than I thought I would. It&#8217;s a romance and romances depress me. I still can&#8217;t quiet pin down why I enjoy it. </p> <p><br/>I like that Tom is a character that is the result of watching movies like Garden State and not understanding The Graduate. I like that he thinks he&#8217;s in a movie where he meets some wondrous puzzle in the form of a pretty girl who&#8217;s ready to fall in love with him and live happily ever after in a life where they have pancakes for dinner and get married in a bouncy castle. I like that it&#8217;s basically Paper Towns: The Movies.</p> <p><br/>I like the cast: who can&#8217;t like Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zooey Dechannel. And Chloe Gratz-whatever-her-name-is is adorable if not unbelievable as an insightful big sister in the role of a little sister.<br/>And I like Agent Coulson. <br/><br/>Granted, a few things do piss me off about it. The last scene, for starters. It just grates me, like it&#8217;s undoing everything the movie was trying to say. Oh yeah, and I&#8217;ve read The Picture of Dorian Gray tons of times in public, you wanna know how many people have asked me about it (or any other book, for that matter)? None. Probably because I&#8217;m nowhere near as attractive as Zooey Dechannel. But still. I guess this movie is what it&#8217;s like for pretty people.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1022603/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/500_days_of_summer/">Rotten Tomatoes- 87%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PsD0NpFSADM?rel=0" width="560"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25403694303http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25403694303Mon, 18 Jun 2012 21:31:00 -0400(500) Days of SummerJoeseph Gordon LevittZooey Deschanel<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shawshank_Redemption"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/ShawshankRedemptionMoviePoster.jpg"/></a></p> <p>Probably because it&#8217;s a two and a half hour long prison movie, this film didn&#8217;t do very well when it was first released. It didn&#8217;t win a single award despite a bunch of nominations, probably because it lost them all to the more liked Forest Gump, which took best picture ahead of this and <em>Pulp Fiction</em>.</p> <p>And yet, I find Shawshank much easier not only to watch but to really like than Forest Gump. Shawshank is much less disturbing than Gump (a woman takes advantage of a mentally handicapped man and then tells him he has a child whom he must take care of after she dies. She may have even given him AIDS). At least with Shawshank you know what you&#8217;re getting into. You know it&#8217;s going to be a serious drama.</p> <p>Despite the multiple serious subjects the film takes on (wrongful imprisonment, prison rape, abuse of prisoners, money laundering, etc) it never does loose it&#8217;s message of hope. It&#8217;s honestly the kind of movie that would probably have swept the Academy Awards were it not for Gump.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111161/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/shawshank_redemption/">Rotten Tomatoes- 90%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/C0RZNIFZxoY?rel=0" width="560"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25337540051http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25337540051Sun, 17 Jun 2012 22:46:24 -0400Shawshank RedemptionTim RobbinsMorgan Freeman<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitless"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/17/Limitless_Poster.jpg"/></a></p> <p>How can a movie this dull leave me with so very many questions even after I suspended my disbelief on so much. Fine movie, I will pretend Bradley Cooper is likeable. And I will not question the ridiculous phlebotinum pill or your <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percent_of_brain_myth">bullshit pseudo-fact that people only use 20% of their brain</a> (which the movie got wrong because the myth is 10%! God movie, you are really trying to be terrible).</p> <p>But there are still so many other questions! Like how Bradley Cooper got his book contract? Has he written stuff for them prior to the movie (it&#8217;s doubtful since his past writing career is never mentioned, but how else did he get a fancy editor he doesn&#8217;t seem to like or use and a fancy book contract when he&#8217;s never written a word of his book)? And why do all writers look like they&#8217;re suffering from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlX3fGUbzv8">signing psychosis</a>? Why does knowing how to do things (like fight) allow him to physically be able to do them? Why wasn&#8217;t making sure he had a steady income of his pills and finding out what they were made of and possible side effects the first thing he did? I don&#8217;t understand you movie!