My 2010 Movie Odyssey - Part XV

How the West Was Won (1962)

This may be the most epic western ever made. The Cinerama process (an ultra-widescreen format) captures the American west in all its grandeur. The problem is that the movie gets too big for its britches. Much like Giant and Cavalcade, How the West Was Won tries to tell too much story in its (already considerably lengthy) running time. Characters came and went throughout the film and I was never always sure who was who and what their relationships to each other were. It was more like a series of short films strung together than one cohesive narrative.

The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)

There is no story here, just a series of parody sketches from the guys who later made Airplane! It is very funny though also very R-rated, but feels more like watching an episode of Saturday Night Live than an actual movie.

American Psycho (2000)

This film is too grim and dark for my liking and, aside from a scene in which our antihero and his colleagues compare business cards, not very funny for being a satire.

Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965)

Having seen some of the new episodes of Doctor Who, I was curious to check out some of the classic Doctor Who stuff. And then I saw this movie was available on hulu. And it starred Peter Cushing as the Doctor. So I watched it. First of all, it is not a part of the Doctor Who canon but a spinoff movie made for American audiences with some of the major bits of Doctor Who mythology altered in order to make it more accessible. It is a rather hokey movie with very dated production design, though consistent with the little bit of classic Doctor Who that I have seen. There is little to recommend here, even to fans of Doctor Who or Peter Cushing.

Moon (2009)

This is an intriguing tale of a man working all alone on a remote lunar mining facility. While the film has a slow pace it covers some interesting narrative territory. (Or it would have had I not worked on a student film about ten years ago that basically had the same basic plot twist to it.)