American Taxi Driver Psycho

As is common for me when I need movies to watch, I like to go to the ol' internet and find lists...Top 10 Movies every Guy Should See, or The 30 Movies that mention Elastic Waistbands, etc.

So, I found a list and was intrigued by two movies.  First, American Psycho starring Christian Bale.  Bale plays Patrick Bateman, who works on Wall Street in the late 80's.  He is a pretty typical schmuck, as movies from that time period tend to depict...except that he is a murderous psychopath behind his mask of "normality".  I thought the movie was very well shot, but I was very confused at how the film played out.  I was left with quite a large question mark over my head as to the resolution of the film, and there seem to be a lot of people who agree with that assessment on the interwebs.  Overall, it failed to resonate with me but I plan on reading the book to see if I can gain further clarity.

The second movie I watched was Taxi Driver, a "masterpiece" starring Robert DeNiro and directed by Martin Scorsece.  I have noticed that there seems to be a time period of movies that I don't get, and this falls squarely into that time perieod.  This movie is considered to be one of the greatest of all time, and personally, I thought it was prettty awful.  Maybe I don't "get" older movies, but they tend to fall very flat for me.  I watched Chinatown a few months ago, and can't remember being more bored with a film...until I saw Taxi Driver.  The only interesting part of the movie for me was trying desperately to remember Harvey Keitel's name.  Other than that, I only watched the rest of the film because I was sure that at some point there would be a point to the movie.  Maybe I am wrong...maybe there is something that I missed that was critical to tying the film together, but whatever it was, I missed it big time.  I was confused the whole time as to what the hell was going on, and there really wasn't much of a plot to latch on to.  Was he going to kill Palentine?  Was he trying to date Betsy?  Was he trying to save Iris?  Who knows? I would love to talk to someone who "gets" this movie and have them explain it to me, and why I am so wrong, because lord knows I am not going to come to that realization on my own.

Can one of you help?

Deceptive Movie Titles

I will readily admit, I judge books by their cover. I have long since learned that I don't have the time to give every book, movie, and album a fair shot.  I would be backlogged for years and never get out of it.  So, I have to judge things by my immediate reaction (quick aside, you should read the book Blink by Malcom Gladwell about that subject. Great stuff.).  This inevitably leads to me missing the boat on some great stuff, but it also leads me to finding things that I thought weren't going to be great and turn out to be fantastic.

One of the great differences between me and my wife is that she will watch anything.  We give Redbox way too much business because she will watch pretty much every DVD that they put out because she just doesn't care.  She just wants to watch something for 2 hours and be done with it.  Movie watching for me is much more personal.  I need to feel involved, like I am part of an experience.  I don't watch movies for watching's sake.  I want to be invested in the experience.  So, I am pretty picky about what I watch.

Both of these points lead up to the next bullet, which is how movie titles can drastically affect which movies I watch.  A great example of this was the movie "Dinner for Schmucks" with Paul Rudd and Steve Carrell.  I knew the basic premise of the movie (rich guys bring morons to dinner and pick a winner) but not much else.  After watching the movie, I was actually a bit upset because the title was flat out wrong for the movie.  The film was about Paul Rudd finding one of these "morons" for the dinner and how he kind of ruined his life.  The "dinner" was the last 20 minutes of the movie.  I felt a bit betrayed.  I truly believe the movie would have been a bigger success if it had been called "A Week with Barry" or something similar.  I judged the movie by its title, and it betrayed me a bit.

Ok, so final point:  One of the movies that has snuck past me for several years is the movie "Donnie Darko". The reason that it got by my finely honed filters is that it sounds like an Italian gangster movie (to me).  I thought it was just another movie like Goodfellas or Carlito's Way, and I can't stand gangster movies.  Seriously, I don't think I have enjoyed one movie like that, save for The Usual Suspects.  So I never watched it.

