'The Unbelievable Truth'

The folly of undertaking such a cataclysmic task of watching all these movies or listening to a bunch of records is not understanding context.

Money has a lot to do with it. There's a huge difference in Independence Day or Titanic compared to The Unbelievable Truth, Hal Hartley's first feature film. Or, to compare apples to apples, there's a gigantic difference in Sleepless in Seattle and The Unbelievable Truth.

Titanic required the huge budget to achieve groundbreaking special effects to fake a gigantic luxury liner sinking into the frigid Atlantic. The amount of money to tell the story of two star-crossed lovers was, comparatively, cheaper.

Sleepless in Seattle required $21 million to essentially tell the same story as The Unbelievable Truth, which required $75,000. The two films were released four years apart.

Granted, Sleepless in Seattle is better than The Unbelievable Truth mostly because they spent more for better actors, better writing, better production and all the warm fuzzies that you get from watching the Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks romantic comedy. The other side of the picture is that no one was going to put $21 million into a film from an unknown director about a teenage girl that inexplicably falls for a guy just out of prison for manslaughter.

My point: The Unbelievable Truth wasn't even good for $75,000 and probably would have been exponentially better had they spent $4 million or $14 million. I suspect. Sometimes selling out is not the worst thing in the world.

'The Tin Drum'

Director Volker Schlöndorff looks like Bryan Cranston's Walter White from Breaking Bad.

Fun story: In 1997, a court in Oklahoma ruled that The Tin Drum was child pornography.

Law enforcement went to every store and confiscated every copy. They even intimidated movie rental stories to give up the addresses of those who had rented the film so they could go to the house and confiscate those copies.

Unfortunately, the judge had seen scenes (probably the young boy eating the sherbet from the girl's navel among other things) out of context. Lawsuits ensued and it was eventually overturned and all copies were returned. And, as it turns out, the confiscations were ruled unconstitutional. All this over a film about facsim and Nazis.

America.

'Kind Hearts And Coronets'

Eddie Murphy has nothing on Alec Guinness. Fifty years before Murphy attempted to portray several different members of a family, Guinness would have eight different parts in Kind Hearts and Coronets.

He also was Obi-Wan Kenobi. So there's that.

Give the American film censors some credit in 1949. They had the word "nigger" changed to sailor. Real progressives over in the states.

'Monsieur Verdoux'

Look up "dark comedy" in the dictionary and you'll see a movie poster for Monsieur Verdoux.

It's a fascinating film about a jobless banker, who romanticizes women only to grift them for their money and then kill them. Rumor has it that Orson Welles initially wrote the film and approached Charlie Chaplin to play the lead role.

Chaplin balked at the idea. Either he didn't want to be directed or the film wasn't completely written and didn't want to mess with an unfinished project. Either way, he bought the script from Welles and made his own money, giving Welles credit only for the idea.

It's a new world for Chaplin, who actually talks and doesn't take on his "Tramp" character that made him a highly recognizable movie star the previous 20 years. It's Chaplin like he's hardly been seen before.

The film did poorly bombing in the United States mostly due to the timing of its release (amid the tumult of World War II) and his extremely dark theme of casually murdering women, not thinking it murder because it was done for money and saying a few dead women was better than war.

Verdoux is based on the real-life Henri Désiré Landru. He killed 10 women after putting an ad in the looney-hearts section of the newspaper. He also killed one of the women's sons. He, like Verdoux, was caught when a victim's sister came snooping around and was executed.

I'm sure it wasn't nearly as funny as the film, though.

'Little Miss Sunshine'

I remember this film initially being promoted and hyped as "Steve Carell in a serious role." He'd had "The Daily Show" fame on top of Anchorman and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Therefore, playing the gay, suicidal Marcel Proust scholar was considered a seachange in Carell's career.

However, you come away from watching Little Miss Sunshine completely impressed with the people you weren't aware of like Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin and Alan Arkin.

Dano's on Joseph Gordon-Levitt level with me: I watch anything he's in. He's absolutely awesome in this film and he's fantastic in There Will Be Blood.

Breslin is an actress that had that one fleeting moment. She's gone on to do other films and they all suck and chances are she'll never be in anything worthwhile for the rest of her life. And that's OK. You don't need to set the world on fire twice in a lifetime. Most never do and Breslin happened to do it as a 10 year old.

Why was she so good? It wasn't her acting chops or her performance, per se. It was the look. The tacky clothes, the glasses and that awkward body that hadn't quite gotten rid of that baby fat and hadn't evolved into the slender, longer frame that she's surely adopt with age. They captured her on film at the perfect time. The scene where Dano's Dwayne lifts Breslin's Oliver up a steep embankment and her poochy belly sticking out is accidentally awesome. It sorta makes the film. That you can't teach and you can't script or storyboard.

'Withnail and I'

This is frequently considered the biggest cult film in England. Who knew?

The two stars, Richard Grant (Withnail) and Paul McGann (I) have something other than this film in common.

McGann was Doctor No. 8 and Grant was Doctor No. 10 in the Doctor Who TV series. Isn't that interesting.

Two notable co-stars: Richard Griffiths portrays the flamboyantly gay uncle Monty superbly. He also is Uncle Vernon Dursley in the Harry Potter films. Where he may or may not be gay.

Ralph Brown portrays the confusing burnout Jake. He is also Del Preston in the Wayne's World films, the road-hardened roadie with all the wonderful stories.