Movies I Watched in November, Part 1

December is already past the halfway point, but it's not too late to share the first (of three!) posts about the movies I watched in November, is it? (I sure as hell hope not!)

I re-watched this one for our pre-“Spectre” episode of Out of Theaters (listen here), and I’d forgotten just how damned entertaining this Bond reboot was. Daniel Craig is praised for bringing back a certain gritty nastiness (or is that nasty grittiness) to the character, but he’s funny too, whether it’s wrecking someone’s care after he’s been mistaken for a valet or cracking wise under torture. A fine return to form for the series, paving the way for 2012’s even better (in my humble opinion) “Skyfall.” Of course, before we got to that movie, we had to go through…

Not as good as “Casino Royale” or “Skyfall,” but not as bad as its reputation, either. One of the few (if not the only) Bond films to be a direct sequel to what preceded it, it slows things way down (after delivering one of the best Bond car chases in its opening) and focuses on the grief of Bond after losing Vesper, the apparent love of his life. There are some great set pieces, and Craig is even better than in “Casino,” but it just doesn’t have the same punch. Still worth a look, though.
 
Allie’s obsession with all things Potter continues, so now that she’s finished with the books, we’re plowing through the movies. This is her favorite so far, possibly because it contains the first hints of romance, hopefully not because Robert Pattinson guest stars as the handsome-but-doomed Cedric Diggory. (Pattinson’s fine, but I really don’t want anything “Twilight” coming into the house.) My review? After the clumsy first two all the Potter films are pretty good, and though this one gets a little deep into nerd lore with the tournament and the different schools, it’s consistently entertaining, and the end, where you-know-who makes his big appearance, is genuinely spooky.  Another one watched for an Out of Theaters episode ( listen here ), and, believe it or not, the first time I’ve seen this Oscar-winning semi-classic. It’s legendary (notorious) as the first (and only) X-rated movie to win the Best Picture statue, though these days it might land a PG-13. The subject matter is sleazy enough, focusing on a naïve Texan (Jon Voight) who dreams of coming to New York and landing an easy gig as a kept fella to some rich lady. Naturally, it all goes wrong instantly (for one thing, he ends up paying his first intended customer) and before long he’s broke, homeless and hanging out with Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), a small-time con man who’s even more pathetic than he is. Very much a movie of its time (1969), “Midnight Cowboy” is loaded with experimental-film-style flashbacks to Voight’s troubled (and confusing) past, plus at least one party sequence that’s trying to capture some sort of Warhol-era grooviness. Those moments were already cliché in 1969 (Ebert complains about them in his original review), but they’re actually oddly fascinating these days, artifacts of an earlier era. Plus, both Voight and Hoffman are excellent, and the scenes of New York as it edges its way to the hell it became in the 1970s are truly fascinating. One warning: You will get very, very sick of the song “Everybody’s Talkin’.” Trust me on this.