Pride & Prejudice (with Keira Knightley)

Jarhead

Doom

Wallace & Gromit - Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Serenity

I did get a free movie pass for this one but it was scheduled on the same day as class.

The heart-wrenching dilemma! The agonizing! Curse the people who schedule the screenings for making it on a day that I could not go!

So what else to do for a loyal Joss Whedon fan but to pay and watch it as soon as I could?

Domino

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

Short and cute but predictable. My friend Dawn and I both agreed that Tim Burton's previous stop animation film "The Nightmare Before Christmas" was much better in terms of originality of story. The characters were cuter and more original, with more songs that you end up humming along with after you've finished watching the movie.

Just Like Heaven

The Man

The Aristrocrats

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

The Island

Happy Endings

Fantastic Four

War of the Worlds

Wedding Crashers

George A. Romero's Land of the Dead

The Perfect Man

Batman Begins

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

I confess that I actually paid to go see this movie but I really wanted to see it despite all the tabloid gossip about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Hustle & Flow

Howl's Moving Castle

Rock School

Monster-In-Law

I confess not a movie seen with a movie pass but seen because I knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody that had a copy of the movie.

I'm ashamed to have perpetuated the piracy and am only slightly mollified by the fact that the movie quality was static at best. I hereby re-affirm my pledge to the Movie Geek Oath not to be seduced by watching another pirated movie and thereby continue the vain hope of keeping the cost of viewing and buying movies as low as possible.

It's All Gone Pete Tong

The Longest Yard

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

It wasn't a movie pass movie but come on! It's Star Wars for crying out loud! Hence the entry =-)

Kicking & Screaming

Newsweek's Complete List of 1000 Top US Schools

Ok so this isn't a movie...but screw that!

My old high school is on this list!

First school on the list from Chicago, IL and it's my old alma mater!

I feel smarter by sheer association!

Let the riotous laughter and sarcastic remarks begin *grin*

Kingdom of Heaven

House of Wax

HBO Movie "Warm Springs"

So it's been almost a year since my last posting....Shoot me.

On the movie watching front, the latest one I saw was "Warm Springs" by HBO Films starring Kenneth Branagh and Cynthia Nixon last night at the Chicago AMC River East.

It was good!

Kenneth Branagh can always be depended upon to give an amazing complex performance and he has yet to disappoint. Cynthia Nixon was the surprise casting here as Eleanor Roosevelt. At first it seemed a really strange choice but as you watch her you get the feeling that she wasn't cast so much because she was "one of the Sex and the City girls" but because she would actually bring something new and interesting to the portrayal of Eleanor. From what little I knew of Eleanor Roosevelt I had always imagined that she was quite the out-spoken staunch woman's rights advocate but I learned that she was actually quite shy and initially didn't like to speak in public.
My friend Meredith who went with me also told me that Eleanor Roosevelt was a lesbian, that she and Franklin D. Roosevelt were distant cousins and related to Theodore Roosevelt, and that Franklin Roosevelt had a mistress even when he was in the White House!

But none of that was revealed in the movie. The movie covered the years after Franklin Roosevelt contracted polio but before he was elected President. How he went through depression and self-loathing as he searched for anything that would make him walk again. Through that quest he ended up in a run-down place in Georgia where through meeting other polio victims of all ages, sizes, races, gender, etc. etc. etc. He re-discovered his compassion for others and his desire to help do what he could all while having to come to terms with the horrible idea of never being able to walk again.

It was interesting to watch the struggle between the man's ego and his capabilities, between what he wanted for himself and how he felt compelled to help those even more "unfortunate" then himself. Not to mention another aspect of the freedom vs. restriction that being born into "High Society" money can place on a person. Kenneth Branagh really portrayed the struggles of the conflicting points and yet simultaneously showed how those conflicting points could both compel a person while they despaired at the same time. Very complex and emotional without pandering too much to the sympathies or patronizing the audience.

Definitely worth a rental viewing or watching during one of it's many runs on HBO. =-)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Amityville Horror

Kung-fu Hustle

Sahara

Sin City

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous

Dust to Glory

The Ring 2

Millions

The Pacificer

Cursed

Constantine

Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior

The Wedding Date

The Merchant of Venice

Elektra