GBGoodies 2015 Movie Logbook

Blue Car (2002) - I watched this movie for the 6th Hall of Fame. This is kind of a hard movie for me to rate because I liked some things about it, but I didn't like other things about it.

I'm sorry about all the spoilers, but it's hard to explain my thoughts about this movie without giving away some important plot points.

I liked the basic story about a teacher helping his student with her writing because he thought she had talent. He even encouraged her to enter her writing in a competition. For most of the movie, I thought it was a great relationship. He became almost a father-figure for her, when her own father wasn't part of her life.

I was also back and forth about the main character, Megan. At first, I didn't like her because she seemed like a self-centered teenager. She didn't want to help her mother by taking care of her younger sister, and she was even rude and nasty to her mother about it.



At least the movie ended on a bit of a high note. I liked Meg's final poem. It was very powerful.

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Brokeback Mountain (2005) - I watched this movie for the 6th Hall of Fame. I saw this movie many years ago, so this was a re-watch, but I didn't remember a lot of the specifics about the movie, so it was nice to watch it again.

This is a great movie about a very unique love story. It's about two men who fall in love when they are young, and form a bond that lasts a lifetime. Even while each of them leads "normal" family lives, they keep their love a secret.

This is a very powerful, and gut-wrenching movie. Heath Ledger (Ennis Del Mar) and Jake Gyllenhaal (Jack Twist) both give stellar performances. They make you feel their happiness when they're together, and their pain when they're apart. Michelle Williams also gives a fantastic performance as Ennis' wife.

This is a beautiful and heart-breaking movie that everyone should see.

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Featuring a giant Michelle Williams.

Ha, she's going to eat them both.

The Notorious Landlady (1962) - I watched this movie for the 1960 movies list. I had never heard of this movie, but it aired on a local cable channel recently, and it has a great cast, so I decided to give it a try.

This movie is so good that it's one of my new favorite Jack Lemmon movies. This movie is a mystery with just the right amount of comedy, and even a little drama mixed in. The final chase scene set to the music from The Pirates of Penzance was the perfect way to end this fantastic movie.

Jack Lemmon and Kim Novak are great together in this movie, and this is one of Jack Lemmon's best performances. It was also nice to see Fred Astaire in this movie too. He was perfect as Jack Lemmon's boss.

Unfortunately I missed this movie before I turned in my 1962 movie list, but it is very likely to be on my 1960s list. I highly recommend this wonderful movie.

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That's cool to find a new favorite so completely out of the blue like that.

Yeah, it caught me by surprise. It aired after another Jack Lemmon movie called Good Neighbor Sam (1964), but that movie wasn't as good. It was a good movie, but just average good, not great good.

The Notorious Landlady was a much better movie, and Jack Lemmon was at the top of his game in it. I'd rank it right up at the top of his movies with The Apartment.

Woman in the Dunes (1964) - I watched this movie for the 6th Hall of Fame. I had never heard of it before watching it, but after reading the synopsis on IMDB, I was pretty sure that it wasn't my type of movie, and unfortunately, I was right.

Overall, I found this movie to be kind of boring. The characters weren't likable at all, so I had no reason to care if he was able to get away or not. Most of the movie was so dark that it was hard to see what was actually happening.

And I hated the ending because it made no sense.

After watching the movie, I read a little bit about it on IMDB to see if maybe I missed to point of the movie, and maybe something might change my opinion of this movie, but it didn't help. I just don't get what most people see in this movie.

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Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) - I watched this movie because I was challenged by Jiraffejustin to watch all the movies in Swan's Top Ten. Thanks to several Movie Tournaments here on MoFo, I had already seen several of the movies listed, but this was one of the few that I hadn't seen yet.


I hated Fitzcarraldo (1982), so when I saw that this movie starred Klaus Kinski and was directed by Werner Herzog, I had little hope for this movie. Unfortunately, this wasn't my type of movie either.

