Malteasers

The Maltese Falcon: A well-deserved rewatch, one of those lightening-in-a-bottle films, as attested to by the fact that Warner Brothers then spent the next few years putting Humphrey Bogart together with Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet and shaking vigorously, and never getting the desired result (Casablanca is their only arguable success, but it's a very different movie). Anyway, what one has here is a tense, witty thriller with cleverly-used sexual subtexts, impeccable casting and a denouement scene which is still powerful despite repeated viewing.

Movie count for 2010: 98

Teenage Kicks

A Fistful of Dollars: Another rewatch; what I noticed this time around was the ethnic politics of the town. Both of the gangs that the Man With No Name sets against each other, the Baxters and the Rojas, are clearly mixed-race, but the Baxters emphasise the Northern European section of their ancestry while the Rojas emphasise the Hispanic, suggesting a further racial dimension to an already-complicated situation.

The Lover: Fifteen-year-old French girl, living in 1930s Vietnam, has sexual affair with thirty-two-year-old Chinese man. This could have been a powerful, erotic tale of love forbidden on many levels, but unfortunately it's just boring.

Spider-Man: A rewatch, but one of the few superhero movies I can stand rewatching; it actually does something interesting with the concept by making Peter Parker's transformation into Spider-Man a metaphor for adolescence, both physical (as Peter's body gains new powers, but everyone still treats him like a dork), psychological (as Peter comes to grips with the moral issues surrounding the use of his new abilities) and social (as Peter struggles with the tacit class issues underlying his friendship with Harry and his love for Mary Jane). Willem Dafoe as the Green Goblin is amazingly Grand Guignol, but makes it work.

Cyrano de Bergerac: This was one of my favourite films when I was a teenager, and watching it again after many years I can kind of see why. Both Cyrano and Roxane are deeply adolescent individuals, with Cyrano obsessed with his image as a tragic lover and rebel against the system, and Roxane a superficial woman who spends fourteen years locking herself away in a convent after the death of her husband rather than grieving and getting on with it. Unfortunately this adaption, while beautiful, well-cast (hooray Depardieu) and nicely researched without making that background research too intrusive (coughgangsofnewyorkcough), cuts out some of the dialogue from the original play which indicates that the author regards Cyrano as a bit of a self-obsessed manchild, meaning that the audience has to take the characters here at face value.

Movie count for 2010: 97

Of Dogs and Men

Old Boy: Man locked in hotel room for 15 years then mysteriously released seeks out the person/persons responsible. Result is sort of like The Prisoner, only with martial arts and some gleefully Jacobean incest, mutilation and ironic vengeance schemes.

My Life as a Dog: An earlier you-will-cry-buckets dog story by Lasse Hallstrom, about a young Swedish boy separated from his beloved pet and sent to live with small-town relatives when his mother develops a fatal illness. Suffused with guilt and grief, as well as burgeoning feelings of sexuality which confuse his relationship with his tomboy friend Saga, he conflates his own identity with that of his dog, his mother, and the then-recently-deceased Laika, eventually coming to accept his situation despite all its unfairnesses, leaving the viewer to carry on the anger and grief on his behalf.

10 Things I Hate About You: After my last foray into the post-Lurman Shakespeare-for-teens genre, I was not expecting too much from this, but it proved surprisingly good, being The Taming of the Shrew redone as a Whedonesque high-school comedy, full of zingy one-liners and humourous stereotypes of teenage cliques and with the misogynous treatment of Kate in the original play considerably mitigated (as the focus is less on Kate's brainwashing at the hands of Petruchio, as on the Kate- and Petruchio-equivalents both unbending and becoming less hostile to each other and the world). The one real complaint is that the start of the film seems to set up a subplot involving Alison Janney's randy school guidance counsellor which gets abandoned about one-third of the way in.

