- A dysfunctional family takes a long road trip in a beat-up Volkswagon bus to a girls’ beauty contest. The raunchy but kind grandfather dies peacefully, the gay uncle fails at suicide, the optimistic but failed father discovers his grand business ambition is for naught (just as his son discovers that his congenital colorblindness prevents him from pursuing his life’s ambition and has led him to squander six months of his voice to silence), the mother has been forgotten, and the little girl for whom everyone else endures the travel tears her pants off in the climactic sequence. Doors of cars falling off, and other such antics, ensue.
- An old, fuddy, extremely rich, purebred English woman doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about.
- Men get shot for a war.
- A woman on a bus in a strange dusty country is shot by two boys who accidentally discharge their father’s rifle. Her husband panics. At home, the babysitters have killed the kids. In another part of the world, another language is spoken.
- One man says he is a cop but he is a thug. One man says he is a thug but he is actually a cop. Another man says he is a thug but he is an informant. One man says he is a good cop but, in the end, he assassinates the last thug standing. Blood is spilt. Lives are ruined. Psyches are destroyed. Everyone dies.
- Israelis getting shot, from the point of view of Olympic spectators.
- Two nineteen year old boys adrift in a pre-Vietnam rural America meet during a shared summer stint as shepherds in the high mountains of Wyoming. They fuck all summer. It is not until they part, after leaving the mountains, that they realize each is the only that can fulfil the other, but one of the boys is more scared than the other of the consequences of sexual non-normativity, and they can never return to that moment of grace where they were alone in the mountains and holding love without holding back. In the end, the less cowardly man is killed for his bravery and the cowardly man can only remember him by the scent of their shirts.
- A bunch of people get in a car crash.
- A comedy about fat, bald, insecure, middle-aged oenophile, and his better-looking, charming friend on the eve of his marriage, taking one final bachelor weekend in the wine country north of Los Angeles. Both find girls. The slanty-eyed zany one beats the bachelor for not disclosing his engagement. The pretty, aging blonde one trains her sights on the unlikely fat candidate, who blunders his chance, but gets a second chance by epistle. Wacky antics, like cars being driven into trees, naked hicks, and ninjitsu, ensue.
- A famous blind musician.
- A crazy jazillionaire wants a really, really big plane.
- A girl power/incest movie about an old lonely man who adopts/trains/kills a tough-in-the-ring, sweet-little-thing lady boxer.
- A famous horse named after a pastry made of only bread and water wins some races. A little man balances atop.
- One man is a cop. One man is a deli owner. One man is mysteriously covered in blood one night. One girl is dead. The second man kills the third man for killing the girl, but the third man did not kill the girl. Everything is uncovered by the first man. The woman who stands by her man is virtuous, and the one who does not causes the cruelly mistaken revenge murder of her husband. The light is long, winter is coming, and everyone speaks in a Boston accent.
- A man with a blond ponytail rides a ship for a while.
- A washed-up actor goes to Japan to make some extra cash and finds in the hotel a pretty young woman whose husband could give two shits about her. The actor and the young woman discover their union can make them both young, but both cannot bring themselves to take the risk. The neon lights emphasize their isolation.
- The four members of Winger set off the third leg of a very long journey to destroy a ring. A former member of the band still hangs around, coveting the ring. One of the members of Nelson shoots arrows. Kurt Cobain is a wayfarer who is actually of royal lineage. Sir Ian McKellen, in nose prosthesis, is a goodly wizard whose powers are unknowable. All the good people win in the end, and all the bad people die.
- An author walks into a river with rocks in her pockets. Meryl Streep puts flowers in a vase.
- Italians, Irish, and nonethic Americans kill each other with workaday tools in the filthy slop that is lower Manhattan. An Irish boy with a grudge kills the preening maniac who killed his father.
- A red windmill filled with dancers.
- A schizophrenic mathematician sees patterns in everything, such as pigeons and newspaper articles. This is partly helpful, because it inspires him to develop game theory, but it is also destructive because he sees things that don’t exist.
- A spaceship doesn't blow up.
These movies are: Little Miss Sunshine; The Queen; Letters from Iwo Jima; Babel; The Departed; Munich; Brokeback Mountain; Crash; Sideways; Ray; The Aviator; Million Dollar Baby; Seabiscuit; Mystic River; Master and Commander; Lost in Translation; Return of the King; The Hours; Gangs of New York; Moulin Rouge; A Beautiful Mind; Apollo 13.
The verdict: when nouns perform verbs, critics are smitten. Go forth, young writer, and give me a hit.
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