Its 3:49PM on Tuesday, which means its time for my regular Monday movie post. 

Sorry, its been busy around here...

Aren't all of you supposed to be on vacation, so I can go, too??  Instead we've got all these great deals to work on.  Damn you!

Anyway, I asked someone over the weekend what my movie should be this week... without even saying what movies I had seen or liked or giving her a choice.  Her response was exactly why I agreed to post it, because its something we've all seen and I've never met anyone that didn't think it was a great movie.

"Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'."

Now you know... and everyone knows.  Its just a fantastic movie all the way around.  Its a difficult, but beautiful story of friendship in the harshest of circumstances, and an interesting commentary of the world "out there" versus the world "in here" and what it means to be innocent.  Shawshank Redemption may very well be the best movie of my generation...  and Morgan Freeman is definitely one of the top 5 actors of my generation.  What's amazing was that Shawshank went a complete 0-fer in the Oscars, because it was up against Forrest Gump, which cleaned up, and Pulp Fiction. 

I've only seen the movie twice.  Its not the kind of movie to see over and over again... its just too much to take.  Either way, its truly a great piece of work.  Tim Robbins also does a great job, but I think his charactor gives him a little wind at his back.  His charactor is just in the right situation to really result in a great performance, whereas I think Freeman does a little more to get Red there, but now I'm being picky. 

Robert Redford will show up again on this list, and both Dan Ackroyd and Mary McDonnell have already appeared.  Same, too, with Ben Kingsley.  Perhaps I should just have made this a Top 25 Actors list.

Sneakers is about a quirky cast of characters that gets paid to break into things so that no one else can break into them.   Then, when one of them gets discovered to have a not so clean record, they need to break into a place to break their friend out of trouble. 

There are a lot of characters in here...  maybe too many, but its a bit like Ocean's Eleven, where none of the characters really get developed to deeply, but you just kind of have fun watching them play the game with each other.  In addition to the aforementioned repeaters, those making their first and perhaps only (although that's subject to change) appearance on my list are Sidney Portier and the late River Phoenix, who both do a great job as well.

In any case, in addition to being a fun, quirky, and geeky movie, it sounds fantastic.  James Horner's soundtrack is worth a purchase, and listening to Branford Marsalis play the sax is worth the price of admission.  The soundtrack seamlessly sets off the movie and you probably only realize how good it was if you listen to it separately afterwards.

It was really hot yesterday.

I was in a new place.

I didn't have a Mustang Convertible.

I still haven't closed on my apartment yet, and it seems like whatever can go wrong with this close will go wrong.

Reminds me of U-Turn, with Sean Penn, and that's my movie this week.  Directed by Oliver Stone, U-Turn takes Murphy's Law to new heights (or depths).  Fingers cut off by a loanshark, car broken down, Sean Penn finds himself in a one horse town in the Arizona desert.  If that's not bad enough, he gets mixed up with the most backwards, twisted collection of characters I think I've seen in any movie not named House of 1000 Corpses.  Billy Bob Thorton plays a car mechanic that gets dirtier more ornery with every piece he rips off of Penn's 64 1/2 Mustang.  Jennifer Lopez gives new definition to the phrase, "Don't get involved with a crazy hot chic who may or may not be having an inappropriate relationship with her father in Arizona after a loanshark cuts off two of your fingers."   Ok, so that's not an often-used phrase, I'll admit, but it should be, because its just a bad idea.

Things in U-Turn just get from bad, to worse, to ugly, to whatever's much worse than bad, worse, and ugly combined.   Great movie... not so great for the whole family to watch.

So, I should be closing this week *hopefully* and moving to Brooklyn this weekend.  It has me thinking a lot about neighborhoods and New York, and whenever I think about that, I always think of this scene in 25th Hour where Edward Norton is in the bathroom of his father's bar.  He goes off into this rant, cursing out all the different New York neighborhoods and accompanying inhabitants.  When he got to Bensonhurst, I was pretty sure I knew some of those guys and exactly where they were when they filmed it. 

25th Hour is a really powerful movie, and the situation effectively packs a lifetime into a single day--Edward Norton's last day as a free man before he goes off to jain for a seven year sentence.

