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May 31 movie: The Adventures of Quentin Durward. This was a fun swashbuckler starring Robert Taylor. Although Robert Morley threatens to steal the movie as the conniving King Louis XI of France. The buckle is well swashed (including an amazing fight scene involving church bells and a flaming pit -- we thought we were watching Iron Monkey set in 15th century France), but the movie also uses humor to keep things fun. I could have lived without the running jokes about how the gypsies are immoral and the scots are cheap, but otherwise I really enjoyed the light tone of the movie. There was also the unintentional humor of the title character's name: most of the actors put on these vaguely British accents, and every time anyone said "Durward" I heard Endora from Bewitched sneering "Durwood."

May 1 movie: Passage to Marseille. With Humphrey Bogart, Claude Rains, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre among others, this movie should have been better than it was. It's about a bunch of escapees from Devil's Island who enlist to fight for France.

May ? movie: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. This wasn't the best movie ever, but I did enjoy it very much as an exercise in retro, a tribute to films from the "Golden Age" of Hollywood. It kind of reminded me of Raiders of the Lost Ark in that sense. Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law do have great chemistry and are good at playing characters in a 40's movie. I loved the giant robots that attack Manhattan, and the memorable last line of the movie.

May 11 movie: It's Love I'm After. This was a delightful little Bette Davis movie. Also stars Leslie Howard as a pompous actor, Olivia de Havilland as his star-struck fan, and the marvelous Eric Blore, wearing an abominable toupee. I didn't even know they were doing Bette Davis this month on TCM until I stumbled across this on my first morning in Houston. I missed three weeks of it! Bummer.

May 14 movie: The Harvey Girls. I don't know why, but this is my favorite Judy Garland movie. Maybe it's Angela Lansbury as the sassy saloon girl/villain. Maybe it's the song "The Acheson, Topeka and the Santa Fe." Maybe it's Ray Bolger's dancing. Or maybe it's just those cute aprons the Harvey girls wear. Whatever the reason, I love this movie.

May 15 movie: Wayne's World 2. I only watched this because it was the last night of my trip and I was tired of my book and there was nothing else on. It had a few funny moments but was mostly a waste of time. The hotel room sucked, too. There was an air vent in the bathroom making this insanely loud noise. I couldn't stand it unless I shut the bathroom door. Also there were cigarette burns in the bedspread, and the closet door was broken, and there was no desk or table to put my computer on. Whine, whine, whine.

April 11 movie: Johnny Mnemonic. This movie was a mess, but it was a stylish mess. Technology has unfortunately advanced fast enough to make the plot seem silly, but you can see the kernel of a good story in there, struggling to get out. Keanu Reeves is great, as long as he isn't talking, and the supporting cast includes just about everybody: Udo Keir, Henry Rollins, Ice T, even Takeshi Kitano! That was the bonus surprise of the movie for me, because I didn't know who he was the first time I saw it. Unfortunately he doesn't get to do much. But still, Takeshi Kitano!

April 14 movie: Serenity. Dang, Joss Whedon gives good commentary. He maybe spends a little too much time talking about what lens he used in this or that scene. But he does a really good job of avoiding the two main types of bad commentary: 1. praising every actor without every saying anything substantive: "He's a great guy, she's beautiful, he's so funny, etc"; 2. describing the scene as if they were doing closed captioning rather than commentary: "now he's going into the room, he's about to confront his mother, they're arguing about the job, etc."

April 20 movie: Hero. Another boo to IFC for showing a wonderful Chinese movie in a terrible format. The dubbing wasn't that bad I suppose, but if you know the actors' voices then it becomes more intrusive that they aren't speaking with their own voices. And the pan and scan is a serious problem with a visual movie like this. And yet, I still watched it. I'm a sucker for Maggie Cheung.

April 24: Paycheck. Note to self: Just because a movie was based on a Phil Dick story doesn't mean it will be a good movie. In fact, odds are not good for movies made from PK Dick stories. I think the problem is that Dick stories start out with a weird, interesting idea, and then get weirder from there. But the movies take the weird interesting idea, and use it as a hook on which to hang a generic action picture. With the exception of Blade Runner of course. And also Minority Report which I thought was pretty good. At least it made some attempt to stay true to the spirit of the story. But Paycheck doesn't even try. And don't get me started on the ending, which totally invalidates what little point they do try to make with the movie. It just makes me feel sad about the lost possibilities.

A big part of the problem with Paycheck is Ben Affleck. Who is a stunningly bad actor. It would have been a much better movie if Paul Giamatti, who played the schlumphy best friend, had been the lead instead. I would have found Giamatti much more convincing as a computer nerd in a Dick story. But then again, it would have been a very different movie if it had starred Paul Giamatti.

April 24: Shaolin Soccer. Yay to IFC for showing this movie, but a major boo! to them for showing it not only dubbed, but panned and scanned. Very very lame of them. It makes me less annoyed at the cable company for moving the channel to premium so we can't watch it anymore. On the bright side, it sounded like Stephen Chow did his own dubbing, so at least his character sounded fairly natural.

On IMDB I got some info on the all-female soccer team with moustaches. According to the IMDB forum, the actresses playing the two main female soccer players are huge Chinese pop stars and close friends of Chow. So it's just a random gag to have them on a soccer team. The female team was called "Team Double Handsome Dragon" so also possibly a joke about pretty boy soccer players.

April 26 movie: Red Headed Woman. This was more what I think of as a typical pre-code Harlow movie. Harlow plays a social climber who gets what she wants by seducing rich men. Chester Morris plays her first victim, who spends a lot of time glowering and saying ugly things to Harlow, and also beats her up at one point. Una Merkel is great as the sassy best friend, a role she did many many times. Charles Boyer also has a small part as the chauffeur with whom Harlow gets some on the side. This movie sort of tries to have it both ways: Harlow gets her comeuppance, gets humiliated and tossed out on her ear by both rich guys, but then runs off to France and ends up happy, richer than either of them, and still has her chauffeur on the side. If it had been made a couple of years later they would have had to make her die of a wasting disease in a poorhouse to punish her for her sexual aggression.

April 26 movie: Deep Rising. Good lord this was bad. It was basically Alien with giant squid. Who are huge because they evolved at 40,000 feet below sea level, but are also tiny enough to swim through plumbing pipes when they need to. Also they roar like lions, and have big mouths on the ends of their tentacles, and can survive indefinitely out of water. And they're smart enough to learn how to shut hatches and "herd" the cast from one part of the ship to another. The movie seemed like an enjoyably stupid romp until the very end, which was so very very stupid that it made the whole thing seem a waste of my time in retrospect. That's valuable time I could have been web surfing! Oh wait, I was web surfing while I watched. Never mind then.

Okay, so I've been a slack ass about the movie list. I fell so far behind that I just couldn't deal with writing up movies I'd seen months before, which made me fall even more behind, and it was just one of those vicious things.

I hardly even watched any movies in the past couple of months -- only 9 in March and 10 in April -- but I never stopped keeping track. I'm going to try writing up the movies I've just seen, and work my way backward. If I never get all the way caught up, but I get back to posting the current movies, that will be okay.

And without further ado...

April 30: The Girl from Missouri. A Jean Harlow movie with a happy ending, whee! Harlow plays a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who wants to make good with her life, falls in love with a rich guy (Franchot Tone), outwits Tone's suspicious father (Frank Morgan) and ends up with everything she wanted. It warmed my heart. The best line in the movie, said by Harlow, was "He's a vulgar vulgarian!"