263 – A Day of Average Movies (feat. The Maze Runner, A Walk Among the Tombstones, and This Is Where I Leave You)

this is what the old man who lives in my brain looks like

Every once in a while you get a weekend that sees a whole lot of new releases that are more than a little intriguing. As the year winds down, and more and more Academy Awards hopefuls begin to see the light of day, these crowded weekends become more common. This weekend doesn’t see the release of many prestige pictures, but it does premiere several films that I find interesting. I saw Tusk last night, but – in order to fit in everything – today I watched movies about a kid who is really good at mazes, an Irish cop pretending to be American, and a Jewish family who just can’t get their shit together. It’s been quite a day.

253 – Doug Benson Movie Interruption: Maleficent

Believe it or not, back in the day I actually went to a movie theater and saw Maleficent. It was a Friday night – June 6th, to be exact. Presumably I had tried to make plans and failed utterly, because I can imagine no other situation in which I would go to such a screening of my own free will. But there I sat, already having watched a true masterpiece earlier in the evening – Bonnie and Clyde. Guess which film I ended up writing about that night. Maleficent was so middle-of-the-road that I couldn’t even think of a couple sentences to toss off on Letterboxd. Instead I just rated the movie: 2/5 stars, which seems high in retrospect. I must have liked some aspect of the movie, though earlier tonight I could not for the life of me remember what it was. Surely watching the movie again with a bunch of comedians talking over it ought to refresh my memory. Right?

025 – Snowpants 01/25/2014

A friend of mine recently told me that he thinks improvised comedy is one of the most important art forms that we have. Two things: 1) this guy isn’t even an improviser (which raises the question of why I was even interacting with him), and 2) he was at least a little drunk. So, while I take what this anonymous “friend” said with a grain of salt, I do agree that improv has a lot of redeeming qualities that should bring it more attention than it currently has.