The story of the search for El Dorado should have been interesting, but this was just brutal. It was boring at times, but some scenes were so barbaric that they were hard to watch. This movie should have felt like a good adventure movie, but it didn't. It felt more like a war movie to me. It seemed like every few minutes someone else was being killed. There was no adventure, and not even a good ending.

This is another movie that I just don't understand what most people see in the movie.

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Persona (1966) - I watched this movie because I was challenged by Jiraffejustin to watch all the movies in Swan's Top Ten. Thanks to several Movie Tournaments here on MoFo, I had already seen most of the movies listed, but this was the last movie that I hadn't seen yet.

The movie started off with several disturbing images, including one image of a big spider, so this didn't look too promising right from the start. Fortunately it got better, but it still wasn't my type of movie.

I usually like movies that have a lot of talking without a lot of action, but for the first half of the movie, I had little interest in what Alma was talking about. It's also kind of boring to listen to one person doing all the talking, as opposed to a conversation between two or more people. There's no discussion or conflict. It's just one person rambling on about herself and her life.

The first half of the movie kind of dragged on, but it started to get a little better in the second half. If Alma had told Elisabeth some interesting stuff, it could have been a good movie, but most of what she talked about was just boring. They seemed to be forming a bond that was quickly broken at that point.

I'm not sure that I really understood the ending.

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Where are the ratings for the last two movies?

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

I decided not to rate them because they weren't my types of movies, and the ratings would have been very low. If I had to rate them, these would be the ratings:

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
Persona (1966)

What do you think you would rate the exact same movies if Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee were in them? Seriously.

If they were the exact same movies, they would get the exact same ratings. But I'd like to think that Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee wouldn't make those movies. Their movies are much more lighthearted and entertaining. Those movies were just brutal and depressing.

Plus rep for watching them. Too bad you didn't like them, though.

In Woman in the Dunes...



Persona, when you say you don't know if you understood the ending. That's kind of the point, it's not meant to be straight forward and make complete sense, it's supposed to be up to you to think about identity and draw your own conclusions, it's an examination of humans and other elements of life.

When you say you don't understand what people see in these films, really? I can understand that your tastes are very defined, and certain 'types' of films you don't like, but can you really not see why people might like/love these? At all? Not everyone watches a movie expecting something to happen or for the end to give us the arrival to a certain place, some films are more open and attempt to go to different places of the mind through imagery and such, and examine deeper themes that go beyond a normal linear story. It's fine that you don't like them, but I'd be surprised if you genuinely can't see why others would like these films.

I think all three are great.

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I have to agree with this. I like a lot of arthouse, like these, because of their depth and ESPECIALLY because of their craft. The kind of movies gb likes tend to bore me because they are standard and, often, formulaic. But that's not to say her taste is bad (in fact, there are some I like - WALL-E, Arsenic and Old Lace, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, just off the top of my head. Spielberg has style people! ). But it's not my taste. I get why someone might like them, but they're not for me, because when I watch movies I am looking for craft, depth, intellectual stimulation, and/or a visceral experience (which is what I love about horror).

Some movies that I don't like, I can see why other people like them, even though they're not my type of movie, but other movies, I just don't see what other people see in them.

I'm not a fan of some of the top-rated movies, (The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Chinatown, etc.), but I can appreciate the movies for what they are, even if I don't love them. At least the story is good, the characters are interesting, and they hold my attention. They're not the type of movie that I would want to watch again, but I'm glad that I watched them at least once.

But other movies, (like Aguirre and Woman in the Dunes), I just don't get it. There was nothing there to draw me into the movie. No likable characters, boring story, and they just don't hold my interest at all.

The characters aren't meant to be likeable, try... complex. Aguirre is about a man descending into madness both in body on his journey and in mind. Persona is about identity, Woman in the Dunes is also about identity and society. Other people find them interesting, and therefore not boring. Other people have different criteria, story is not a necessity for everyone.

And that's the difference between me and most of the people here. I'm just a casual movie watcher. I love watching movies, but I just want to sit back, relax, and be entertained. I don't need some deep story to figure out. I just want a simple story that holds my attention.