Matters of cinema.

As you might have guessed, I like movies. I do not, however, go to see as many of them as perhaps I should.

There are several reasons for this. Obviously, I have to be interested in a movie before I’ll plunk down $7 to go see it. For example, I don’t do FaceBook, so The Social Network holds almost no appeal for me.

A second reason is that there’s only two places I will see movies: in a private home (my own or someone else’s) or the Alamo Drafthouse chain of cinemas in Austin and certain other areas of Texas. If I go to an Alamo Drafthouse, I know I will get the following:

  • No commercials. The Alamo does show interstitial material before the movie, but the clips they show are always entertaining and relevant to the movie in some way. They do run brief house ads, and trailers for coming attractions, but I know I won’t have to put up with a Pepsi or Chevy Volt commerical.
  • Food that ranges from good to excellent, a larger selection of beers than many bars in Austin, and highly efficient at your seat service.
  • No disruptions. The Alamo theaters are serious about this, and make it known upfront. I have never actually seen someone evicted from an Alamo for talking or otherwise being disruptive, but I’ve also never been in one where it was actually necessary. People who go there know how to behave.

So if a movie doesn’t play the Alamo, and I don’t catch it in someone’s home, I’m not seeing it. All this is by way of saying that of the Oscar nominated films this year, I’ve seen exactly…one, so far.

I didn’t have any notions going into True Grit, beyond “Oh, look, a Coen Brothers movie.” I haven’t read the book, although I hear good things about it from many folks. (Charles Portis is a big blind spot for me, and I’d like to fix that.) I also haven’t seen the original John Wayne version. (I’d like to, but the current DVD release looks cheap; I’m hoping the success of this version will result in a better DVD release of the original. I haven’t seen the Blu-Ray version in stores yet.) Lawrence and I and some other friends finally got it together, after several false starts, to go see it, and…

…I thought it was a perfectly okay movie. I realize that’s not exactly wild praise, but I just thought the brothers took a simple story and told it very well. It didn’t have the same emotional impact on me that No Country for Old Men did, but it was a fine movie. Without being condescending, I wish my stepfather could have lived to see it on home video; I think he would have enjoyed it.

Bonus movie note: There’s a series of Japanese werewolf movies that go by the name “Kibakichi”. I watched the first one a few nights ago, and, with all due respect to our gracious hosts: don’t. The fire our host built in his fireplace was vastly more entertaining to me than Kibakichi was. Lawrence blames the dubbing, but I’m not sure better dubbing would have saved this movie. Nothing basically happens until the last 15 or so minutes of the movie, the werewolf transformation scene is unexceptional, the story is incomprehensible, the use of firearms (when is this movie supposed to be set, anyway?) is incompetent, and, at 1:37, the movie is about 1:36 too long. Perhaps other people are more fond of the Asian supernatural genre than I am, but I still say “Avoid”.

2 Responses to “Matters of cinema.”

  1. Earl Cooley III says:

    I plan to re-watch Wolfen just as soon as the DVD arrives at my door.