I signed up for a free trial of Netflix and decided to binge on as many movies as I could in two weeks without totally ignoring my real life. I got through 11, which is pretty good all things considered, and lots of them were very good. Here's what I saw and what I thought (don't worry, no spoilers):

Juno – I enjoyed this, although it didn’t quite live up to all the crazy hype. I did like the attitude and spunk Diablo Cody brought, although honestly I would probably hate Juno if I knew her in real life. However, Allison Janney can do no wrong, in my humble opinion.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith – This was the perfect movie to watch on Valentine’s Day: sexy actors, rage, violence and deception. Good stuff.

The Fountain – A really beautiful art piece. The lighting alone makes this worth a viewing. Some of the parallels and visual ties between the past, present, and future storylines were very striking and gracefully done. But it felt like something was missing and I can’t quite put my finger on what. I almost wish they’d done one more draft on the script. It seemed to hint at a lot of profound ideas, not quite posing questions and definitely not giving concrete answers. As a piece of cinematic art, I liked it, but even a day later I’m still mulling over what more I wanted from the movie. I may need to watch it again later and see if my opinion holds.

Real Women Have Curves – I really want to have a beer and shoot the breeze with America Ferrera. I think she seems like such a fun, laid-back gal. The plot here is nothing new and I don’t think it was terribly realistic (how many high school teachers just happen to be best buds with the dean at Columbia University?), but there’s still a lot of charm in this movie. And mad props to Lupe Ontiveros, who played the mom; she was fantastic.

Me and You and Everyone We Know – A movie about damaged and detached people. I don’t quite know what to do with movies like this because it seems like they’re trying so hard to be “deep” that I can’t simply enjoy them. Visually, though, this one had great colors and some of the character quirks were brilliant. I really liked the idea of technology and connection and art, and the sections that dealt with that were my favorites. The squicky dude hitting on the teenaged girls was not my favorite, nor was the chatroom side plot. However, I’d give this movie the nod for best writing thus far in the Netflix experiment. This is also the first movie in this endeavor where I especially noticed the instrumental soundtrack and felt like it was a very right fit. The more I think about it after the fact, the more I like it. I’d like to watch it again once the marathon’s over.

I’m Not There – Awesome. Really awesome. I don’t know a lot of Bob Dylan history, but I liked this idea of presenting his many self-inventions. Interesting way of presenting an artist, music, fame and creation. Cate Blanchett and Marcus Carl Franklin were fantastic, Christian Bale had some great moments, lots of excellent supporting roles. Lots of great writing and great visuals. Not only do I want to listen to copious amounts of Dylan now, I kind of want to buy this movie. 

Be Kind Rewind – Very cute and had some genuine laugh-out-loud moments. I wish I’d seen more of the movies they were recreating, but I still enjoyed it. Jack Black is one of my favorite movie comedians, and I think he can really shine in smart films like this one (also High Fidelity). I’d definitely recommend it. 

Waiting for Guffman – The best part of the movie was about half an hour in when I realized Corky St. Clair was the six-fingered man from The Princess Bride. Who knew? The movie itself was just sort of okay for me. A little disappointing.

Thank You For Smoking – Smart and sassy. I laughed out loud at several points, and both the writing and acting were totally solid. Oddly, I feel like it had really good sets: very strong yet modern in lines and colors. It made a fitting backdrop, so props to the design team. My only question was an element of the Katie Holmes plotline, and honestly, I would have cast somebody else. She was the weakest link in a great cast and she just bothers me on principle. But despite my brief disappointment to a kind of obvious plot twist, the movie redeemed itself and took a slightly different take than I expected for the ending. I really enjoyed it and would watch it again.

Burn After Reading – If memory serves, this was my first Coen brothers movie. It was pretty good, but not a stand-out for me. Brad Pitt was hysterical, though. I really think I’ve sold him short all these years. I’ve seen him in movies that are pure fluff (see Mr. and Mrs. Smith), but even then he’s really got something kind of magic on screen. He’s a scene-stealer. The saving orphans and being incredibly sexy don’t hurt either. So good for you, Brad, you’ve finally won me over. Coen brothers, you still have some work to do.

Lars and the Real Girl – This was such a good movie to end the Netflix venture on. It was sweet and a little sad and seriously renewed my faith in humanity. (What, sometimes a girl has doubts.) It’s another one that I plan on watching again and possibly adding to my collection. I don’t have anything else concrete to say other than to highly, highly recommend it.

At dinner this evening, we started talking about our top five movies of all time. I gave my list, started debating my number five selection, then decided to be all-inclusive and just come up with a top ten. So here you are, dear readers, Anna's ten favorite movies to date, roughly in order:

1) Amelie (A past boyfriend said this choice as my favorite movie of all time said a lot about me. Take that as you will.)
2) Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Held the #1 spot until junior year of college. I still cry at the end every time.)
3) Ferris Bueller's Day Off
4) Singin' in the Rain
5) Star Wars (A New Hope, and not the ridiculous extended version)
6) High Fidelity
7) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
8) Run Lola Run
9) The Matrix
10) The Court Jester

I also feel like I should note the honorable mention due to A Muppet Christmas Carol, as I have watched it more times than any other movie and can recite the whole thing verbatim, complete with musical numbers. However, this list could be subject to change since I'm finally giving in to the siren song of Netflix. More on my two-week, free-trial, crash-cinema-catch-up is forthcoming.

