Sadly, I've still never seen Escape from New York.

But, but...you're missing Chef/Audrey II as the Duke of New York!

ITA with FKB's comments on the Carpenter score. And with Hec's comments on A Series of Unfortunate Casting Choices, Or Just the One, Really.

We're batting about .250. PotC 2 Friday night, which was not good. Pretty, in parts. Art Direction after my own heart, but it's always embarrassing when somebody bruckheimers all over the place like that.

Tonight, Monster House. What a pointless waste of celluloid. It's kind of a Stephen King story, is the best I can say about it. And great particle effects in the animation.

But...Jim Carrey.

Exactly. Even he would have been tolerable if there had been less of him and if he hadn't over-acted quite so much. Those were beautiful sets and it felt like he tried to eat all of them.

Not related to Carrey, but I have to give "Nashville" another shot when it is not so late that I am passing out. But it held my attention surprisingly well considering I'd like the music better if it were "Chicago" or "Detroit"

Emmett's watching A Series of Unfortunate Events and it is like an unceasing itch that everything is perfect.

Jim Carrey ruined that movie for me. And I really do mean ruined, because it should have been something I adored and wanted to watch over and over. But every time Jim Carrey was on screen, I started grinding my teeth. I'm still trying to decide if it's worth buying it on DVD and just watching it with the sound turned off.

Nashville's not my favorite Altman, but people have pretty varied reactions to it. The music isn't all that great, for one thing, although I don't think it was meant to show the contempt that the movie's detractors hear.

On a similar note, I watched A Prairie Home Companion last night, and liked it despite my general indifference-to-annoyance with Garrison Keillor.

I have Nashville on the DVR (thank you, TCM!), so maybe I will finally watch it one of these days. I was going to do it today, but I'm more in a War of the Worlds mood. No thinking!

The only movie that I'd consider improved by Jim Carrey's presence rather than lessened or completely ruined would be a Faces of Death sequel.

He was fine playing against type in Eternal Sunshine. But that's the only movie I've actually liked him in.

I seem to remember liking him a long, long time ago (circa In Living Color, maybe?) in a TV movie called Doing Time on Maple Drive, in which he played an alcoholic.

I loved everything else about Unfortunate Events so much -- as Hec said, the gorgeous ratty gothiness of Olaf's house, the costumes, the kids, the music, the lighting -- that I've trained myself to avert my eyes when he's on screen. I can take him a little easier as the research assistant and as the fisherman than I can as Olaf, for whatever reason. There was a *little* less Jim Carrey there, and a little more Count Olaf coveracting. Or at least that's what I like to tell myself.

He was fine playing against type in Eternal Sunshine. But that's the only movie I've actually liked him in.

Ditto. I mean, small doses of his physical comedy, like, sketch-length doses, and then he can go back into the toybox he comes outta.

I saw Enduring Love this weekend, along with Laurel Canyon, and I feel as if I ought to feel all grown up and like them both, but I only liked one of them. Still, overall it was quite the weekend of superhero-to-be floundering in befuddlement. (Plus, bonus floundering by Toshiro Mifune in Throne of Blood !)