</p> <p><img height="148" src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5ioap7kM71qarndmo2_250.gif" width="185"/></p> <p>But let&#8217;s take a moment to step back and examine our characters. We&#8217;ve got the main character Eddie Mora, a man dead set on proving that the only way to get ahead in the world is by taking lots of magic drugs and then everyone will love you. We have his girlfriend who is apparently very very stupid because she sees her boyfriend nearly fucking dying because he is addicted to these mystery pills and what does she do? She takes one and then uses a small child as a weapon. We&#8217;ve got the scary foreign drug dealer and the scary dude in a suit. Not a single one of them is likeable.</p> <p>Moving on to the presentation of the film. There&#8217;s this idea that, when you&#8217;re watching a movie, you want to watch something happen rather than be told about something happening. Show; don&#8217;t tell. This movie completely ignores that. Voice-overs of shots where Eddie is supposedly winning everyone he comes into contact with over. I swear, there&#8217;s a shot where he&#8217;s arguing with some guy and there are all these people crowded around them and the guy he&#8217;s (probably supposed to be) arguing with is just nodding along, presumably thinking &#8220;Oh yeah, I AM a fucking moron for thinking that. Thank you so much for showing me what an idiot I am in front of all these people!&#8221;</p> <p>Finally. My main grievance. Take the (amazing) BBC show <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_%28TV_series%29">Sherlock</a>. Sherlock, much like Eddie, is very very smart and can remember a great deal of things. Sherlock, unlike Eddie, cannot remember everything. He is also hated by most everyone because he is a dick to most everyone. People don&#8217;t generally like to be shown that they are stupid. Very smart people will make everyone else feel stupid. Everyone loves Eddie. He is a Mary Sue. He&#8217;s shown to be damn near perfect, and it&#8217;s the people around him that screw up his life.</p> <p>So remember: Don&#8217;t bother trying hard because there is a pill that can make you perfect and loved by everyone.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219289/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/limitless/">Rotten Tomatoes- 69%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/THE_hhk1Gzc?rel=0" width="560"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25261610791http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25261610791Sat, 16 Jun 2012 21:30:00 -0400LimitlessBradley CooperAbbie CornishRobert De Niro<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_Lola_Run"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f5/Lola_Rennt_poster.jpg"/></a></p> <p>It&#8217;s like somebody saw Clue in the 90s and wanted to make a really long music video out of it.</p> <p>Also, a warning to anyone who gets motion sickness- this movie uses spinning cameras like JJ Abrams uses lense flair. Beware.</p> <p>Maybe it&#8217;s just because I&#8217;ve already seen the multiple scenario idea in both Clue and that third season episode of Community, but I like those a lot better.</p> <p>This is an okay music video though.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130827/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/run_lola_run/">Rotten Tomatoes- 93%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ta1Sn6MtC9w?rel=0" width="420"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25196720096http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25196720096Fri, 15 Jun 2012 21:43:00 -0400Run Lola Run<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Ted%27s_Excellent_Adventure"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bc/Bill_%26_Ted.jpg"/></a></p> <p>Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.<br/><br/>It&#8217;s not a movie for intellectuals to ponder on. Hell, the opening minute (just past the truly terrible credits), is George Carlin telling you exactly what he&#8217;s going to do. It&#8217;s rife with plotholes and historical inaccuracies.<br/>But it&#8217;s really, really funny. It&#8217;s got Napoleon going bowling with middle schoolers and Joan of Arc Jazzercising. It&#8217;s got Freud holding a corndog and Genghis Khan skateboarding.</p> <p>It&#8217;s very much an 80s movie.</p> <p>I don&#8217;t especially know why, but I enjoy the hell out of it. It&#8217;s not a great movie by any means, and I&#8217;m sure that if I watched it a lot I would get annoyed with it, but every once in a while you need to just kick back and party on.