Movie count for 2010: 93

There Will Be Issues

Inception: One of the best new films I've seen this year, a modern take on the sort of reality-bending issues explored by the likes of McGoohan and Cocteau, and in print by some of the best New Wave science fiction, with a cleverly ambiguous ending. Also, the less cute Leonardo DiCaprio gets, the more he actually shines as an actor, here brilliantly portraying a man slowly going mad in a series of dreams within dreams.

There Will Be Blood: Takes several familiar tropes of frontier fiction-- the small wilderness settlement caught in a power struggle between big business and a small community leader, the father and son becoming estranged and reconciled, the unexpected arrival of the long-lost relative who may not be all he seems, the up-from-poverty entrepreneurial life history-- and plays with them to explore the complex dynamics between an oil prospector, a pentecostalist preacher, and the oil prospector's son (or maybe not, it's complicated). I'm not really certain it deserved all those awards/nominations, but certainly it's got a lot going for it.

ETA: Alan suggested a somewhat more complicated subtext exists in TWBB, in which Daniel Plainview is the devil, hiding in plain view (Daniel being a reference to Daniel Webster); first seen in a pit, mining for silver, he then becomes an oil man, leading Paul to sell his birthright and Eli to become tempted by the sins of pride and avarice (note that, like Jacob and Esau, they are twins), leading the latter to deny God in the end; HW, however, ultimately rejects his father and walks away from temptation. So perhaps it did deserve all those awards, and thanks Alan for seeing what I didn't.

Movie count for 2010: 90

Capsule Catch-Up

Disturbia: Essentially Rear Window for teens, with a couple of knowing winks to Psycho and Vertigo in there as well, as a teenage boy confined to the house by a court order suspects his neighbour is up to no good. The title would suggest some kind of Donnie Darko-esque comment on the nastinesses hidden by the polite face of suburbia, but it’s actually just a popcorn flick. Also the love interest is a bit too much of a fantasy figure for me to take her remotely seriously.

Les Valseuses: Follows the adventures of two ne’er-do-wells stealing, breaking and entering, and, depending on how one views the complicated consent issues involved, raping their way through France, until a strange tragedy forces them, gradually, to rethink their position on life and women. An American film would have made them lovable rogues who never do anything seriously objectionable; this film doesn’t shy away from the evil side of the characters, but also provides them with a satisfactory ending which gives them emotional closure as well as an implicit comeuppance for their crimes.

Austin Powers: Nineties nostalgia classic which shows a clear love on the part of its creators for Sixties pop culture (even working in visual references to the Doctor Who stories The Daleks’ Master Plan and The Invasion); watching it now, what strikes one is that the Nineties references are the bit that feels dated, not the Sixties ones (I winced when Robert Wagner announced “The world is dead, there are only corporations”-- we all know where *that* philosophy led). Oh, and that Mrs Kensington Senior is much lovelier than her daughter; guess the modern celebration of the Cougar/MILF was a few years off at that point.

The Sweet Smell of Success: 1950s indictment of celebrity and the press culture which surrounds it, which is if anything more relevant today than at the time. Almost Shakespearian in its portrayal of a press agent and gossip columnist’s conspiracy to bring down a rising young musician, and a clear influence on Mad Men.

Manhunter: Genuinely disturbing adaptation of Red Dragon, exploring the grey area between criminal and investigator, through unfolding the complicated triple relationship shared by FBI agent Fisk, his current quarry, serial killer Dolaryde, and his previous quarry, Hannibal Lecktor. The décor and soundtrack are 1980s to the point of distraction, but, apart from leading to a couple of dreadful synth numbers, it’s mostly a good thing, helping to build up the tension through oppressive music and spare minimalism.

Mr and Mrs Bridge: The single most boring and pointless film I’ve ever seen, consisting of two hours (and about ten years of screen time) in which nothing really happens. Every so often a drama seems to be emerging, but it quickly gets stomped flat. Otherwise there’s not much to do other than develop one’s hatred for the titular characters, a boring and hypocritical man and a woman who never seems to stand up for anything, even herself.

