Now that I finally have Mom conditioned to watch movies and not television shows, I seem to be making significant headway in my quest to 150 as many movies as I can watch in 2012. To keep from posting huge lists twice a month, I'm going to start regularly posting what I've seen in the past week. Since I've already got a backlog, let's get started. I watched the following movies the first week of April:

76. Meet Dave (2008)
After blogging about it in 2008, I finally had to watch this "family comedy" -- the only kind of movie Eddie Murphy makes anymore. I got the impression that the actors were really trying but had nothing to work with either via script or director Brian Robbin's instructions. (Robbins only directs television shows for kids and Eddie Murphy films, and it shows.) At one point, Eddie Murphy smiles into the camera as he shits money. That's fun for kids of all ages! To be perfectly clear: don't watch this film.

77. Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)
Believe it or not, I'd never seen this before. Two words summarize why it is a classic: unintentionally hilarious.

78. Bridesmaids (2011)
I had started this film alone but quickly decided that it was a film that Mom would enjoy, so I started it over. Kristen Wiig knows funny.

79. Meteor (1979)
This movie predicts future events, showing a flying object slamming into the upper floors of the World Trade Center. Does that mean that one day Sean Connery will really be a divorced rocket scientist trying to save Earth from an idiotic NASA beurocracy?

80. How the West Was Won (1962)
Slowly, I'm working my way through all those mid-1960s epics that have a running time of three hours and mid-movie intermissions. This film was originally presented in Cinerama, which apparently was a gimmick placing three screens side-by-side. Because of the camera design required to capture such a wide aspect ratio, there's no shot approaching a close-up in the entire story, which may explain why the studio cast only stars in even the minor roles. Seriously, Lee Van Cleef shows up for 30 seconds as a member of a gang of pirates. I'm not convinced that this type of epic story with an all-star cast and Imax-style visuals has any place in modern Hollywood, and that's part of the film's appeal, I think.

81. Columbiana (2011)
A brainless revenge flick that wasn't worth the time it took to watch it. I'd rather watch nothing but 3-hour epics than any number of boring 90-minute wastes of celluloid like this.

82. Thor (2011)
This was the Marvel movie I was looking forward to in 2011, and I'm pleased to say that it lived up to my expectations. Far better than Captain America, Green Lantern, and Green Hornet combined.

83. The Smurfs (2011)
Trey can attest that I spent most of this movie complaining about Scottish Smurf. However, I really enjoyed Azrael the cat and Hank Azaria's Gargamel. Dont' get me wrong: I don't want to see it again, but I'm not in hate with it.

There was one more film this week (Trey knows what it is), and I'll get to it soon.

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Eddie Murphy's giant head has been touring America promoting the star's latest flop movie, Meet Dave. It's a pretty good looking sculpture of the star of The Adventures of Pluto Nash and The Haunted Mansion, as it lacks any pores or blemishes, unlike the real Murphy. Lemuel Gulliver pointed out that from his diminutive point of view, the Brobdingnagians had terrible skin with seemingly gigantic pores, and the microscopic vermin that lived on them were plainly visible to him. No doubt Eddie Murphy, one of the highest grossing stars in the world thanks to such films as Metro and Holy Man, would never suffer the indignity of appearing as something other than perfect.

Unfortunately, this reproduction lacks the animation of an audio-animatronic Jason Taylor or a marionette of the Royal de Luxe. You'd think an actor animated enough to play every role possible in each movie in which he appears would be a perfect opportunity to create a larger-than-life animated prop. But then Hollywood never does anything all-the-way when half-assed will do just as well. In fact, this statue of Life and I Spy star Eddie Murphy has more in common with the statue of the Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth, Minnesota, than anything else: they're both big, colorful, and created just to sell me something.

(All kidding aside, the sculpture was created by a fellow named Jim McPherson at Gentle Giant Studios. He's posted more pictures similar to the one above here. Fantastic.)

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