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096928/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bill_and_teds_excellent_adventure/">Rotten Tomatoes- 82%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xrGWooNDPiE?rel=0" width="420"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25131460511http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25131460511Thu, 14 Jun 2012 21:51:42 -0400Bill &amp; Ted's Excellent AdventureKeanu ReevesAlex WinterGeorge Carlin<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_State_%28film%29"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3c/Garden_State_Poster.jpg"/></a></p> <p>Garden State feels like a movie that I&#8217;m supposed to like. It&#8217;s one of those &#8216;coming of age when you&#8217;re in you&#8217;re 20s and finally finding out who you are&#8217; kind of movies. It&#8217;s supposed to be quirky and fun while being really deep and philosophical and asking the kind of questions that you&#8217;re supposed to ask when you&#8217;re in your twenties.</p> <p>I should like it. I kind of want to like it. I like Zach Braff and Natalie Portman. But I just can&#8217;t like this.</p> <p>I can&#8217;t help but feel that it&#8217;s too on-the-nose with the questions its trying to provoke.</p> <p>I hate the stupid lines that are supposed to be really thoughtful, like this one:</p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="225" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/sIqBke3zoM0?rel=0" width="300"></iframe></p> <p>I hate it when characters fall in love with their soul mates and have life all totally figured out after three days. I hate that Natalie Portman&#8217;s character doesn&#8217;t have much character besides being &#8216;happy-ditzy-perky-pixie-girl&#8217; and that her epilepsy gets mentioned once and never brought up again (seriously- Why did they even mention it?!).</p> <p>I hate how Zach Braff doesn&#8217;t really seem to put much thought into his mom dying and that it&#8217;s used as a plot device to get the characters where they need to be when they need to be there. Yes, I know that the main theme of the movie is that it&#8217;s better to feel rather than be numb, because though you might feel pain sometimes, you will also feel happiness. And part of expressing that numbness was to show that Zach Braff was emotionally numb to his mother&#8217;s death and couldn&#8217;t cry.</p> <p>I don&#8217;t actually know why Zach Braff&#8217;s psychiatrist father put him on all those meds in the first place. I have read that it&#8217;s because his father was angry with him for paralyzing his mother and&#8230; stuff. I guess. Maybe I missed where that got stated. Then again, it isn&#8217;t stated how he kept getting his meds despite not seeing his father for nine years and not going to any other psychiatrist. </p> <p>In concept I like this movie. If you told me that there was a movie starring Zach Braff and Natalie Portman that was a dry-comedy/coming-of-age drama, I would be up to watch it then and there.</p> <p>I just don&#8217;t like the execution.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0333766/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/garden_state/">Rotten Tomatoes- 86%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/u82n0e1mgmQ?rel=0" width="560"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25053771304http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/25053771304Wed, 13 Jun 2012 19:26:22 -0400Garden StateZach BraffNatalie Portman<p><a><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d3/The_Iron_Giant_poster.JPG"/></a></p> <p>I haven&#8217;t watched this movie in years. Mostly because when I did watch it the last time I cried like a biker who stubbed their toe.<br/><br/><img height="96" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m59gj5j0T41r6nep6.gif" width="175"/></p> <p><br/>This is the &#8220;Kid and their X&#8221; done right. Directed by Brad Bird (of The Incredibles and Ratatouille), it&#8217;s basically a Pixar movie done in hand animation. But unlike a lot of &#8220;Kid and their X&#8221; stories, this one is basically a boy and his Frankenstein. It&#8217;s set in a time when you could believe people would be terrified of a space monster, and all the characters are characters. Even the giant gets to grow as a character.</p> <p>This movie is great because everything in it just works so well. It takes time to be funny and heartfelt and sad and hopeful.