The Untouchables: Garnered a lot of awards when it came out, but really, it didn't tell me much I didn't know (or couldn't infer) about crime and law enforcement in Prohibition-era Chicago, and I'm far from an expert on the place. Also contained a sequence of a raid on some smugglers by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, mounted on horseback (I kid you not), in which, despite the presence of Tommy guns, not one horse gets shot.

Movie count for 2010: 88

Who's on Faust

Mephisto: Brilliantly incisive retelling of the Faust story. Klaus Maria Brandauer plays an actor with vague socialist leanings but a stronger sense of personal ambition, who is tempted by the promise of success the Nazi party offers, and compromises himself and his ideals, all the while offering platitudes and excuses. Of course it's bigger than that, with Brandauer's experience being an allegory for that of the whole German people post-Weimar, and the complexities of compromise explored through the various characters. There are also some clever breaches of the fourth wall in which the audience is placed as a character in the film, and a very Prisoneresque sequence in which an entire wedding party, some masked as devils and animals, dance wildly to the German tune Im Grunewald.

Passion of the Christ: Disappointingly conventional retelling of the Crucifixion story. Yes, it's gory; yes, they went to a lot of trouble recreating first-century Palestine, yes, everyone's speaking Aramaic or Latin, but Jesus is European-looking, Mary Magdalene is the Woman Taken in Adultery, the implications of Pilate's washing of his hands as regards his culpability in the whole affair is skated over quickly. Even the gore is hardly without precedent (go take a look at 15th century Flemish religious art). If you want a straight presentation of the modern mainstream Protestant take on the Crucifixion, watch it, but if you want a consideration of the implications of the story for society and religion, frankly, you're better off watching Ben Hur.

Movie Count for 2010: 81

Gang warfare

Gangs of New York: Scorscese taking some of his familiar themes-- New York, anarchy, migration and its links with crime-- and applying them to the Irish community of the 1860s. It has a lot of excellent period detail, but unfortunately this makes it feel a bit too clean and distant: Scorscese can do terrifying urban anarchy (Taxi Driver) and modern filmmakers can do Victorian squalor (the recent BBC adaptation of Bleak House, among many others), but this feels rather like it was filmed in a pioneer village rather than a real place. This, plus the casting of Leonardo DiCaprio (still at the time known for playing cute heroes rather than more ambiguous characters) as the protagonist, plus, apparently, some differences of vision between Scorscese and his producer, has meant that a lot of the film's political message (a savage take on the way in which the rich more or less let the poor of the city go to the devil, other than to exploit them as cannon fodder in their political and literal wars) has less of an edge than it ought to have, and life in the sort of ungoverned environment where everything is privately owned and, consequently, the fire departments spend more time fighting rival fire departments than putting out fires, comes across more as a quaint portrait of olden tymes than, as it must have been, a desperate, terror-filled and brutal existence. Lots of British actors in supporting roles, and if you blink you miss Trevor Cooper about halfway through.

Movie count for 2010: 79

Not Shakespeare

The Running Man: One of the less subtle of the late-C20 media-dystopia genre, but an entertaining one. In a faceless totalitarian world borrowed from Soylent Green (and a dozen others), the public are kept in check through edited news media borrowed from 1984 and a violent, entertaining pro-wrestling-style game conceptually based on Rollerball and populated with characters from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome; Arnold Schwartzenegger, a policeman with no acting ability who decides that Society Is Wrong, finds himself inevitably forced to participate in said game (scenario borrowed from Year of the Sex Olympics) and also aiding a resistance movement wandering in from Terminator. Where the movie shines is in its shameless use of postmodern irony: by encouraging the viewing public to enjoy the violence of the game, the movie makes them one with the audience members baying for blood, and also ends the story on an ambiguous note which questions whether Schwarzenegger's revolt will change society or be assimilated into the media juggernaut. Ahhh, the 1980s, nobody knew how to have their cake and eat it better than that decade. Co-stars Jesse Ventura, making this the only blockbuster movie I'm aware of to contain no less than two American state governors.