What would you do?  How would you spend it?  Who would you want to be with?

The supporting cast is great, too.  Robert Scoble... eerrr..  Phillip Seymor Hoffman couldn't be more uncomfortable tagging along the last day of a ride that left without him some years ago.  He and Barry Pepper play Norton's childhood friends whose paths all diverged pretty significantly, making the juxtaposition of their presence on this contrived last day all the more emotional and complicated.  Anna Paquin, as Hoffman's underage and oversexed student, Brian Cox as Norton's Dad, and Rosario Dawson as the girlfriend that might have turned Norton in round out a really perfect cast.  This film is a must see for Edward Nortan fans, New Yorkers, and just about anyone else.

Since it was Memorial Day weekend, which is way I kinda forgot to post this on Monday, I tried to think of a movie that could somehow tie into the holiday theme.  I scanned my list for anything with war...  nope...  beaches?  Boats perhaps?  Well, actually, beaches and boats I have.

My Memorial Day Weekend 50 Favorite Movies Pick:

Castaway

I saw this in the theater and from the moment the plane goes down and he wakes up on the island, to about the moment he gets saved, I've never seen a theater full of people so engaged, so intently focused on a movie in my life.  No one made any noise.  No shifting, no whispering.  They just sat still, in silence, while Tom Hanks lived and learned, alone, on this island in the middle of nowhere.  It was one of the quiet movie experiences, between both the audience and the movie, that I've ever seen.  It was just exhausting to watch, really.   We'd seen Philadelphia and  Forrest Gump, and while those were good acting roles for Hanks, they were also solid, well written stories.  Castaway... well, was there even a script for this movie?  I mean, it must have been all directions, because he hardly has any lines throughout his time on the island.  Now that's great acting, when you can move an audience just by being alone, quiet, in the middle of nowhere.  We've seen this story before with a boatload of people, or two or three people, but just one guy...  it could have been a real flop if it wasn't done right, but its perfect.  Hanks is perfectly cast and really pushes the envelope on his acting skills.  Oh, and the Wilson the soccerball did a phenomenal job as well.  This is one of those movies that I probably won't watch again, only because its so intense, but its easily one that deserves to be on this list because of its quality.

I wasn't going to post this one so soon, because its so new, but I watched it tonight and couldn't resist. 

I'm not a particularly good traveler, so when I think of what it would be like to stay in Japan, I picture myself as out of place as Bill Murray.  In fact, if you had to cast anyone as an out of place character, from the less than scientific Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters to the perpetually stuck Phil Connors in Groundhog Day, Bill Murray would be your guy.  Its almost as if the casting agent says, "I don't want someone to actually do any acting.  I just want the whole movie to happen to this guy, and we'll just watch it happening to him." 

And that's what Lost in Translation does... it happens to Bill Murray.  He doesn't ask for it.  He doesn't try to meet Scarlett Johansson.  He doesn't really even want to be on talk shows or have his name up in lights.  But yet, its not like he has a clear idea of what else he wants to be doing either.  I think I'd like my life to happen to me a little more once in a while... instead of me needing to push and nudge and make things happen.  Why doesn't Scarlett Johansson just randomly show up in my life, you know?  Maybe she blogs and uses Technorati or PubSub to find herself...  you never know. 

Anyway, the soundtrack of this movie is perfect, but I'm not sure it would stand alone just to be listened to.  Its more of a score and fits perfectly with the movie.  There are some great music scenes, like Murray's karaoke rendition of "More Than This".  In fact, the whole movie is just very well put together.  I'm glad Sofia Coppola can write and direct, because she sure as hell can't act her way out of a paper cup.  (As far as I remember, there were only two Godfather movies, right?)

Like a lot of the movies that will be on my list, though, nothing much happens in this movie.  There's really no plot.  Its just a few days in the lives of two mismatched, but perfectly matched, Americans in Japan.  Nothing really changes in their lives at the end, or does everything change?  What does he whisper in her ear at the end?  On one hand, the idealistic part of me hopes he doesn't cheapen the whole experience by telling her to look him up in the states or something, but, on the other hand, I sure wouldn't mind Giovanni Riobisi's character get kicked to the curb in a hurry.  Anyone care to comment on what they think he said?