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0129167/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/iron_giant/">Rotten Tomatoes- 97%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OTnu-cGP17w?rel=0" width="560"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24984689747http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24984689747Tue, 12 Jun 2012 19:26:14 -0400The Iron GiantEli MarienthalJennifer AnistonVin Diesel<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Train_Your_Dragon_%28film%29"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/How_to_Train_Your_Dragon_Poster.jpg"/></a></p> <p>I never saw this movie in 3D. I don&#8217;t know if that helped sway a lot of people towards it like 3D did for Avatar, but it looks fine as a 2D movie.</p> <p>I have to guess that the 3D added something I just didn&#8217;t get watching it without because the reviews for this movie seem overwhelmingly great. It&#8217;s not a bad movie, but it&#8217;s exactly what you&#8217;d expect from this kind of movie. You know what&#8217;s going to happen if you&#8217;ve ever seen a kid&#8217;s movie where a loner kid befriends a &#8216;monster&#8217;. It doesn&#8217;t have the heart to make it stand out like Pixar movies do and it falls into every basic plot point that&#8217;s never made sense before. Because if you discovered something about your people&#8217;s natural predators that could end hundreds of years of bloodshed and death, wouldn&#8217;t you attempt to explain it to your village? Especially after you&#8217;ve already proven your techniques and tricks work?<br/><br/>Also, I know I&#8217;m not really up on the history of European accents, but I&#8217;m almost positive that the vikings weren&#8217;t Scottish or American.</p> <p>But it isn&#8217;t unenjoyable. It&#8217;s just exactly what you&#8217;d expect.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0892769/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1194522-how_to_train_your_dragon/">Rotten Tomatoes- 98%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/oKiYuIsPxYk?rel=0" width="560"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24915928668http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24915928668Mon, 11 Jun 2012 19:25:03 -0400How to Train Your DragonJay BaruchelGerard ButlerCraig Ferguson<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Lose_Friends_%26_Alienate_People_%28film%29"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5b/Lose_friends_and_alienate_people.jpg"/></a></p> <p>Oh god.<br/><br/>I never thought I could hate Simon Pegg. And yet, I do. He plays a jackass, stuck up, annoying, self centered jerk. He has no idea how to dress for any correct occasion or even behave correctly in social situations. It&#8217;s not that he knows how to and rejects it, it&#8217;s that he&#8217;s so stupid he doesn&#8217;t understand when he&#8217;s acting inappropriately. Which I think is supposed to be funny, but it&#8217;s really just annoying. Really really annoying.<br/><br/>And that&#8217;s all this movie is; frustratingly annoying.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455538/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/how_to_lose_friends_and_alienate_people/">Rotten Tomatoes- 37%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VYTlY4-9uf0?rel=0" width="560"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24846695384http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24846695384Sun, 10 Jun 2012 19:21:57 -0400How to Lose Friends and Alienate PeopleSimon Peggkirsten dunst<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am%C3%A9lie"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/53/Amelie_poster.jpg"/></a></p> <p>I&#8217;m a sucker for movies with narrators.</p> <p>I don&#8217;t honestly know why. But the narrator, explaining small quirks and habits of the movie&#8217;s characters just fits so nicely. It&#8217;s a technique nicely used here (and nicely re-used in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushing_daisies">Pushing Daisies</a>).</p> <p>Amelie may be the only Manic Pixie Dream Girl to not only star in her very own movie, but to not be focused on romance. Granted, a romantic relationship is a fairly large plot point, but more in the sense of Amelie herself to become less of an introverted person. <br/><br/>Really, the only criticism I&#8217;ve found of this movie is that it has a fairly strong monochrome casting for the area of Paris it&#8217;s set in. I can understand the complaints, but I can&#8217;t really make any of my own. I don&#8217;t know Paris.