I saw the Sex and the City movie last night with some friends. I went just to ogle the clothes and I figured I wouldn't like the storylines they used. I have a lot of thoughts, but I shall put them under a cut for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

Last summer I had my friend Amanda, who is vegan, and her boyfriend over for dinner and made ratatouille. I chose it because it's one of the few dishes in my repertoire that doesn't rely on cheese, but it happened to be shortly after the Pixar movie came out. Steve peered into my simmering pot of vegetables and said, "I didn't know it was a real food." It is a real food and is, as Colette says in the movie, "a peasant dish." It's hearty, simple, and delicious. Eggplant is the main vegetable along with peppers, zucchini, and onion. Chop them all up and saute with some garlic, spices and tomatoes. All you really need is patience, no special skill involved. It's a comfort food. We ate it often enough in my family during the summer when the vegetables were at their tastiest.

I'd been meaning to see the movie Ratatouille ever since it came out, but since I'm cheap I wanted to wait until it came out on video. I finally snagged it from the library yesterday and settled down after dinner to watch. Pixar makes such gosh darn beautiful movies. I loved all the scenes of Remy scampering through buildings or dancing around the rim of a soup pot. And yes, it made me miss Paris. But what really got me was the look on that little rat's face when he's watching a cooking show with his culinary idol, Chef Gusteau, whose motto is 'Anyone Can Cook.' As Gusteau talks about loving and savoring the many tastes and textures of food, Remy stares at the tv screen with this expression of overwhelming, teary-eyed happiness, wordlessly saying "Yes! I understand!" I know that they chose ratatouille as his finale dish because it has the word 'rat' in the name, but I did like that it wasn't a traditional show-stopper. Even though Remy's way of cooking and serving it looked nothing like mine, it's the reaction the dish has on the harsh critic Anton Ego that's important. And I think that's what I love about cooking for people: if not that madeline-in-the-tea moment of nostalgia, then the creation of a new memory that someone will one day look back on fondly as 'that time we had dinner at Anna's.' Good food is beyond sustenance. It's creativity and invention and mistakes and therapy and fun. When the credits ended, I wanted to hit the kitchen and plan a dinner party.

There is a sort of gross but funny epilogue to my Ratatouille story. I dreamt last night that I had a rat infestation in my apartment. In the dream, I was trying to fall asleep but kept hearing the usual creaks of my building. Then there was a scabbering, squeaking sound. It moved up and down the length of my room, and then out of the corner of my eye I saw a stream of huge, spaniel-sized rats pouring out from under my bed and into the closet. I was afraid to move. And they actually didn't look much like rats, but I knew exactly what they were. Finally they seemed to be gone and I got up to try to find my cell phone and call my landlord. But two rats were still lurking and tackled me. They started biting my feet. I fought them off, called my landlord and cried into the phone "It's two in the morning and there's rats everywhere and I've probably got rabies! Help me!" He sighed in exasperation and hung up.

And then I woke up, heels tingling from the phantom bites. It was five a.m. in real time and I had to rub my feet to make sure there were no marks. So I guess the lesson here is that as much as I love food, I don't love rats. The end.

I have come to the conclusion that I don't like Wes Anderson's movies. Granted, I've only seen two - The Royal Tenenbaums and just finished Rushmore - but I've gotten a pretty good idea of his style and it drives me insane. It's probably a bad sign when the best thing I can say about a film is "Well, I liked the soundtrack."

His visual style is certainly distinct. He's got a thing for using paintings and big block print, and there seems to be a strange yellow glow over each scene. I'm not a huge fan of text in film, but I did like when Rushmore went through all of Max's many extracurriculars, although now that I think about it, there was a similar sequence in The Royal Tenenbaums that showed all the places Gwyneth Paltrow's character cheated on her husband.  I guess the biggest thing that bothers me is the way he writes. It's too glib, like he's tried so hard to make them sound real but wants every line to be saturated with some deeper meaning. Or maybe I feel like I should be reading more into the script because I get nothing on the surface, just detached banter. In one of my writing classes, a girl said in workshop that she thought every line of dialogue should work to advance plot. I hold a much looser view of what it can or should accomplish, but the Anderson's scripts don't do much for character either. It's just so...fake.

I apologize if I'm maligning your favorite writer/director, but I take my dialogue pretty seriously. I write a lot of it. Most of my stories start out as conversations in my head, and once I'm rolling on a scene, I tend to play out everything that the characters say to each other and have to go back later and add in whatever might be happening around them. It's a little different though when that conversation is happening in your mind's eye and isn't a concrete presence on the screen. You don't need to sketch out a character or add in a note about their quirks; you see them live. And that's what I like in movies, seeing a real spark between real people (or at least real people playing imagined ones).

There was one scene in Rushmore that I really liked: the kite-flying, when Margaret Yang comes up to him and says that she faked the results of her science project. "Why?" Max asks her. "Because it didn't work," she answers. That was the best character connection, when you could see why he finally gave her a chance. Finally I was okay with just a silent shot of Jason Schwartzman's face, because finally I knew what he was thinking. But for both this movie and The Royal Tenenbaums, I find that as the final credits roll, my overall reaction is just, "Huh? Why do people like this?" My friend Amanda had lent me Rushmore, saying that she was so excited to be writing about it for a class on film and childhood, and I know I've heard other people mention Wes Anderson's movies as their favorites. It's just not my cup of tea, I guess.