Four Lions: Hilarious black comedy about an inept cell of British would-be jihadis, made all the more biting by the fact that most of the humourous episodes appear to be drawn from real-life stories of domestic terrorism, and taking swipes at Special Branch, politicians, orthodox Islam, university students, mainstream misunderstandings of Muslim culture, and marathon runners in the process. The Daily Mail worried that it would offend Londoners; as a Londoner, I can assure them they're wrong.

O: The success of the Baz Lurman Romeo + Juliet spawned a number of Shakespeare-updated-to-relate-to-modern-teens movies, and this is unfortunately not one of the best. The premise is fine-- the story of Othello, set in a Deep South private prep school with Othello as the star basketball player and sole black student at the school. The problem is that the execution misses out on most of the subtleties of the Shakespeare play: Shakespeare's Othello is not just a warrior, but an intelligent, cultured and well-read man, whereas this movie's iteration simply had him as a dumb jock. Iago, similarly, is one of those Jacobean characters who is less an actual person than a personification of some kind of social force (e.g. Vindice in The Revenger's Tragedy), and simply having him as a psychopathic emo kid with fairly obvious motivations (envy, racism and some father issues) lessened him somewhat. As the movie contains a prep school, a dim blonde, an emo kid and some doves, I found myself regularly reminded of the Literal Total Eclipse of the Heart video.

Movie count for 2010: 78

Fraud, fraud and football

F for Fake: Orson Welles semi-documentary on art fakery. A strange film in that it is totally unlike any other early-seventies film I've seen, and yet somehow manages to feel completely and totally of the period. Extra marks for sweetly charming scenes of Orson Welles performing magic tricks.

Hell Drivers: A rewatch this one, but still entertaining. Although the story is cleverly told (with the crime which the protagonist has committed never being totally revealed to the audience, who are forced to figure it out through hints and allusions, and with the villains' scam being carefully worked out), it carries extra amusement through the fact that most of its cast would go on to be known for far different things. Just ten years later, who would believe a girl would turn down Sean Connery in favour of Stanley Baker? Or that Doctor Who and Number Six had gone in together on a complicated business fraud? Actually, perhaps that one's not so unbelievable.

The Damned United: I'm not a serious football lover so I was surprised when I wound up quite enjoying this movie, a drama based on a true story about Brian Clough, a football manager who specialised at taking poorly-performing teams and turning them around, who gets the chance to manage top-of-the-first-division Leeds United and fails. The characters are well outlined, with no one being terribly likeable and yet everyone's motivations being completely understandable, and the whole thing had the feel of a Greek tragedy rather than Golden Gordon.

Movie count for 2010: 75

Doin' the French Mystique

Gran Torino: Marketed as a "get off mah lawn!" white-old-man's-revenge-fantasy movie, in fact this turns out to be an interesting exploration of race and migration in the Midwest. The initial racism shown by Clint Eastwood's character to his Hmong neighbours is tempered when he finds himself siding with the same neighbours against a Hmong youth gang, and indeed there is the implication in the later stages of the film that the Hmong are simply undergoing the same process of integration that Eastwood's own generation went through (he, and his friends, are all clearly the children or grandchildren of European migrants). The ending is reminiscent of The Shootist and The Man who Shot Liberty Valance, and yet also manages to be anti-violence.

Blazing Saddles: An old favourite of mine, but also part of the general questioning of the Western which took place in the 1960s and early 70s. Where Sergio Leone, at the same time, was showing us a real, more brutal West, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was challenging the genre's boundaries, Blazing Saddles holds the implied racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and general pro-establishment sympathies of the traditional Western up to savage ridicule. That, and it's really funny.

Movie count for 2010: 72

Sound of Silence

The Graduate: A story which uses a minimal plot (young man just out of college and trying to find his way in life sleeps with the wife of his father's business partner and falls in love with her daughter) as an exploration of character, suburban 1960s morality, and social criticism. There is also a further metacriticism in that the two young people's rebellious act in running off together at the end of the story is in fact is exactly what their parents wanted them to do at the start of the story (namely, marry and continue the business dynasty), questioning whether the youth rebellions of the 1960s really were instigating a social change, or just echoing wider patterns of middle-class social reproduction (children are forced into roles by their parents, rebel, but marry people like themselves, and eventually find themselves reproducing their parents' lifestyles and values); Mrs Robinson, after all, no doubt thought she was being rebellious when she slept with her boyfriend as an undergraduate and started this whole mess.

