Two Sci-Fi Movies

I put the following pair of movie posters together a while back for cousin Mike:

These are the first two movies from Duncan Jones, David Bowie's son. His third movie is a World of Warcraft movie, called "Warcraft" I think, and his fourth is called "Mute," a sci-fi thing where the main character can't talk, and the whole thing looks so much like Netflix's show Altered Carbon that after all the gin I drank I got confused and started expecting Altered Carbon plot points to pay off. It wasn't bad, despite my confusions.

But these two, Moon and Source Code, are quite good and silly enjoyable. Sam Rockwell stars as basically the only character in Moon, and the plot thickens to the point that trying to describe it essentially spoils it.

Source Code stars Jake Gyllenhaal as what amounts to the last few days of a consciousness trapped in a computer program, as he spends his time trying to find a bomb on a train, a terrorist attack that's also---somehow---been trapped as the titular source code in a computer somewhere. I'm not saying it makes a ton of sense, but it was cool enough: Jake Gyllenhaal redoing the train ride and incrementally getting closer to discovering the bomb, before getting blown-up over and over. And of course falling in love with the girl sharing his train booth.

They're both good and I recommend them.

Updated: 11 Movies by Linkovich Chulmousky

Here you go, Dan:

I have some ideas, but I'll reserve them for the comment section.

Thanks for your hard work!

33 Movies and Some Notes

 In my head I never tried to focus on a "favorite" movie of all time, or whatever. I always had a list, a "List of Five" as it were. (What if we had more fingers?)

There were three movies on my List of Five that were "older" and a fourth that was newer, and these four never fluctuated, and they are all present in my first picture, my First Eleven:

The fifth movie in my List of Five kept changing, depending on my mood or whatever I watched that week (or month), but the point is that spot was a little more fluid. It was always between three different movies.

Then I saw "The Third Man", and my List of Five got upended. I couldn't drop any movie from my pantheon, but I needed to add The Third Man. Life was hard at this point.

It was here that the challenge came up on FB, the naming of ten movies that were too important or too influential for your own viewing habits.

Oh snap, I thought, this is perfect: I've got my ziggurat with four necessaries, the three floaters could all be there, The Third Man can be there, and that leaves the next two most important movies for me, and my List of Ten was done.

Soon after I watched the Battle of Algiers, and I added the image to my First Eleven, and I got to 11, and the idea to start my own Prime Movie Challenge was formed.

So, my First Four:

1. Citizen Kane
2. On the Waterfront
3. Chinatown
4. I (Heart) Huckabees

And the fifth spot on the original List of Five went to one of the following:

1. Bulworth
2. Children of Men
3. The King's Speech

The Third Man monkey-wrenched this generally stable five-spot ziggurat. The next two that had outsized influence over me were:

1. Pulp Fiction
2. The Matrix

And then The Battle of Algiers rounds out the First Eleven.

As far as that picture goes: I (Heart) Huckabees; Pulp Fiction; The Third Man; Children of Men; Bulworth; The Matrix; On the Waterfront; Citizen Kane; The Battle of Algiers; The King's Speech; Chinatown.

My Second Eleven had some movies that I consider super close to the heart as well as some bones being tossed, but lovingly so.

I think I mentioned all of these films in the response to a post, but here we go.

Top row: Dazed and Confused, Last of the Mohicans, Tombstone, Zodiac

Middle row: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Gravity, Cool Hand Luke

Bottom row:Into the Spiderverse, The Wild Bunch, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, The Black Power Mixtape

I still had a bunch of movies I really liked, so I made another 11, a third 11, and wanted it to capture some of the few I couldn't believe I missed and a few others I realized how much I liked. I think I may have mentioned the list in another post comment, and here we go again.

Top row: Dog Day Afternoon, Godfather II, The God's Must be Crazy, Ghostbusters

Middle Row: Empire Strikes Back, Dead Poets Society, Vertigo, Dr. Strangelove

Bottom Row: Temple of Doom, Die Hard, Goodfellas

I was planning on writing a bunch of explanations, like a personal history of my movie tastes or some other boring bullshit, and I probably still will in the future, but mostly for myself. I'd wanted to say more about each of these movies, and see if I could even put together another list, but then I noticed I'd started this post (with the three pictures already added and half of it already written and chilling as a draft) and decided to just finish it, post it, and save the long-winded blah blah blah for later. (Too late.)

11 Movies by Linkovich Chulmousky

I think something is wrong with this site... Pat, if you see this... I have created a new 11 shot movie list deal, but this site won't let me upload the presentation slide I built.  Something is wrong... maybe?

Madness! Another Eleven!

Sorry guys, I've got another Eleven movies, and I think I'm done for a bit. I'm not yet ready to write up some of the other ideas I was having, like my answers and my ziggurat's history and all that.

But, this maybe should have been my Second Eleven instead of the other collection.

Thanks, and good luck!

Some Notes and Another Eleven

 You guys are awesome! 

Part of the background for this idea I had was in trying to decide my own personal favorite movie. That was an internal conversation I've been having for decades, and in the last six or seven years I finalized, like, a list of five, where the fifth one seemed to change depending on my mood. 

Then I saw "The Third Man" from 1947, and my five-level ziggurat was shot. It was a splendid problem to have: to see a movie that you may have only heard about in passing, and it turns out to be, like, the best movie in history. Or at least in the conversation.

Later, some silly Facebook challenge I only had half the energy for helped push my thoughts out to ten, and I made a graphic very similar to the Eleven I showed you guys. Then I saw another movie that firmly buried itself in the upper pantheon of Movies for Pat, and I added the following picture, to get to a Prime number:

This image makes me giggle a little, in that (1) if you haven't seen the movie, it's most likely impossible for you to guess it correctly, unless your history buff game is strong; and (2) if you have seen the movie, then you definitely know what's going on here, and you'll get the answer immediately.

This is a scene from "The Battle of Algiers." Filmed in Algiers less than five years after the Arab majority kicked out the French occupiers, the movie is shot in B&W and paced like a documentary, it deals with the realities of starting, sustaining, and winning a revolution.

In one sequence, three ladies come into what seems like their apartment. They take off their head scarves and robes, revealing house clothes. One comes over to a mirror to check out her long, luxurious hair. Then she takes scissors to the thick braids, hacking away until it's mostly short. Then she grabs a jar of peroxide and starts to lighten it up. By the end, the three women are all dressed French girls, the one who gave herself a haircut and dye job is even in capris.

See, all three have to be able to get through security checkpoints without proper papers, and the only way to do that is by being---or looking---French. Once on the other side of the checkpoints, they can deliver their bombs. That girl up there is being hit on by two French soldiers, while sneaking a bomb through a checkpoint.

Later on I'll put up some answers to my first Eleven, maybe to go along with this next set. I'm with you Dan, about doing more, and more styles or genres or whatever.

But, the Next Eleven:

Until I get a new computer My Prime Number is going to have to be Se7en (Not Pictured, BTW...)

 Good luck everyone.  To quote Harrison Ford (also not pictured):

    'You're gonna need it.'