By week three, there have been some noticeable effects. I’ve had to bump up the treadmill a couple notches, and I’ve raised my movie standards a bit too. Also features ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’, ‘Tyson’, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and ‘Dial M for Murder’.

A few weeks ago now, I decided to start a little experiment: a simple regimen to combat the twin menaces of backlog and beer gut. Hop on the treadmill for at least 20 minutes every single day, and watch a movie every single night (see first post here for further explanation).

By week three, there have been some noticeable effects. To work up the same sweat on the treadmill, I had to bump up the incline a couple notches. Similarly, I’ve raised my selection standards a bit, trying harder to seek out movies I’ll really enjoy or at least have a strong enough opinion to make them worth discussing here. When making a time commitment equal to two work days per week, there really isn’t room for many Hancocks.

[Note: "WI" indicates ability to Watch Instantly via Netflix.]

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Drag Me to Hell

This movie is genuine Raimi through and through, and how we’ve missed him so. Not exactly scary, as is his style, but enough to make you jump and scream and laugh with every turn. Alison Lohman’s adorable innocence makes the gypsy-curse torments she faces that much more gasp-inducing, and by the end this morality tale is exactly as Spencer described it on one of our podcasts: a pure rollercoaster ride.

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A Serious Man

How to begin? This is absolutely the kind of movie only the Coen brothers can make. It’s not afraid to take its time, to make us writhe in discomfort, to punish its characters to make a point. Is it enjoyable to watch? Not exactly. It’s less exciting than No Country, less directly satirical than Burn After Reading, and designed shot by shot to unsettle and frustrate. There are certainly funny moments, but they won’t seem funny at first — especially in a half-empty theatre with people who may not get the Coens’ dark humor. You may end up the only one laughing, furthering the uneasiness of watching Larry Gopnik’s life fall apart. In fact, the film seems almost to dare us to laugh more than is actually appropriate; though higher forces or our own dispositions may be conspiring against our every move, the only way to endure is to accept that it’s all one big joke, and we’re the punchline.

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The Bourne Ultimatum

I’ve never been a big fan of the Bourne movies. Too much blurry camerawork. Not enough dialogue besides government agents saying, “Get him!” or “He’s on the move!”. A handful of egregiously improbable moments made it worse, like riding a corpse in freefall down a stairwell, or always walking away from horrible car crashes, or leaping from a spinning fighter jet (okay, that was Live Free or Die Hard, which I liked, and weakens my argument). Anyway, they’ve always rubbed me the wrong way and seemed to be nothing more than a guy running away from people for two hours. However, either because I’m adjusting to the new era of action movies, or because this third installment felt more focused and rewarding once Bourne finally figured something out at the end, I enjoyed this one despite myself. Congrats, Bourne Ultimatum, for winning me over.

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Tyson

Mike Tyson, the man, is such a unique individual that just watching him sit on a couch and talk about his life is totally spellbinding. From the legendary knockouts, to the tales of psychotic behavior, abuse, and drug problems, to the jail time and retirement, you wouldn’t think there’s a fragile, frightened person underneath it all, but that’s what this movie shows. Up close and personal, we see someone who got too much too soon without ever learning the life skills to deal with it all, and someone who for all our sympathy has done some terrible things. You can’t help but like the guy, peculiar vocabulary and all, but you’re never quite sure if you should. It makes for a fascinating 90 minutes.

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To Kill a Mockingbird

Almost everyone had this as required reading in school at some point, and of those, I’m sure most have also seen the excellent film adaptation. If by some turn of bad luck, you hadn’t seen the movie (like me), you owe it to yourself to track it down. The combination of childhood playfulness and serious social commentary is masterful. The kids are heartwarming, and Gregory Peck’s Atticus is a model father and citizen, so when they suffer defeat it brings tears to your eyes and when things work out you just want to hug every one of them.

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Capitalism: A Love Story

Say what you will about Michael Moore’s movies (I have some further thoughts I’ll explain elsewhere), but his movies are at least good for tackling a tough issue and making us think, whether it’s guns, war, the auto industry or health care. Capitalism, unfortunately, tackles the fundamental underpinnings of our whole economic system, with segments on financial markets to insurance to union labor to home loans. While there are plenty of moments of the “Whoa, shit, I didn’t know that” variety, as is his talent, the whole thing feels a bit scattered. It’s as if he’s rushing to try to make every point he can on a topic too big for one film, and as a result loses his way a bit on the road to his thesis. Still worth seeing, but not his best work.

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Dial M for Murder [WI]

It’s true that this movie jumps a little too suddenly and conveniently into a plot for ‘the perfect murder’. But once it gets underway, it doesn’t come off so perfectly after all (shocker), and that’s where it gets much more interesting. The interplay as plotters try to cover their tracks while others try to uncover the truth is handled deftly. However, having recently watched Strangers on a Train as well, something else sticks out: why the multiple uses of tennis stars as main characters, Mr Hitchcock? In Strangers it made sense, since there was a tennis match in the film. In Murder, the character could have been anyone who married rich and needed money. Either Hitchock has a fixation I don’t quite understand, or there was a mid-century epidemic of former tennis players hatching murder plots that they forgot to teach us about in history class.

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