Pale Rider: A disappointing rehash of elements of several much better Westerns (mainly A Fistful of Dollars, High Plains Drifter, Shane and Once Upon a Time in the West), featuring Clint Eastwood as a gun-toting preacher With No Name who comes to the aid of a group of California gold-miners under threat from a local developer who is Evil and engages in environmentally unsound mining practices (no, really, this is an actual plot point). Between the bigging up of the preacher as hero and the simplistic environmental message (hydraulic mining bad, but mining by smashing up rocks and diverting streams perfectly OK, it seems), it appears to have been jointly funded by the Southern Baptist Convention and the Sierra Club.

Brighton Rock: Archetypical British film noir about gangsters in Brighton, which clearly disturbed Brighton Council enough that there's a disclaimer at the start of the film to the effect of "it's not like that anymore, really!" Scarily, it actually is, even now.

Movie count for 2010: 70

The Red King's Dream

Alice in Wonderland: OK, but not really Burton at his best; he seems to be just ticking boxes (Gothic imagery? Check. Childhood imagery? Check. Helena Bonham Carter? Check. Checkerboards? Check) rather than really innovating, and even Johnny Depp lacks his usual sense of madness and just looks like Ronald McDonald after a bad Friday night in Camden. "Alice in Wonderland" is one of those children's stories which lends itself well to adult reinterpretation; the problem is that it's been done before, twice (Dreamchild in 1985 and Něco z Alenky in 1988), both of them bringing a sense of twisted menace and peculiar sexuality which this film is completely missing. Also drags in a linear throughput plot thread which seems to be stolen in equal measures from Dragonslayer and The Wizard of Oz (Alice must slay the Jabberwock and restore the White Queen to the throne, thwarting the evil Red Queen) which Lewis Carroll would hardly have approved of. It passed the time well enough on an eleven-hour flight from Brazil, but I wouldn't have paid money to see it.

Movie count for 2010: 67

End with a Bang

Apologies again for lateness; I've been in Brazil and only just saw this last night.

The Big Bang

Idea Proposed but Not Used in the Davies Era: Ending the Doctor Who universe.
Central Premise Recycled From: Back to the Future.
Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: River Song borrows the Doctor's "I'm the Doctor, look me up" schtick from "The Forest of Gump," and Moffat borrows his own "the Doctor seeking help from a small girl who is really the person controlling all this" schtick from the same story.
Gratuitous Scottish Joke: Amy's parents are a pair of Scottish stereotypes: a tall, ginger-haired and nervy woman married to a short, fat, curly-haired man who's terrible at speeches.
Amy Saves the Day with Wuv: Yep. Amy reconciles her Wuv for Rory and her Wuv for the Doctor, and goes off to have the TARDIS' second long-term polyamorous relationship (don't tell me Jamie, Zoe and the Doctor weren't all at it like knives). The Big Bang, indeed.
Tennant Line: None, but we do get the return of "Geronimo."
Star Wars Bit: A seven-year-old child with a Special Destiny, and a special relationship with some kind of universal force.
Nostalgia UK: The Doctor attempts to channel fellow big-chinned media personality Tommy Cooper by donning a fez, though River and Amy both agree that's a terrible idea.
Teeth!: None!
Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: At first I thought the stone Dalek, but then I noticed the prototype figures for the Amy and Rory Get Married gift set placed on top of the wedding cake...
Something Gets Redesigned: The Earth, though one could also count the stone Dalek.
The Crack in the Universe Is: Closed.

