April Update

Okay, so I haven't done any posting here in a while, because all of my time has been taken by my current job. So in the interest of putting something, anything up here, I'll just put a scoreboard up of the last two months' worth of movies that I've seen:

First, new movies:

Watchmen: Mixed bag. Some great scenes and performances, especially Jackie Earle Haley and Billy Crudup; some total garbage moments and boring performances. Overall, a real lack of any vision beyond transplanting the whole thing from print to celluloid. 5/10

The Uninvited: Serviceable. 5/10

Gomorrah: Fascinating stuff, and harder to achieve than it might look. 8/10

Two Lovers: Quite good. 8/10

Race to Witch Mountain: I was hoping for fun, I got poorly-made crap instead. 3/10

Three Monkeys: Solidly made, but I have to question what there was to it beyond two hours of miserabilism. 7/10

Everlasting Moments: Interesting to watch, but flawed and repetitive. 6/10

Knowing: Basically the same movie as Signs (which I hated), mostly crap redeemed only by some nifty visuals of destruction. 4/10

The Last House on the Left: Better than it could have been (the performances are actually pretty good, and it's not a pure gore-fest), not quite as good as it should have been (there's a masterpiece to be made of this material that just hasn't been fully realized yet, not in this version, Craven's, or Bergman's). 6/10

Now, old movies:

Gone in Sixty Seconds (1974, H.B. Halicki): 7/10

A Boy and His Dog (1975, L.Q. Jones): 6/10

The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961, Val Guest): A really clever demonstration on how to make an epic, globe-spanning disaster movie that nonetheless mostly takes place in a single set. 7/10

The Abominable Snowman (1957 Val Guest): 6/10

The Endless Summer (1966, Bruce Brown): 6/10

Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe (1991): 3/10

Cult of the Cobra (1955, Francis D. Lyon): 5/10

Doppelganger (2003, Kiyoshi Kurosawa): 6/10

Bright Future (2003, Kiyoshi Kurosawa): 6/10

Hell Night (1981, Tom DeSimone): 3/10

The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955, David Kramarsky): 3/10

The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues (1955, Dan Milner): 3/10

Andrei Rublev (1966, Andrei Tarkovsky): The first Tarkovsky film I've immediately loved. 9/10

Jeanne Dielman 23, Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles (1975, Chantal Akerman): 9/10

Eliminators (1986, Peter Manoogian): Mandroid, scientist, mercenary, ninja. Together they are ELIMINATORS! 5/10

While the City Sleeps (1956, Fritz Lang): 7/10

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956, Fritz Lang): 7/10

My goal for April: to prepare myself for next month's release of J.J. Abrams's Star Trek by re-watching all 10 of the previous films, plus large doses of the TV series.
Thanks for reading!