Woke up earlier than I expected today. I was planning to catch a screening of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, but I woke up early enough that I actually caught the first screening. I suck at the criticism but it's something I always want to attempt- It didn't exactly start off weak. It started off with some confusing moments, but that's to be expected, you stick it out. It also didn't start off with any kind of Gondry imagery that you would expect. This came later, after it all starts to come together and make perfect sense.

And it's good. There are moments that I would describe as poetic. Not really poetic, actually- My exact thoughts as I was watching the movie were "this has so much goddamn poetry to it," which maybe you get the difference and maybe you don't. It's romantic, a romance. Not just the love story aspects, which are there, but- the relationship is presented in a very real way. And the movie takes the romantic view of them as being worthwhile as opposed to taking the fatalistic stance that they're not. This worked for me. It'll work for you, maybe. It has a bit of a bittersweet ending, which always seem much less bullshit to me than a happy ending or a downer ending.

Other movies I've watched recently- I saw Brewster McCloud, a Robert Altman film he did after he did MASH but before McCabe And Mrs. Miller. Bud Cort's in it. Apparently, the original title on the script was Brewster McCloud's Sexy Flying Machine. So I think that's a nice pitch for it. If that had been the title, it would have sold itself. But it also has my favorite final frame of any movie, and it's pretty good, on the whole. I think I'm going to watch Nashville next week, as I discovered the school has it in its library. I enjoyed that Brewster McCloud.

Alex loaned me Army Of Darkness and John Carpenter's The Thing. Haven't finished Army Of Darkness yet. I started watching it, then stopped caring. The Thing is pretty effective. I split up the watching of that one too, but that's... The Thing is just solid. My brother watched it this past summer, but I was asleep at the time. He was really into it though. He rented The Fog, which was done before The Thing, and I watched that on the couch with some other people. The Fog is pretty crappy. It doesn't really jump out at you as being terrible, but there's nothing cool about it. The Thing has some very nice effects, and I guess it kind of scared me in parts, even. Not enough to produce an audible response, or actually provoke fear after the fact- There are certain moments that are just kind of unexpected, and in the sequence that follows, I was just feeling the movie more. Moments that brought up the adrenaline, that made my eyes widen a tad.

Got The Grand Illusion and Casablanca out of the library, which will be viewed following my completion of Army Of Darkness.