<br/><br/></p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211915/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/amelie/">Rotten Tomatoes- 90%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/JodKDrNgEVM?rel=0" width="420"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24776210811http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24776210811Sat, 09 Jun 2012 19:30:55 -0400AmélieAudrey TautouMathieu Kassovitz<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Things_I_Hate_About_You"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/95/10_Things_I_Hate_About_You_film.jpg"/></a></p> <p>It can&#8217;t be easy to try and update a Shakespeare play into a modern-day American high school. Especially one as controversial as The Taming of the Shrew. <br/><br/>So, obviously, the movie would need a major re-write. Though some weird stuff still manages to make its way into the movie.</p> <p>First and foremost, Kat Stratford seems to be completely hated by everyone at her Seattle private high school Padua for very little reason. While it&#8217;s evident that she doesn&#8217;t try to make people like her, she&#8217;s mostly only outwardly mean to guys who are complete assholes. But this is set in what appears to be a very large 90s high school; are you really telling me that she is the only bitter, frustrated teenager around? And that not only does the entire school know about her, but hate her? <br/>To me, at least, she doesn&#8217;t seem unpleasant. No more so than Daria Morgendorffer or Veronica Mars. Or most people I went to high school with. Or me in high school.<br/><br/>Hell, her younger sister Bianca is a far meaner; she uses a guy who asks her out in a pretty cruel way. Granted, that guy&#8217;s only motivations for doing nice things for her is so that she&#8217;ll date him because he thinks she&#8217;s so pretty, but I can only criticize the young Joseph Gordon Levitt so much (hell, his character in 500 Days of Summer is basically the analysis of his character in this).<br/><br/>Then we get the Stratford father, a man incredibly obsessed with his daughters remaining virgins to the point of making archaic rules about them not dating instead of just talking with them about sex and treating them like people. Smart, capable people who can think and make decisions for themselves, because teenagers are going to find ways to go out and have sex  and it&#8217;s really pretty creepy how obsessed he is with his daughters&#8217; sex lives.<br/><br/>And then there&#8217;s the plot. <br/><br/>Can anyone tell me why proto-Jersey Shore character Joey Donner wants to sleep with Bianca? Is it really just because he thinks she&#8217;s a virgin? And why the hell do 90s teen comedies seem to think that the jerkass popular guys love to make bets about shit like this? Between this and She&#8217;s All That, it seems gambling addictions plagued the youth of the 90s. <br/><br/>Kat is a smart girl. Why she doesn&#8217;t think &#8220;Oh, this guy who has tried asking me out a few times all of the sudden the past few days suddenly changed his interests to match mine&#8221; is suspicious at all is beyond me, considering her so-called bitterness for people is the direct result of not being suspicious of a guy who wanted to go out with her.</p> <p>Again, a lack of communication is the one thing attempting to cause rift in the relationship between Kat and Patrick. Instead of just saying as he&#8217;s asking her out &#8220;Hey, this jackass is paying me money to take you out, wanna split the money to go see a concert?&#8221; and then her warning her sister of how Captain douchebag is a doucebag, he lets the rouse go on and on until it&#8217;s discovered because the rouse is always discovered. He could have done literally anything else than he did and it probably would have turned out better for all parties involved.</p> <p>Yet there are some really great parts. Patrick singing, for one. And Allison Janey. No one can dislike her in this movie. She&#8217;s just too funny- and she&#8217;s only in two scenes.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0147800/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10_things_i_hate_about_you/">Rotten Tomatoes- 61%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QeOoTiINw4E?rel=0" width="420"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24709296016http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24709296016Fri, 08 Jun 2012 19:28:16 -040010 Things I Hate About YouJulia StilesHeath Ledger<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Antoinette_%282006_film%29"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/41/Marie-Antoinette_poster.jpg"/></a></p> <p>No, it&#8217;s not really a historically accurate piece. I&#8217;m not really one of those people who thinks films based on historical events necessarily have to be accurate. I like Inglorious Basterds even though I know World War II didn&#8217;t end with a few Jewish-American soldiers gunning down a bunch of Nazis in a French theater. So why should it bother me that this isn&#8217;t accurate?