'Pan's Labyrinth'

I've essentially quit buying DVDs. Maybe it's because I'm concentrating so much on watching films I've never seen. Maybe I just don't need all this shit cluttering my life. Maybe because I'm tired of owning films that I really don't like all that much.

If I were to buy 10 DVDs, Pan's Labyrinth would probably be one of them. It has everything from the great acting (some brilliant Spanish actors and actresses), a really cool story set in a really interesting time in history (the Spanish Civil War). It's history set behind this fairy tale that attempts to create a myth that is cracked by this very real, very tragic reality. To me, that's horrifyingly sad.

Visually, it trumps most of what I've seen. Guillermo del Toro just simply does it for me here. I love the look and the colors. I love the violence and the uniforms.

It makes you wonder what Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Chronicles of Narnia and other recent fantasy films would have looked like and been had del Toro been put in charge.

I did want to make note that this film reminded me a lot of Cria Cuervos and The Spirit of the Beehive, two Spanish films released during Francisco Franco's regime, which both contained allegories criticizing the fascist regime, the same defeated 40 years before in Pan's Labyrinth. All three have a dark-haired young girl as the protagonist. But only one has a half-man, half-goat.

'The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring'

There's something about the modern epic that just turns me off. The acting, writing, technology and ability is all there. What kills filmmakers these days is sentimentality.

Peter Jackson and others like him want to force emotion on to you. They want you to sit there as and keep forcing the square peg in the circle hole. Eventually, they want you to somehow empathize with these characters in great anguish.

It's all The Fellowship of the Ring is. It's Elijah Wood's Frodo laboring under the pressure and alienation of carrying the ring. That of Viggo Mortenson's personal self-doubt as the heir to the Gondor throne.

It's Sean Astin as Sam Gamgee being overly emotional and eerily attached to Frodo. It's Sean Bean's Boromir wrestling with the undying urge to grasp the ring of power and to wield it as he saw fit.

This isn't The Lord of the Rings; it's an episode of Oprah.

These are not the emotions or actions of simple heroes. How can Aragorn be so conflicted about his own ability and role in the history of Middle Earth and yet look like the coolest motherfucker as he fights 100 orcs at one time? In battle, all of these characters have little doubt or question about their ability. They're killing machines and it's a wonder why they would ever field an army of orcs because it's a 200 to 1 killing ratio.

However, when the battle ends is when the emotions come out and the aloof nature of these characters and the forlorn looks and characters on the verge of tears. How insulting! We're not robots. We know how to feel. We do not understand the pressure of the chore or what it feels to be always in danger, but we can imagine. We can feel on our own. We don't need Elijah Wood doing it for us.

'The Wizard of Oz'

I grew up watching The Wizard of Oz every spring whenever it would be shown on network television. It was always a highlight of my year. I love this film.

When I was a kid, I always thought people in film and TV to be my age. Like Kelly Leak in The Bad News Bears was my age. In fact, he was 12 when the film was made and was probably 25 by the time I got around to watching it.

So, I thought Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale was somewhere in Hollywood ... at 15 years old (Gale was apparently supposed to be 12 ... if produces thought they could convince us Garland was 12, then they had another thing coming). In fact, Garland had already died. But I grew up through my 20s identifying Garland as Dorothy Gale and nothing else.

The virginal, pretty, sweet and sassy Dorothy Gale. I knew he as nothing else. I guess I knew she was in other films, but I didn't want to watch those other films so she was always the little girl from Kansas. Isn't that weird?

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One of my favorite parts of The Wizard of Oz is the songs. Even as the kid, I really liked the songs and as a kid I didn't really like singing or dancing.

For whatever reason, the composers created something that I could sink my teeth into. Doesn't make a lot of sense.

As an adult, I truly appreciate the music, especially the lyrics. I think the wittiest songs are the intro songs for each of the Scarecrow, Tinman and Lion. The "If I Only Had A ..." songs. Really funny and great lyrics. Thoughtful and smart.

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My favorite of the three cohorts is the Tinman, especially played by Jack Haley. Although he plays a Tinman and his hold downfall is tears or rain rusting his hinges, he also comes off as really smooth and with the best voice.

Like a real crooner whereas Bert Lahr may or may not have been able to sing (although his theatrical/operatic style is most humorous) and Ray Bolger comes off as more of a vaudvillian physical comedian, Haley seems like a legit singer, actor and dancer.

I love his wry smile, that smooth voice and the physicality of his dance routine. When he stands straight up and begins to pitch from side to side as if he were to fall over is really quite remarkable getting his legs to look like they are nailed on the ground.

It's interesting that Lahr, Haley and Bolger didn't have these extensive Hollywood careers. They each did some film and, later, some TV. But not a ton of each. They were all vaudvillian veterans with some Broadway experience. Still, they each had a hand in one of the most popular and beloved films of all time and little else.

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I watched this film for the first time all the way through in about 10 years. It was also the first time with my three-year-old daughter. She liked it. Kind of thought the Wicked Witch of the est and flying monkeys might freak her out. But she's a tad bit mature to get too worked up about such nonsense.

I'm sure we'll watch it again.

