I think I'm on pace to see about 120 movies this year. That's down from recent years. I definitely need to devote more time to the couch. Here's the first batch of movies from March:

24. (962.) The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
Last month I complained that I didn't like adventures through the desert. Yeah. Despite having both Sean Connery and Michael Caine in the same movie, I found this boring. Oh, well.

25. (963.) The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)
Both the previous movie and this one were directed by the legendary John Huston. Both movies are well shot and edited, but both share a similar failure to develop their characters into anything other than plot devices. Looking back at Huston's filmography (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen, etc.), I see characterization certainly wasn't a problem for him early in his career, and it isn't a problem in some of his later films (Victory, Annie). Maybe the early seventies were just a rough patch for great director. Even Hitchcock struck out occasionally.

26. (964.) The Great Bank Hoax (1978)
This is a small-stakes comedy about corruption in a local bank. After watching several movies in a row with thin characterization, I really enjoyed Burgess Meredith in this.

27. (965.) Gravity (2013)
Ugh. Why are we supposed to care that Sandra Bullock gets back to earth? All she does is whine while everything mankind has ever put in space is destroyed before our eyes. I didn't think I'd like it, and I didn't. I especially didn't like that in a movie taking such pains to present the "reality" of life in space, physics was suddenly ignored so that when it came time to resolve George Clooney's character. So physics are important except when they're not? Ugh.

28. (966.) Swing Shift (1984)
It blows my mind that the same man who directed this romance directed Silence of the Lambs. Unlike that great thriller, this film meanders without much direction before just sort of ending. On an unrelated note, Goldie Hawn can act. (I had never before realized just how much Kate Hudson looks like her mother). So I guess there's that.

More to come.

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