</p> <p><br/>This movie doesn&#8217;t really have much plot or any character development, which would usually make me hate it. But it does manage to not fall into the trap that&#8217;s usually associated with highly stylized (but altogether empty) movies; it doesn&#8217;t rehash the same tired plots and problems like, say, Moulin Rouge does.</p> <p>Both Marie Antoinette and Moulin Rouge are quite similar: they are both historical-ish movies set in France, both highly-stylized with wonderful costumes, sets, and shoots, neither have much as far as stories and characters go, and both use very modern music. It&#8217;s that Marie Antoinette doesn&#8217;t fall into the overused plots that Moulin Rouge does (plots that make the movie completely unbearable for me), instead focusing on the extreme decadence of the ruling class. I don&#8217;t really know why this film was so poorly received while Moulin Rouge was so highly regarded. There may not be much besides style to Marie Antoinette, but at least it isn&#8217;t trying to beat my skull in with shitty excuses for plot, dialogue, and character. This at least knows all it&#8217;s got going for it is style, and it tries hard to work with that.</p> <p>In fact, the movie being so stylized and focused on the richness of everything and ignoring most anything of importance reflects the lives of the French nobility. So, in short, it works. It&#8217;s not great, but it works.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0422720/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1158195-marie_antoinette/">Rotten Tomatoes- 55%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BuByY-DnGYo?rel=0" width="420"></iframe></p> <p>By the way, if you want to learn a little about the French revolution <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvSod16wfgg">these</a> <a href="http://youtu.be/NTMFtLAS90Q">three </a><a href="http://youtu.be/PyZsLYxaIuM">videos</a> are pretty entertaining and go over the basics.</p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24641192083http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24641192083Thu, 07 Jun 2012 19:20:56 -0400Marie Antoinette (2006)Kirsten DunstJason Schwartzman<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_at_Tiffany%27s_%28film%29"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a9/Breakfast_at_Tiffanys.jpg"/></a></p> <p>Everyone has heard of this movie. Everyone knows Audrey Hepburn is in this movie with her hair all piled on her head, wearing a little black dress and smoking a cigarette in a long holder.</p> <p>Most people probably know of Holly Golightly being the ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Girl- The happy-go-lucky (lightly) New York girl who&#8217;s job seems to be going on dates with &#8220;rats&#8221; and throwing big parties (well, that and passing information to an imprisoned mob boss). A girl who refuses to name her cat because she doesn&#8217;t &#8220;own him&#8221;, instead choosing to just call him Cat. Most people probably think of one of the most infamous instances of racism in Hollywood with the casting of Mickey Rooney as the Japanese Mr. Yunioshi, or the definitely-a-call-guy (is that the right term?)-when-he&#8217;s-not-writing Paul Varjak and the probably-a-call-girl Holly Golightly.</p> <p>Though I&#8217;m really surprised how the fact that Holly&#8217;s ex-husband seems to slip past a lot of the criticism, considering he&#8217;s a pedophile and all. He married a fourteen-year-old and this somehow slips by on &#8220;what the fuck&#8221; factor of many elements of the movie. Yes, the good-ol&#8217; 1960&#8217;s; a time when you can talk openly about having married a fourteen-year-old girl, but you can&#8217;t make one of the protagonists gay. </p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054698/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/breakfast_at_tiffanys/">Rotten Tomatoes- 88%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/urQVzgEO_w8?rel=0" width="560"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24570120366http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24570120366Wed, 06 Jun 2012 19:20:57 -0400Breakfast at Tiffany'sAudrey HepburnGeorge Peppard<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_Black_II"><img height="443" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3d/Men_in_Black_II_Poster.jpg" width="299"/></a></p> <p>They (that all-mighty they that seem to do and know everything) had to know, when making the first Men In Black movie, that they would turn it into a franchise. So why did they decide to get rid of Agent Kay? There could have been a nice arch with Jay and Kay working together for longer before Kay&#8217;s memory wipe. <br/><br/>The first MIB movie was a character-driven movie, and it worked really well. