Moose And The Movies

Nine of the movies I watched in January were rewatches. A couple of them I have seen several times, favorites from my DVD library from the early '00s. The rest are films I remember watching only once before. Here are my tier-list rankings of those rewatches. I'll be back in the next day or two with a recap of all the movies I saw for the first time, and I also plan a combined ranking. 9. Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, 1978, directed by Philip Kaufman, streamed on Kanopy, 2.5 stars.   I had always remembered this as a pretty good film since I saw it probably during its first theater run. But it didn't hold up for me at all, mostly because of all the plot holes. 8. V/H/S/2, 2013, multiple directors, streamed on Prime Video, 2.5 stars. You need more than one excellent and one decent segment to hold up a five-segment anthology. 7. Southern Comfort, 1981, directed by Walter Hill, streamed on Prime Video, 3 stars. A decent thriller about a National Guard unit lost in the swamps ...

American Beauty, 1999, directed by Sam Mendes, Paramount Pictures blu-ray (2017), 4 stars. I was apprehensive about this movie this time around. American Beauty was one of my favorite finds of the early DVD era, more than 20 years ago. I loved everything about it, and watched it several times back in the day. But it had been awhile, long before the Kevin Spacey thing happened. I recently picked up a blu-ray edition of American Beauty at a clearance-sale price, so I decided to give it a revisit. And I wasn't sure how it would feel knowing what we now know. I am happy to say that even though much of American Beauty did feel a little ickier now than it did a couple decades ago, it still held up pretty well for me. Spacey's central character, Lester Burnham, had that slimy, creepy feel about him. But it was fine because the character was written that way -- and because Spacey was so damn good at playing creepy people. That was his stock in trade. And for years, he was celebrated fo...