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I never thought about who played the flying monkeys until now. I guess I always assumed they were real monkeys with wings on them. Clearly, they're people. Munchkins I presume.

'The 13 Clocks'

There's nothing deep (or overtly deep) or complicated about James Thurber's fantasy stories.

Duke is due to marry the princess on her 21st birthday. The prince -- disguised as a minstrel strolls into town. He's given the seemingly impossible task of finding 1,000 jewels and starting all 13 clocks in the castle.

It's easy when there's a lady who cries jewels. And when the princess is the key to starting the clocks.

It's a rich, entertaining stories. Take the story and add Thurber's sing-song prose-poetry and the beautiful illustrations included in the edition I was able to read.

'Stand By Me' & 'The Princess Bride' & 'When Harry Met Sally'

Director Rob Reiner has four films in the 1,001 list.

Martin Scorsese has nine (a rough count) so maybe it’s safe to say that Reiner is half as good of a director as Scorsese.

I’ve never considered Reiner anything other than Meathead from “All in the Family.” Look at a list of his directed films, and it’s not bad at all.

In fact, I think the guy has quite a bit of value. I think he captures a certain amount of attitude from the Baby Boomers and, to a point, Generation X.

Is there a more quintessential relationship film than When Harry Met Sally? Did any film of its genre or time quite straddle the lines between the pessimism of the Boomers and Gen X along with the seed of hope and serendipity that both groups kinda still believed in down deep?

There’s Billy Crystal’s Harry. The typical asshole. Jaded and a straight shooter. He calls it like he sees it and he sees everything as being related to sex without the niceties and small things that make true relationships grow and prosper.

Then there’s Meg Ryan’s Sally. The optimist (a journalist, of course), who truly believes that people are deep and have different dimensions from the one-sided sex whores to the multi-dimensional thoughtful creatures seeking to perpetually evolve emotionally.

Consider Reiner’s other work. This Is Spinal Tap commenting on the metal scene of debauchery and a listless generation. Misery and the idea of celebrity and a fan’s perceived expectations. A Few Good Men and the military complex.

Two of his films kind of serve as bookends and both deal with death: Stand By Me and The Bucket List.

The latter is a silly, throwaway movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman (it’s no Pacino and DeNiro … but it’s still two of the best actors of the past 50 years), who are dying and seek to scratch off a list of things to do before they pass on. Stand By Me is the Stephen King story about four friends in the 1950s who travel to see a dead body. It’s part adventure, part macabre and part adolescent fixation on death – something they didn’t understand then and something that we assume Nicholson and Freeman still don’t understand in their 80s.

Despite all his films being relevant for a certain group of people, nothing’s captured the imagination of the American public (especially that of Generation X) than The Princess Bride. Ironically, it’s a story of true love where despite everything in the world going against our two lovers, nothing would get in their way, even death.

Still, there was a subtle message. One that was relatively popular at the time. It’s the same theme in The Neverending Story – that modern technology was ruining our youth. In The Neverending Story, children not reading anymore was basically destroying an entire imaginary world full of multi-faced races, uncooperative, lethargic giant turtles and rock eaters. And spawning tremendously large man-eating wolves as agents of change and despair.

In The Princess Bride, Peter Falk has to force feed his grandson (Kevin Arnold … or as he’s also known, Fred Savage) a book forcing him to turn off his video games. Despite the grumbling, Savage ends up loving the story. And, thus, Fantasia was saved.

My point is that Reiner doesn’t make awesome films that change the way we look at writing or acting. He’s not Scorsese or Godard. But he’s also not a tortured artist or someone unable to bring on a fight in a film. There’s not many guys that can be so light hearted as in The Princess
Bride and capture such a heavy burden in Stand By Me.

'The Wonderful O'

A quaint and funny fairy tale about treasure-seeking pirates who invade an island and due to one of their own distaste for the letter "O" they begin terrorizing everyone by outlawing anything with an "O" in it's name.

A kid could probably read this and gain quite a bit of entertainment. But for an adult with interest in language and words, it's great because it's written (basically) in rhyme and with a very sing-songy tone.

You could present any number of socio-political allegories and be fine.

Sadly, James Thurber does not mention or describe a land with sex, but no orgasm.

'Journey to the Center of the Earth'

I'm a sucker for dinosaurs and pre-historic animals.

Otherwise, this was a pretty dumb story. I'm willing to suspend any notion of reality, in terms that an entire world (atmosphere and all) could exist beneath the crust of the Earth.

I just find the storytelling off putting. For one, there's an entire sequence that's a dream -- a tribe of apes kill a giant crocodile monster. All this time and it's a dream. Why not make it real? What's the point? I mean, it's fantasy to begin with why feel the need to make one sequence a dream? Was the idea of apes bashing int the skull of a giant croc with dinosaur bones just too unbelievable?

Then the story ends with the three adventurers surviving a volcanic eruption (them, in a wood raft being themselves spewed out of a volcano with magma and shit) and making it back and the only real mystery and question that they have is why the compass screwed up. Seriously? My biggest question would've been, "How the hell did I just survive being erupted out of a live volcano in Italy?"