sunday afternoon flims

so here we are on a lazy sunday afternoon.. busy morning at Target and grocery shopping with the roommate, and just finished my weekend round of netflix... this weekend saw Hard Candy, a bizarre little indie starring Ellen Page of X3 fame turning the tables on an internet pedophile, American Graffiti, the story of several teenagers on their last night in town before leaving for college in the early sixties; it's noteable as George Lucas' first studio film and Harrison Ford's first role. It predates the original Star Wars by 4 years, and good lord does he look young.

Also finally got around to watching Full Metal Jacket, which is Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam movie and most famous for R. Lee Earney as the drill sergeant that drives the fear of god into his new Marines. Excellent, excellent movie, helps me further understand why Kubrick is considered one of the all time masters of Cinema. Coupled with my watching Platoon a few weeks back (that was Oliver Stone's 'nam movie), I think I'm finally ready for the granddaddy of them all = Apocolypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 masterwork on the subject.

The joy of Netflix for me is that there are so many movies I think I need to see as a self-proclaimed film buff, but it's hard to remember them all and blockbuster doesn't carry a lot of the smaller ones in its stores (i.e. Hard Candy, which I would be very surprised to find in my local video store). With Netflix, I just add them to the list as I think about it, and poof! Here's Full Metal Jacket! and then Poof! here's Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man! and then, suddenly, Poof! Here's a travelogue about Scotland. It's all there for the taking, three at a time.

p.s. The title is not a typo. After watching Steve Martin playing Inspector Clousseau for 2 years in the little "turn off your cell phone" bit at the start of movies, I have "Shhhh! I'm trying to watch a flim!" stuck in my head, and sometimes accidentally say it that way in real life, so now I'm sharing that little nugget with the world.