12 Movies Meme.

So... I've been tagged! Fletch over at Blog Cabins got tagged first by Piper over at Lazy Eye Theater, then, in turn, tagged me. So what is this tagging business all about? Well, it's this meme thing in which each tagged person must state what 12 movies they would play if they were running a theater for 6 days.

So what I get to do is choose 12 movies, themed or otherwise, and spread them out over 6 days as if I would be showing them at this theater. It took me a while to come up with any idea of how to incorporate some of my favorite movies... and while my list isn't tidied into one theme (Fletch, for instance, did a bunch of movies that deal with different vices), each day I'm showing movies has its own theme. So here I go!

Simon Pegg Sunday.













- Shaun of the Dead is one of my favorite movies, and I would not be able to have a movie marathon without it. It made perfect sense to kick everything off with it, and when it came to choosing a partner movie for it, why not the movie with all the same people... Hot Fuzz?

Bank Heist Monday.













- Anybody who frequents this blog knows I like a good heist film, and these two just happen to be two of my favorites. It doesn't get any more classic than Dog Day Afternoon (and for fun, there's some Dog Day Afternoon references in Inside Man, which would be played afterward).

Foreign Film Tuesday.













- Relatively self-explanatory, I think. Let's give the people some culture, even if it can be disturbing. Pan's Labyrinth and Oldboy are two of the greatest foreign films to come in quite a while, and they're two of my favorites, as well.

Bang Bang Wednesday.













- Here we have two drastically different movies with somewhat similar titles. Bang Bang You're Dead is one of the most important and most powerful movies ever made (and should be shown in every high school across the nation). Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is just some fun comedy noir, and one of Robert Downey Jr.'s best movies this side of Iron Man.

Hitman Thursday.













- Again, Leon is one of my favorite movies (and I mean the director's cut, not the stupid American release dubbed The Professional). And it was Natalie Portman's first movie. So I decided to pair it up with another great hitman movie, and one of Tom Cruise's best performances, in my opinion, Collateral.

Romantic Fantasy Friday.













- I wanted to include The Princess Bride in this list because, well, it's one of the greatest movies ever. But I had trouble figuring out what to pair it with. I needed a movie that was similar in some way to it, so I had to think about what it was, exactly. It was a romance movie first and foremost, but it's also a fantasy movie. So then I had to think of other romantic fantasy movies, looked at my DVD collection, and saw Big Fish. It's definitely a romance with fantasy elements, and it's also a great movie (one of my favorite Burton films). They also both have an old man telling a younger person the story.

So there we are. That would be my 6-day marathon. I think it'd be super fun. Some runners-up included Equilibrium/The Matrix (awesome action), and the original partner with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was Who Framed Roger Rabbit until I realized I wanted to put in Bang Bang You're Dead (which I thought about partnering with American History X, but didn't want to part with any full day of choices I'd already picked).

Anyway, another part of this thing is that I have to tag at least 5 other people for this, so here we go...

1) Cinexcellence.
2) Rachel over at Rachel's Reel Reviews.
3) Kane over at Kano's Kogitation (even though he's not a total movie blog).
4) Daniel at Getafilm.
5) DJ over at Matte Havoc.

(And you guys don't have to do it if y'all don't want to).

That's it! So... who would go to my 6-day movie theater movie marathon thingy?

2 In 1: Chaos and Dog Day Afternoon.

Alrighty. After watching The Bank Job this past Friday, I got in the mood to check out some more heist movies, so I went to rent Dog Day Afternoon. While there, I rented some other movies, one of which was a movie called Chaos with Jason Statham, which could also be considered a heist movie (and better, I thought, than The Bank Job, also starring Jason Statham). Watching both, I felt I could turn this into a 2 in 1, so here we go.

Chaos.

Chaos has an interesting take on the heist film. It actually reminded me a bit of my last novel (without the supernatural/religious elements). The plot of Chaos is thus: After a disastrous hostage situation on a bridge in which both hostage and hostage taker die, Detective Conners (Jason Statham) is suspended and basically blacklisted, while his partner is fired. But when a bank robber who calls himself Lorenz (Wesley Snipes) takes hostages and seemingly tries to rob the place, he only has one request: to have Conners be the negotiator in charge. So Conners is brought back in and is partnered up with the young Detective Dekker (Ryan Phillippe). But when the robbers escape and people start dying randomly, the two detectives believe it has to do with the Chaos Theory—a bunch of seemingly unrelated events are all connected somehow.

The movie is just plain fun, really. The acting is alright… it’s basic thriller-genre acting (and Jason Statham). The plot is really cool, I thought, though highly predictable (though that could be a bad thing, considering the point of the plot is to be unpredictable). I figured out way too much early on, but that honestly didn’t stop me from enjoying the movie. Even though I figured out the final twist before it happened, I was still able to enjoy it with a smile on my face as it was revealed.

I think this is really the first time Jason Statham hasn’t really done his thing in one of his movies. He does kick some ass at one point, but its more cop-type brawling than anything. But I don’t think that’s a drawback or anything. And Wesley Snipes plays a pretty cool bad guy. He just has this “Oh, I’m cool, I’m a badass, I’m totally big pimpin. Look at my hat!” air about him every time you see him. And all the characters were more than just one-dimensional. They each had some kind of backstory to deepen their characters (at least to a degree).

So yeah, really, this is just one of those movies you have to not look too much into, but just sit back and enjoy it. But you also gotta pay attention toward the end, or it might go too fast for you to keep up (I know my dad started trying to talk to me during this point, and I was trying to pay attention to the movie, too. But I got the basic gist of what was going on; plus, I had already figured it out by that point, anyway).

I Am McLovin!

Dog Day Afternoon.

So I just saw it for the first time last night. Better late than never, right? Dog Day Afternoon is based on the true story of a simple bank robbery gone bad. Sonny (Al Pacino) and Sal (John Cazale) go to rob a bank, but being the down-on-their-luck overall nice guys, they take too long and attract police attention. The day lingers on with the employees no longer feeling any threat from the two men (except maybe Sal), and some even refusing to leave when they have the opportunity (by the way, just a random bit of trivia: this is known as Stockholm Syndrome, when the hostages begin to become attached to their hostage takers). Anyway, it gets all over the news, and the two men (moreso Sonny) start getting many fans. The only question left is… how are they gonna get out of this?

I thought this movie was excellent. Its two hours flew by. It was hilarious, sad, and dramatic. The acting was phenomenal, especially by the then young Al Pacino. The subtle performance by the late John Cazale was good, too, making you feel both frightened of and worried for him. The twist about halfway in when you find out exactly why Sonny is robbing the bank was unexpected (at least for me). But it worked (I’d hope so, considering it actually happened that way).

Afterwards I read an article from the real ‘Sonny’ and said he loved the movie, but was highly upset at how some of the things were portrayed and “Hollywood-ized,” and that the movie was really only about 30% true. Still, the movie version of the events was great in its own right. I just rented this movie, but I have a feeling I’m gonna end up going out and buying it. Let’s all go to the country of Wyoming!

Royale With Cheese