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...

INCEPTION

In a summer full of traditional Hollywood tried and true retreads, it's nice to see an original be given a chance to succeed. Inception, the new film from Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, is definitely an original by today's standards. It's a thoroughly engaging and entertaining film that leaves a lot to admire, even if it's far from perfect.

There is no real easy way to summarize the film. To say the story is about a group of thieves that infiltrate their targets dreams to steal information is doing a disservice to the several layers of plot that is going on in the film. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, the leader of the group who is plagued with a lot of guilt from his dark troubled past. His past is starting to creep it's way into his work which is making things difficult for the team. Because of his past he is no longer able to return home to see his kids, he is forced to go on the run in order to avoid extradition back to the states. Ken Watanabe plays Saito, a powerful business man looking for help with his competition. Saito hires Cobb to do the opposite of their extraction process, he wants them to plant an idea into the mind of his lone rival Fischer, played by Cillian Murphy, to disband his father's empire and sell it off. Implanting the idea will require diving deep into the subconscious of their target by forcing dreams within dreams. If they are able to succeed than Saito can guarantee Cobb his freedom and the opportunity to return home to his family. Sounds simple enough right?

Inception is playing with multiple genres. Where Blade Runner combined Science Fiction with Film Noir, and The Matrix combined Science Fiction with Martial Arts, Inception is combining Science Fiction with a heist film, but mostly it's a character driven melodrama. It isn't the action or special effects that drive the film, it's the characters and the dialogue, and there is a lot of dialogue. Cobb is a complex and broken character. There is a lot going on under the surface, and in a line of work that deals mainly with what is going on under the surface this is a dangerous state of mind to be in. The danger and threat to the characters comes from Cobb's demons. If he can't come to terms with his past then it could kill his entire team. It's a fresh approach for a summer blockbuster and a nice change of pace.

It's a long film but it rarely slows down to make you notice. The third act does run a bit long and that is where a majority of the story happens, but it's engaging the entire time and it keeps things tense. The first half of the film is entirely set up. Lots of exposition with plenty of dialogue and explaining of the world and the upcoming assignment, but it never feels forced, but rather necessary. Nolan has created a complex plot that is extremely detailed, every step must be performed perfectly, and the entire process must be explained to the team, and in a sense the audience, in order to pull it off perfectly without not only failing, but getting themselves lost in the multiple dream worlds so as not to wake up a vegetable.

By the end of the film I found myself questioning what I had just seen. Did all of this really happen or was it in itself just a dream? It's totally left for interpretation and that is how I like it. The film is asking you from the very beginning to pay attention and it doesn't try to dumb things down to make you understand by pandering to the lowest common denominator. There are plenty of other films out this summer that take care of that for you. The movie doesn't apologize for it's intelligence, and I wish more filmmakers would follow suit.


Inception is a remarkably engaging story, expertly filmed by one of the best working today. I was truly amazed by the film and I will definitely need to see it again to try and catch some things I might have missed to help solve the ending a bit better. But as much as I loved the movie it is far from perfect. I would have loved to have seen some more crazy and outlandish scenarios in the deeper dream sequences. I loved the scenes in the hallway with Joseph Gordon-Levitt fighting while they are falling in the first dream and that sense of falling is implanted on their next level dream, causing a sense of weightlessness while he fights the bad guys. I would have liked to have seen more of that in the third dream state during the snow fight. Nolan has created a world where anything is possible and he has shown us as much during the training scenes with Ellen Page, I would have liked to have seen the stakes raised during these later scenes.

In the grand scheme of things these complaints are minor and they don't detract from the overall enjoyment of the film. It won't go down as a game changer like films such as Blade Runner and The Matrix may have, but it is a really good and well made film. Compared to what is out in theaters now this film is darn near masterful and it's just refreshing that in a season long parade of intellectually insulting garbage passed along as the best Hollywood has to offer, it's so refreshing to see something written with intelligence and thought that is also entertaining. The movie going experience would be so much better if all filmmakers and producers took as much care and craftsmanship into their product. If more people see more films like this and less of what is already out there than perhaps that would be the case. For that reason alone I can not recommend enough to see this movie, you'll be glad you did.