Hell's grannies

And Now for Something Completely Different: An old favourite; film-length compilation of Monty Python sketches, restaged on film and slightly adjusted to flow into each other better. But still hilarious. The sketches have stood the test of time impressively; there were occasional topical references (e.g. to the "domino effect" and to Nixon) but none too problematic for the modern audience. Works well as an introduction to Python for novices, a reminder of what was so special about them for people who haven't watched the series for a while, and a good "greatest hits" DVD for serious fans.

The Rutles: Scarily well-done spoof documentary on a Rutland band whose career eerily parallels the Beatles, realised by a mixture of Python and Saturday Night Live alumni and some real actual 1960s celebs (including George Harrison). The whole thing is done perfectly seriously-- including songs which sound like real ones from the era rather than parodies-- making it even funnier. Off to download "Good Times Roll" from Itunes now.

Die Hard with a Vengeance: Expectations for this were rock bottom given my feelings about the first film in the series, but this surprised by actually being enjoyable. The edge it had over its prequel was that it clearly wasn't taking itself remotely seriously, and the sense of fun permeated every scene. However, it's a very, well, September 10th type of film: leaving aside the fact that doing a story about terrorists blowing up New York landmarks seems a bit anticlimactic these days, the ideas that a) New Yorkers would not be able to spot a bomb threat a mile off and b) an explosives expert would have to painstakingly explain to policemen about homemade devices which could be hidden in cars or other large pieces of mechanical equipment and detonated remotely by mobile phone seem strangely dated.

Movie count for 2010: 66

The Repeated Meme: Amy's Box

The Pandorica Opens

Idea Proposed but Not Used in Galactica 1980: Time-travel story involving Cleopatra and anachronisms.
Central Premise Recycled From: The "Whose Doctor Who" documentary at one point featured a child opining that the Doctor's enemies should form an alliance, gang up on the Doctor, take away his TARDIS and maroon him somewhere. Apparently one Steven Moffat was listening.
Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: "The Forest of Fear"-- the Doctor's "I'm the Doctor, look me up" bit as a way of getting bad guys to back off before they start. Worked out better for him there, obviously.
Gratuitous Scottish Joke: Again none, unless you count the return of gratuitous Scottish jokes Bracewell and Vincent van Gogh.
Amy Saves the Day with Wuv: Well, I'm not sure what you'd call it, but Amy certainly does *something* to the day with Wuv.
Tennant Line: Didn't notice one, but then I was too busy waiting for the Pandorica to Open.
Star Wars Bit: River Song's Celtic gear was clearly stolen from Princess Leia during the Hoth sequences of The Empire Strikes Back. Presumably when C-3PO was doing the laundry.
Nostalgia UK: Ahhh, fond memories of "The Eagle of The Ninth," "Sky," "The Box of Delights," and all the other British children's fiction involving ancient Romans and/or Stonehenge. And apparently Amy has the same memories.
Teeth!: None! But hey, horses!
Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: Leaving aside the fact that the end of the story looks like a sale in the toy aisle of our local Tesco's, who wouldn't love a mechanical coin bank based on the Pandorica?
Something Gets Redesigned: The whole universe, apparently.
The Crack in the Universe Is: Everywhere, though it starts in the TARDIS scanner.

Unusual

The Usual Suspects: A rewatch this one. I found it sharp, clever, and witty, well characterised and tensely plotted, with plenty to amuse and interest even if you already know who Keiser Soze is. My father-in-law, who watched it with Alan and me, said it was the scariest thing he'd ever seen. I guess it depends on your perspective.

Movie count for 2010: 63

The Repeated Meme: Where's Ivor Novello When You Need Him?

