So last night was the first night in our movie night marathon. We only watched two movies since we started watching a little late and neither of us were up for a third since we finished the second at a bit after 1am this morning. So, the movies we watched last night were:

Death To Smoochy:
Rating: 3/5

Death to Smoochy featurer Edward Norton as a kiddy network mascot with the Smoochy show and Robin Williams as the psychotic kiddy show host Rainbow Randal. Smoochy starts off by playing gigs in methadone clinics until Rainbow Randal gets caught taking bribes and is booted off the air. In search of the next big kiddy show star the network hires the straight-arrow, goody-good Smoochy and the show becomes and instant success. From then on fowl play, assasination attempts, penis shaped cookies, nazi rallies, corrupt charity networks and the irish mafia riddle Smoochy’s life.

This is an older movie and I’ve seen it before, but it’s always good for a laugh, and it’s still entertaining. Even though I’d seen it before I still couldn’t stop laughing when Robin Williams spilt tea on his nuts and freaked out, one of the best bits of the movie. If you’ve never seen Death to Smoochy, it’s certainly worth checking out, just for the fun of it.

Napola (Before The Fall)
Rating: 4/5

Napola (Before The Fall) is a German made indy movie from 2004 staring Max Riemelt and Tom Schilling. The movie, much like Downfall (which is a MUST SEE MOVIE!), offers a lot of insight into the appeal of the Nazi party to German youth in the early 1940’s. Many of Germany’s youth were forced to drop out of school or not go on to college or univeristy because they and their families could not afford it, so they would instead go to work in factories for crap wages to survive. The Nazi Party used this to their advantage and make offers to strong young men that they could not refuse. Max Riemelt’s character Friedrich Weimer comes from a poor German family where his father expects him to go to work in the factory he works in. Friedrich, a strong and athletic boxer wants more and is draw in to an Elite Nazi training school known as Napola with the promise of better jobs, higher pay and an education. Napola shows what the students of these kinds of schools had to endure and tells a fantastic story of the prestige and recognition one receives by attending such a school.

Napola is a great movie that shines light on what it was like to be a young man in Nazi Germany. This movie is one of a few, like Downfall, that has come out in recent years showing WW2 Germany from a German perspective, not from the glorified ‘all 1930’s and 40’s era Germans were Nazi’s’ perspective as is so widely portrayed in US and British films on the same subject. Napola and Downfall are both very much worth watching to get insight into exactly what WW2 Germany was like for the Germans. I highly reccommend seeing both of these movies.

So, that was movie night #1. Movie night #2 will begin shortly after dinner and we’ll likely get through another 2 or 3 movies. Yay!

Der Untergang (Downfall)
Napola (Before The Fall)
Death to Smoochy

I think the wife and I have found our ways back into a movie watching mood again. Last weekend we rented V for Vendetta and The Wild.

The Wild is a cute kids flicks about animals from the zoo. The star attraction of the zoo is, of course, the king of the pride, a lion, who’s cub has some depression and anger management issues and is sick of living in his dads shadow. He decided to run away and ends up stuck in an animal transport container, shipped to a small tropical island where the containers are being filled with the local wild life in an effort to save them from the impending doom that is the islands Volcano. The big lion brags all the time in the zoo about being wild and it turns out, once he and the other animals land on the island, he’s just as scared as they are and has never been in the wild before. Then the movie continues to following the big lion and zoo animals as they try to rescue the lion cub.

Overall, The Wild was a cute movie. Madagascar was better and the best character by far was Nigel the Koala who’s voice was done by the hilarious british comedian Eddie Izzard.

2.5/5

V for Vendetta was an absolutely fantastic movie. The entire movie has a very Orwellian feeling to it and has similarities with Gattaca, Pi and A Clockwork Orange, only with more explosions. The movies main character, V, makes it his lifes goal to bring awareness and freedom back to the british people who have been without ever since a totalitarian regime took over. The government runs and controls everything, including the media, and they fabricate whatever they think is needed to keep the people scared enough to fear the government. The secret police take away anyone that isn’t religious or doesn’t fit in to the governments beliefs and they are never seen again. This movie is full of fantastic quotes from start to finish, has a great story line and a number of twists and turns along the way.

V for Vendetta is by far one of the best movies I have seen in the last few years. My only complaint is when a relatively un-needed, as far as I[m concerned, love interest comes up and seems to be drawn out for a little bit. All be it a very short segment, I don’t think it was needed. Overall thoug, fantastic. A must see movie if you haven’t seen it yet.

4.5/5

Tonight we went out and picked up a mixed bag of old and new movies to take for a run. The cinema for the next few nights will be featuring:

• An American Haunting - This is chrys’ pick and I don’t really know a whole heck of a lot about the movie.
• Napola (Before The Fall) - Napola is a German made indy movie about an athletic young boy with boxing talents and his life in a private school for the elite where future leaders of the Nazi Party are trained.
• The Closet - A French made indy film where a factory worker on the verge of losing his job “pretends” to be gay in order to make the factory foreman back off for fear of a discrimination lawsuit.
• Death To Smoochy - Robin Williams, Edward Norton and a big purple dinosaur costume. Need I say more?
• Dazed and Confused - The classic 70’s stoner flick. I don’t know what it is, but I have ALWAYS loved this movie, it’s just so goofy and fun. It’s one of those don’t need to think at all movies that are just really enjoyable. Not to mention it has an all star cast of actors about 10 years before any of them became super popular.

So, that’s that. The wife and I have a busy weekend of movie watching ahead of us. Better get started.