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones really played off each other nicely. The villain was just an angry slug-alien-thing, but it was fine in the context of the movie- that this kind of threat is a regular thing. This one tries to have a complex plot (that&#8217;s stupid) that makes this one event seem very special, which really contradicts Agent Kay&#8217;s speech in the first film about how the earth is always in danger and exceptions can&#8217;t be made in the rules just because of a rogue alien.</p> <p>The sequel also goes in the exact opposite direction of the first in that it has pretty much no character depth or development. Beside bringing back a few characters in cameo-like roles (probably because they tested well) the idea of having an actual villain is swapped out in favor of casting a sexy lady to just stand around and look sexy. Because why the fuck not, I guess. It&#8217;s not like this movie tried to actually do anything but sell tickets by rehashing the most notable characters from the first, so why not add a lingerie model to try and fill a few more seats?</p> <p>Thus we reach the eternal problem with sequels- they don&#8217;t actually try to make a movie, they try to make a theater filling, tie-in making, toy line creating product.</p> <p>And no matter how poorly it&#8217;s done, we always eat that shit up.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120912/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/men_in_black_ii/">Rotten Tomatoes- 39%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/p4NJHqoojOU?rel=0" width="560"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24502008020http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24502008020Tue, 05 Jun 2012 19:26:01 -0400Men in Black IIWill SmithTommy Lee JonesRosario Dawson<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wristcutters"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/09/Wristcutters.jpg"/></a></p> <p>I don&#8217;t think this movie even knows what kind of movie this is. It&#8217;s not funny, so it can&#8217;t be any sort of comedy. It&#8217;s not philosophical enough to be a serious drama. It&#8217;s not especially interesting, actually. Just a shit ton of retroactive recognition for nearly everyone in the film and a guy who I think was supposed to be in Gogol Bordello. <br/><br/>I can&#8217;t even do a proper review of this. It&#8217;s just too damn boring. The plot is really just &#8220;Yeah I killed myself, road trip road trip road trip Tom Wait&#8217;s hippie-dippy commune camp, Will Arnett cult, convenient plot hole, end. I wouldn&#8217;t necessarily find the dull plot a reason to not like the movie if it had, say, characters. But it doesn&#8217;t, so the movie is just really boring.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477139/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wristcutters_a_love_story/">Rotten Tomatoes- 66%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NHAQW2ko6yI?rel=0" width="420"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24433267637http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24433267637Mon, 04 Jun 2012 19:21:36 -0400Patrick FugitShannyn SossamonShea WhighamWristcutters: A Love Story<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_%28film%29"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ec/Junoposter2007.jpg"/></a></p> <p>It does have a fairly impressive cast list with the exclusion of Micheal Cera who can only play roles where he&#8217;s really really awkward and quiet all the time. But he&#8217;s here to play an awkward teenage guy, so it fits perfectly!<br/><br/>Here is a movie that just repeatedly pulls your hair with it&#8217;s quirky-hipster-ness (because slapping you with quirky is way too mainstream and kids don&#8217;t do that anymore). Hell, these kids are so quirky they don&#8217;t use cell phones, instead opting for the obvious choice for any quirky-kid: a hamburger phone. They&#8217;re even too quirky to talk like&#8230; well, like anyone. Granted, I do like a few of Juno&#8217;s rants (the one about &#8216;sexually active&#8217; is particularly good). <br/><br/>I like Ellen Page. I actually like a lot of the cast- I just don&#8217;t especially like the dialogue, which really hurts the film with how bad it is. But most of the cast members are able to outshine the roles they&#8217;ve been given.