"So... 100 Movies of Fall?" "I hate you."

We did it! We had our doubts along the way, for sure, and Brandon threatened to pull the plug more than once, but I am really glad we persevered. Sure, it's not really a great accomplishment, and we certainly could have done something much more productive with our time, but in the end we do feel like we at least followed through and finished something we started, and got to spend lots of quality time together. To be completely honest, I gained a bunch of weight, we're both in awful shape, our DVRs are about ready to explode, so a lot of other parts of our lives did suffer in the process. However, we are pleased we actually did it.

Usually I love pretty much every movie I watch while I am watching it. I am the worst movie critic on earth because I will feel however the film makers want me to feel and accept just about anything that is thrown at me. During this project I found myself watching movies differently and being more critical knowing I was going to have to write about them, and ultimately got a lot more out of them. I discovered that as a general rule I can't stand 70s movies and absolutely adore 50s movies. I fell madly in love with Lou Taylor Pucci and had an extreme epiphany about Casey Affleck. We realized that Amy Ryan can do pretty much anything and steal every scene she's in. Brandon realized that AFI's Top 100 movies list is VERY inconsistent, and that people who claim that they love The Godfather Trilogy are either retarded or have never sat through that mess. Oh, and don't get him started on The Deerhunter. Mostly he's just happy we actually made the effort to watch movies instead of spending all of our free time watching tv or playing video games. "TV rarely reaches art," he said. I guess I can agree to an extent, but TV will never be replaced as my entertainment medium of choice and I am dying to get back to it.

Overall, this was a really cool experiment, and although I think the fact that Brandon picked a World Cup summer to do it was horrific planning on his part, we both had a great time with it. Now if only we could put this much into a worthwhile project... ;o)

"Dog Found!"

Movie 100!! Casey suggested we make this an event, so we had her and Travis over and asked them to pick something for us to watch. We all agreed Uncertainty sounded like the perfect fit: it has the awesomeness of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is always enjoyable, it has a quirky plot, and the promise of good action. The idea of following a couple through two different stories as a result of the two possible choices they could make seems like it could be very entertaining. Unfortunately, it may have been a bit overly ambitious and was much stronger in idea than execution. We were all very frustrated by how stupid the couple is in the yellow portion of the film and how incredibly boring they are in the green portion. None of us really seemed to care about whether they would survive or what they would decide to do about the pregnancy - we only ever cared about what happened to the dog.

Since we didn't really go out with a bang for our final film, we decided to put on a sure fire winner, just as a bonus, and I finally got to see a movie I have been longing for forever: Balls of Fury!! Brandon gave into the stupid fun and my constant laughter, and ended up enjoying it almost as much as I did. Success!!

"Some things in this world are better left where they lie."

We're still not really sure what the message of 9 was, or what all that funky business with the life forces and whatnot was, but we liked it. This was mostly because of the freaky animation and the great voice casting. It was quite visually compelling, and I do believe I didn't pick up my PSP once because I didn't want to miss any of the onscreen action. We feel like it achieved far more stylistically than it did story wise, and Brandon thought it could make an interesting video game but that the story was not expanded enough from its original short status to make a full length movie. It's not completely satisfying, but it's still short enough that it's worth a watch.

"The grammar in this country's terrible."

I had a sneaking suspicion that Brandon just picked Chaos because after watching Visioneers he likes to say "chay-oss" but as soon as I saw Jason Statham's name I knew the true reason. That's really all it takes for him. Of course, my heart skipped a beat when I realized this was a Ryan Phillipe movie, too. He's one of my "oh so dreamy" actors that I don't get to see very often, but who always gives me the wiggles. Then you add Wesley Snipes to that mix? Now we've got a party. This was a pretty exciting movie with a good story, good action, good twists, good performances - just the kind we like. It was fairly solid all the way around, but I think it just went straight to DVD which is actually understandable because it isn't really groundbreaking or anything we haven't seen before. It is almost like someone took a bunch of elements of better movies, pieced them together, tied a Wesley Snipes bow on it and called it a day. It was fun enough but fairly forgettable.

"I hope she enjoys shitting out the teeth she swallowed!"

Mini's First Time is so messed up, but we both laughed our asses off. Alec Baldwin is great as always, and although Nikki Reed rubs a lot of people the wrong way, we have always liked her. The story is extremely darkly comedic, and Reed and Carrie-Ann Moss do a great job conveying the painfully awful mother/daughter relationship that is the catalyst for all of the crazy behavior Reed's Mini perpetrates throughout. Her theory of life really just consisting of firsts, and her desire to pile as many of them into her life as possible sounds pretty admirable at first, until you realize that her firsts (prostitution, sex with her stepfather, murder) aren't what normal people might go for. We thought it was well done and Reed carries the movie quite well for such a young, fairly inexperienced actress.

"The angels are not done with you yet."

Ah, some good old fashioned video game based action! Mark Wahlberg stars as Max Payne, a cop who is falling apart as a result of the murder of his wife and child, so once the investigation goes dry he relegates himself to the cold case desk in order to keep digging. Once new evidence comes to light, he goes on a revenge fueled rampage to find the murderer. It's a twisted, twisty, interesting, dark, visually intriguing and ultimately enjoyable action thriller. We saw the big bad guy coming a mile away and were kind of disappointed that it took Max so long to figure it out, but the journey getting there was quite watchable. I was surprised that the psycho villain was played by a guy I always think of as a tv actor, and was excited that he did such a good job with it. We're always down for Marky Mark, and the rest of the cast was bulging at the seams with other people we like - Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Ludacris, Chris O'Donnell, Donal Logue, Olga Kurylenko - so although this wasn't a great movie it is definitely worth the watch.

"I am really going to miss that car."

Strangely, we don't have much to say about The Joneses. Ours is a big Duchovny lover household, so we were interested in this one as soon as we heard about it. The concept is clever - a fake family planted in an affluent neighborhood that is secretly paid to lure people into buying the products they use. The problem is that it is very one note and doesn't really go anywhere. In fact, it was way less fun that it could have been, and couple of the story lines ended tragically. I think we would have liked it more if it were a lighthearted look at consumerism rather than pretending to be fun and then falling apart and turning bleak. We will watch pretty much anything good old Dave does, but we wouldn't recommend this.