Unwatched Movie Pile

So I've been MIA for a while once again. Quite honestly I just haven't watched any movies recently, and what few I've seen haven't really gotten me all that excited. I used to go to the theater all the time, now I've been maybe five times this year. A lot of it is time, and a lot of it has to do with the quality. I also haven't really watched much at home. My Netflix movies still sit around for months before I get to them.

I did finally move though and I've just about gotten settled into my new place. I have an office now with a brand new desk set up to start focusing on my writing. And even though it might not show up here on the blog, I have started to write more, which is a good thing. Another benefit of the move is that I've finally gotten all of my DVDs out in the open. Most of my collection has been boxed up and buried in the garage for over a year, but now they are all out and organized and ready for me to start watching, and I have a lot to watch, which brings me to this article.

A couple of years ago a writer on another website wrote about his DVD collection and the amount of titles he owned that he had never watched. He set out to watch one movie a day everyday until he got through his collection, and it took him over a year to finish. That got me to thinking about my own DVD collection.

Having worked at various movie stores I've picked up quite a bit of movies over the years, many that I have seen and love and want to own, but many that I've always wanted to see so I've bought in the anticipation of watching one day, and many that were pure blind buys, knowing nothing about the movie and taking a risk at purchasing. There are some that I have no idea why I bought, maybe because they were used and cheap and now it sits on the shelf collecting dust.

I decided to compile a list of what I own that I haven't watched and the numbers are staggering. I could watch a movie a day and it would take me well over a year to finish. I'm close to 400 DVDs that I need to watch, and some of those are box sets with several movies, so the actual amount of movies could be closer to 450. Some of these on my list I have actually seen before but it's so long ago I don't remember it and I'm due for a rewatch, but most I have never seen before. Pretty impressive huh?

So to get myself writing again I've decided to devote an article a week to my unwatched movie pile. Unfortunately I don't have the time to watch a movie a day, so I'm only going to hold myself to one a week. Maybe I'll have time to slip in a few more, but if I can get through one a week I'll be happy. It's all about the baby steps. I'm not sure how long each post will be, I guess it all depends on what I thought of the movie. I'm going to title this series The Unwatched Movie Pile report, or UMP Report for short. Together we can discover some interesting and exciting movies, or perhaps some real duds. Either way maybe I can finally make a dent into this large stack of movies that have been begging to be watched for far too long.

For my first venture into the pile I've decided to go with something a little more commercial than I'm used to but with some interesting back story, which lead me more than anything to pick this up used and give it a try, and that film is The Golden Compass.

The movie is based the series of books His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. I'm sure it was New Line's hope that this would turn into a new franchise for them after being done with the Lord of the Rings series and the success of other children's franchises like Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia. It is the connection to the Narnia series that got my attention for this film.

The Chronicles of Narnia has been widely praised by religious organizations for it's strong Christian values, as the story is a blatant allegory for the Christ story. They organized viewing parties and rented theaters for church groups to support the film. The amount of effort they put into supporting that film is the same amount of effort they put into trying to get people to avoid The Golden Compass because of it's strong anti religious themes. I had never heard of the series of books prior to this film, and based on the trailer I wouldn't have been that interested in seeing the film, but add controversy to a situation, including anything dealing with religion, and my interest is peaked. So if anything, their protests got someone who wouldn't have watched this film to buy it and check it out.

The movie follows a young girl named Lyra who journeys into a parallel world to find her friend who has been kidnapped. Many children are being kidnapped and taken to this world to be held prisoner and experimented on. In this world every one's soul takes the shape of an animal that is with them at all times, connected by a bond. The leader of this group, played by Nicole Kidman, is trying to find a way to separate the children from their souls. It is up to young Lyra to stop her and rescue the children. I think there was more to the story, but frankly I wasn't all that interested.

Other than the soul aspect of the story, I really didn't get any anti Christianity or religion from the material. There was perhaps a theme of anti establishment or authority, which I suppose can be substituted for religious groups since they hold power and authority. Maybe that theme is more prevalent in the books, having not read them I can not tell, but I don't think director Chris Weitz really tries to play that up. It's basically your typical good versus evil story, a theme older than the Bible itself, except this has lots and lots of special effects.

I really wasn't moved one way or another by the story. It relies a little too heavy on CGI effects. There is an armored polar bear that was visually distracting, but it did have going for it the fact it was voiced by the great Ian McKellen. In fact there are a lot of great actors in the film, including Daniel Craig, Sam Elliott, Ian McShane, and Eva Green. The story is geared towards children, and although some of the scenes might be intense for really young ones, I'm sure kids would really enjoy this film, but it didn't really do all that much for me and I'm not surprised that we haven't heard too much about the following books going into production. I like to think that the story just wasn't there enough and the controversy really didn't have much to do with it's successes or failures.

In fact I was pretty let down by the controversy. The things I was reading while this was in production I was expecting long monologues about God being evil and little kids should be burning their Bibles, but there really isn't anything like that at all. If these groups hadn't protested the film I would never have gotten anything remotely close to the themes they had been suggesting. Again, I'm not familiar with the source material, but it's definitely not in the film.

So I'm not disappointed I dropped five dollars on a used copy, but I probably won't watch it again. It doesn't do anything to stand out from the hundreds of other special effect driven adventure stories that are out there, whether they are geared towards kids or not. For my money neither do the Narnia films, and I've read those books and enjoyed them as a kid, but the movies feel lifeless and sort of like a paint by numbers assembly of a film. Kids enjoy them however, and I'm sure kids would enjoy the Golden Compass. It's not Harry Potter, and it's not Lord of the Rings, but then again hardly any film can aspire to that. Hopefully the next film I choose from the pile will be a bit better, for now this goes into the viewed section of my collection where it will sit until someday I have a kid who is bored and has seen everything else, maybe I'll pull this DVD out to distract him or her. I could do far worse. Until next time...