<br/><br/>Sure, the plot can be a bit swiss cheese-y at times; what with Juno&#8217;s parent&#8217;s acting so calm with her telling them of her pregnancy and plans to have the baby, despite her parent&#8217;s expressing how they&#8217;d rather she got expelled or into hard drugs than getting pregnant. And no, the movie isn&#8217;t explicit with her dealing with most of the physical issues that go with pregnancy; she very rarely pukes, waddles around without much complaint, and the rest is only mentioned in the hideously-written jokes she&#8217;ll spout off every now and again.<br/><br/>A lot of this movie&#8217;s popularity in 2007 (and boy, was it popular) seemed to come from it&#8217;s controversy (or, what people seemed to deem as controversies). How a fairly light indie coming-of-age movie came to be so damn controversial seems to mostly stem from its (not-so-obvious) unfortunate implications that no one could seem to agree on. A third the angry people seemed convinced that this movie was anti-feminist and pro-life because Juno decides against having an abortion under the (false) fact that the fetus has fingernails. The other side of the people claimed it was pro-choice (in that Juno does choose what to do) and feminist (with Juno being a smart, capable teenage girl who isn&#8217;t completely obsessed with having a boyfriend or going to prom or other behaviors Hollywood movies seem to think teenage girls obsess about).<br/><br/>Yet, to add one more controversy to the mix, some people claimed Juno glamorized teen pregnancy, making teenage girls want to get pregnant because&#8230; I don&#8217;t know. But as someone who was a 16-year-old girl when Juno came out, if you think I and my peers are that stupid as a collective whole, I&#8217;m much more worried about you than you are of me.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0467406/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/juno/">Rotten Tomatoes- 94%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/K0SKf0K3bxg" width="420"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24365737628http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24365737628Sun, 03 Jun 2012 19:22:30 -0400JunoEllen PageJ.K. SimmonsJennifer Garner<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponyo"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b3/Ponyo.jpg"/></a></p> <p>Oh great.</p> <p>Another adaption of a classic children&#8217;s story. And of The Little Mermaid? Didn&#8217;t Disney already copy-write the shit out of that one? But wait- this one has not just one or two celebrity voices, but practically all of the English voices are celebrities instead of trained voice actors/actresses.</p> <p><img height="130" src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4v6jcpBWX1ro6n8yo1_500.gif" width="243"/></p> <p>Wait. No. I&#8217;ve spent too many years being cynical to fall for cuteness!</p> <p><img height="129" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4u1sy92N01qfmi6c.gif" width="241"/></p> <p>Fine.</p> <p>Anyways, there&#8217;s this little boy who unwittingly kidnaps Liam Neeson&#8217;s daughter. And yes, he does have a very specific set of skills he uses to get her back. The little boy and the fish-daughter end up falling in love (or whatever five-year-olds call falling in love) and she becomes a human.</p> <p><br/>Also, Liam Neeson totally plays a big-haired ginger Scottish-Japanese sea-magician father who does his makeup like Frank-N-Furter. No lies.</p> <p><br/>The kids in this movie don&#8217;t act like, well, they don&#8217;t act like kids. And I mean, I guess it&#8217;s sweet. And stuff. It is much less annoying that they don&#8217;t act like actual five-year-olds.<br/><br/>But how about a game of &#8220;Let&#8217;s Compare!&#8221; between Ariel and Ponyo? Both from beloved animated movies distributed by Disney based from The Little Mermaid.The main difference? Ariel is 16 and Ponyo is 5. It makes perfect sense to believe that Ariel would want to leave her over-protective father and become human. I think most 16-year-olds have a romanticized version of somewhere they want to go. Ponyo is 5. Ariel does actually act like a 16-year-old, like a know-it-all who makes brash decisions. Ponyo and Sasuke do not act like 5-year-olds. They act how adults want 5-year-olds to act.<br/><br/></p> <p>Sure it&#8217;s a cute movie, I guess. I prefer other Miyazaki films, but that&#8217;s just me. I don&#8217;t say it&#8217;s a bad movie, but it&#8217;s not a movie for me.</p> <p><br/>Just don&#8217;t ask it to make too much sense.</p> <p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0876563/">IMDB</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ponyo/">Rotten Tomatoes- 92%</a></p> <p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bskgNOXbdiE" width="560"></iframe></p>http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24292534775http://100movies100days.tumblr.com/post/24292534775Sat, 02 Jun 2012 19:25:51 -0400Liam NeesonTina FeyFrankie JonasPonyo