When I travel, I like to load up on movies, and I often can't think of movies to load up on, so I go online and look for lists.  100 MOVIES EVERY GUY SHOULD SEE,  or 10 BEST MOVIES ABOUT GIANT BUNNY RABBITS...you get the idea.  One site mentioned Donnie Darko, but it had one element I hadn't seen before...and it was the picture above.  "Wait a minute!  Italian gangsters don't have demented bunny rabbits with them!"  Turns out, the movie is about a high school boy (Jake Gyllenhal) with some pretty severe dementia, and it has to do with time travel, fate, destiny, insane private school teachers, and the like.  It was a great, great movie.  I really, really enjoyed it. I highly recommend it.  I won't say that it changed my life (there are a lot of people online who say this...just check the IMDB comments), but I was very happy to have found one that slipped through the cracks.

I am a firm believer that movies find you.  If I haven't had some sort of inkling that a movie is going to be good, I usually end up not liking it.  A good example is "Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter".  That movie was terrible, and I should have known.  If no one has recommended a movie to me, or I haven't had my interest piqued by something online or on the radio/tv, I almost never like it.  But movies like Donnie Darko will keep that fire alive that tells me to watch a movie in spite of my best efforts to not like it.

Key and Peele: Dueling Hats

Comedy Central

If you haven't had the pleasure of watching Key and Peele on Comedy Central, you can thank me later.

Test

You are predictable

You are predictable:
Take this simple test if you don’t believe it…

The best medicine...

If you had to pick the one video (viral or otherwise) that made you laugh the hardest consistently, what would it be?

This would be mine:

40 Behind The Scenes Photos From Classic Horror Movies | The Roosevelts

40 Behind The Scenes Photos From Classic Horror Movies | The Roosevelts

Great slideshow of some behind the scenes photos of scary movies.  Really takes the sting out of the "horror" to see Pennywise the Clown taking a break on the porch of a house...

Sir...Can you please stand up?

The next installment of the "travel blog" has to do with a very kind old man taking a weird turn.  On my flight to Chicago, I was seated next to an older gentleman (probably early 70's) who was polite for the entire flight.  No problems whatsoever.  He got up to use the restroom in the middle of the flight, and we shared a cordial laugh when he had trouble locating his seat belt.  Perfectly normal interaction for a flight.

If you have flown on a commercial airliner in the past 10 years, you probably are aware of the etiquette of how to deplane.  When the seatbelt sign turns off, several people immediately stand up (I can't, for the life of me, figure out why, but that is a different story) but most people remain seated.  People start to file out of the plane, row by row, until you get to your row. Then you stand up and get your bag and leave.

Which gets us to me.  I was on the aisle seat, waiting for our row's turn.  There was no room for me to stand up because the aisle was full of other people.  There were still about two rows in front of us that hadn't stood up yet, so it wasn't even close to my turn to stand up. This is where it got a bit odd.  The older gentleman next to me says, "Sir?  Can you please stand up?" as if I could have stood up, but was choosing not to.  He wasn't rude...he actually said it very politely.  I was just floored at what I could have possibly been doing for him to assume I wasn't going to stand up as soon as I could.  Trust me, I wanted to get off the plane as soon as I could.  I turned and looked at him, momentarily stunned while trying to imagine what scenario he was running through to say this to me.  It really took me aback.  I looked at him, and said that I was going as soon as I could, trying very hard not to sound annoyed...but in reality, I was a bit annoyed.

There always seem to be a couple of people on every flight who think that the flight is their own personal vessel, and they can't be bothered with all of these other people. The best example I can think of is the person who is in the row behind you, and uses your seat as a way to pull themselves out of their seat or out of the row...causing your seat to lurch backwards violently as they huff and puff their way towards the restroom.  Or, the person who violently moves their seat back as quickly as they can, launching anything on your tray table on to the floor. It just amazes me how people operate in their own little cocoon, oblivious to the world around them.

Most of the time, people are perfectly gracious.  But every once in a while, you get something that happens to you that just floors you...and I will keep telling you about them. :)