The Lodger

Idea Done to Death in the Virgin/BBC Books Era: The Doctor being forced to live like an ordinary human.
Central Premise Recycled From: About a million romcoms (slightly pathetic boy fancies beautiful girl, and, with the intervention of a wacky relative/friend/flatmate, finally gets her).
Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: "The Girl in the Fireplace" again; a spaceship with no crew killing people in a misguided attempt to get itself functional again.
Gratuitous Scottish Joke: None, with Amy yet again out of the picture.
Amy Saves the Day with Wuv: Amy is out of the picture, but Craig saves the day by finally acknowledging his Wuv for Sophie, and vice versa.
Tennant Line: "No, no no no no!" But spoken by Craig. The Doctor also calls himself "the Oncoming Storm."
Star Wars Bit: I'm trying to think of some amusing way to liken James Corden to Jabba the Hutt, but not coming up with much so far.
Nostalgia UK: Football games on the village green. Also quick nostalgic 1960s Gerry Anderson reference when the Doctor introduces himself as "Captain Troy Handsome of International Rescue."
Teeth!: None for a change.
Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: Nothing, or at least I hope nothing (please God, no six-inch fully-articulated James Cordens).
Something Gets Redesigned: A house turns from a two-story into a bungalow.
The Crack in the Universe Is: In the wall of Craig's flat, and all over the "Next Time" trailer.

Field of Dreams

Cloverfield: While I spent the first half-hour of the film debating whether or not to go on with it, as I was hating the characters in it so much, the rest of it more than made up for it by being, essentially, a crystallisation of the post-9/11 movie/TV genre. Spoilt, overprivileged young people having it all suddenly ripped away from them? Check. People stumbling around the wreckage in the dust, unable to make sense of it all? Check. A military and/or civil authorities unable to do anything and causing more deaths through misdirected friendly fire? Check. A mysterious and incomprehensible enemy attacking New York? Check. But, if you add to that the subliminal reference to the Zapruder footage (in that the video footage the audience are watching is an amateur film which captured a major event in American history while being intended for another purpose) and the fact that the thing attacking New York looks amazingly like the Id Monster from Forbidden Planet, you actually have a film-literate comment on the post-9/11 mindset: that America is, in a sense, fighting its own id.

Movie count for 2010: 62 (yes, I know I'm slowing down output, but it's been a busy couple of months)

No doughnut

Bad Lieutenant: Surprising and disturbing take on the bad-cop-who-does-the-right-thing-in-the-end genre, in that the cop is very, very bad indeed, and doing the right thing involves enabling the escape of someone who might possibly be worse. Under that, it's about what the Christian imperative to forgive your enemies really, actually means. If your sanity can take it, watch it together with Taxi Driver and Mean Streets.

FYI, I mean the original 1992 Harvey Keitel version, not the remake, which, having seen this, I want to avoid at all costs lest it should ruin the experience.

Movie count for 2010: 61

The Repeated Meme: World's Blandest Episode Title

Vincent and the Doctor

Idea Not Proposed but Used Anyway During the JNT Era: A monster that looks unfortunately like a giant chicken (seriously, "Arc of Infinity" may be terrible, but I very much doubt the script description of the Ergon read "looks unfortunately like a giant chicken").
Central Premise Recycled From: Mostly "The Shakespeare Code," though there's an element of "Tooth and Claw" in Amy trying to get van Gogh to paint some sunflowers.
Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: "The Girl in the Fireplace" again: the Doctor bonds with a historical figure but not enough to stop them dying tragically before retirement age.
Gratuitous Scottish Joke: Van Gogh has a Scottish accent. Amy has a Scottish accent. "Are you also from Holland?" van Gogh asks Amy. Cue rimshot.
Amy Saves the Day with Wuv: Amy Wuvs Vincent, and makes his final days a little happier by doing so. Aw.
Tennant Line: "No, no no no no!"
Star Wars Bit: Hero with A Destiny, which is recognised by a mysterious traveler and/or hermit, but by no one else.
Nostalgia UK: Who didn't have a copy of either "Starry Night" or "Sunflowers" on the wall of their first residence room/bedsit/flatshare?
Teeth!: No, but some Beak! on the invisible chicken monster.
Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: The invisible chicken monster obviously, though are Character Options bold enough to just release an empty package and claim it's the monster? It'd be one up on "Destroyed Cassandra," certainly.
Something Gets Redesigned: Two van Gogh paintings.
The Crack in the Universe Is: Running through van Gogh's mind. No, really, since he clearly detects the absence of Rory.