The MacGuffin

Sword of Doom is an old black and white samurai movie from Japan. A swordsman shows up on a mountainside and kills and old man praying at a shrine to Buddha. The swordsman is supposed to fight another guy in the town the following day and a woman shows up to try to talk him out of it. He asks her if it’s worth her giving up the goods to stop the fight. If the girl’s husband (as it turns out) loses, then he loses the right to teach at the school he’s in charge of – and it sounds like this is very likely.

Happy Times (or Xingfu Shiguang) is a Chinese film about an aging bachelor, Zhao, who’s pretty much desperate to find a wife to take care of him in his old age. He meets up with this rather rotund lady who seems all sweet and jolly and they talk about getting married. Zhao goes over to her house and the façade starts to crumble a little bit with the lady, due to the way she treats her equally rotund kid and this blind girl who the lady has locked in her room most of the day.

I’m not a major fan of animated films – I was probably held back due to my dislike of comics (aka I like girls) – aside from all but a handful of films. I was unsure of this film, but once I saw Crispin Glover was one of the voices, I was sold on it. It’s kind of a post-apocalyptic movie about these little machines made from the soul of a scientist before he died.

A high school kid who’s playing the part of a nerdy kid (if they wanted a real nerdy kid they would have found ME in high school) who has some trouble with girls. He meets a girl on the internet and despite him having a fake photo up, she somehow convinces him to drive halfway across the country to have sex (hence the drive to have sex – aka sex drive).

Zombieland is a zombie film with the running-crazy zombies rather than the undead crawling up out of their graves kind of zombies. It stars Woody Harrelson, whom I personally have blacklisted from film since his brilliant performance on Cheers, back in the day. This movie changed my mind though.

I hadn’t heard much good about this movie, so when M.Giant asked if I was up for a movie and suggested it, I reluctantly caved and agreed to do it. I do like both Steve Carell and Tina Fey, so I figured at least I’d be entertained by them. The movie is about a married couple living in New Jersey and they have a pretty boring and routine life together. They’re comfortable, but maybe not happy.

Against my better judgment, I went to see Clash of the Titans with my friend M.Giant. I knew there was going to be craploads of CGI in the film, and yet somehow he convinced me I needed to see it. I think he just wanted to see me have an aneurysm in the theater or go postal on some people. I even opted to NOT drink in the parking lot as originally planned, mostly so I would remember some of what I had seen.

Salò o le 120 gionate di Sodoma– This Italian film from 1975 takes place during the Nazi era of Italy’s past. The film starts out with some aristocrats signing some sort of document. Turns out they’ve all agreed to marry each other’s daughter to make some sort of unbreakable pact between them all. A group of gentlemen round up a handful of teenage hoodlum boys and talk about deflowering them, though I’m not sure that’s what they mean. Then a group of men round up a group of girls and the girls are forced to strip in front of a panel of guys who are judging them.

While not quite the same story as most of us remember from our childhood, this Tim Burton film sees Alice back in Wonderland after 10-12 years when she’s 19. Alice gets invited to a really large garden party where the surprise of the day is that this stuffy ginger boy is going to propose to her.

Whip It – Being a big fan of roller derby, I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to see this film. Sad, but true. This film is kind of an exaggerated expose drama on women’s banked-track roller derby in Austin, Texas. A young girl named Bliss, Ellen Page (from Juno fame), lives with her parents in a rural town. Her mother keeps signing her up for beauty pageants with her little sister, but Bliss just wants to experience life. She works at a local diner with her hot friend Pash, played by Alia Shawkat, and their friend Birdman.