The Merry Widow, I'm Swiss, & Man Bites Dog

The Merry Widow suffers from bad sound quality, making Jeanette MacDonald's voice very hard to understand, and some silly dancing interludes. Not the ones with just the stars, but when they cut to hundreds of people dancing to the Merry Widow waltz, that's unnecessary. However, it does have Maurice Chevalier at the top of his game, Ernst Lubitsch having lots of fun with his normal cleverness, and an interesting plot. Not as good as some of Ernst's other works, but still definitely worth watching. Edward Everett Horton just has a great voice and is almost always the most fun in any movie. But not this one, where it's Maurice's movie all the way.

I'm Swiss was much better when Bill Maher wasn't just saying the same thing I'd said three years ago. Or maybe slightly less when he was talking about Iraq. But when he was talking about things other than politics, like food and pot, then he was much better. I enjoyed it, but I definitely said the exact same things long ago. Plus, the audience was lapping it up, rather than actually thinking about what he said. I just kept thinking that if some Republican watched it, they wouldn't be convinced about anything, they'd just get pissed. Not particularly helpful for a good dialogue on just how insane Rick Santorum or Tom DeLay is.

Man Bites Dog was reprehensible. Just like Natural Born Killers. In fact, I guarantee Oliver Stone and these Belgians were thinking the exact same thing when they made their movies. I'd be convinced that Stone actually saw Man Bites Dog before making Natural Born Killers, except that I'm not entirely clear on the timeline. The problem with this movie was that it didn't really try to get a plot going. It was just "I'm a killer" and "We need money for the movie" and "I'm going to expound upon how I kill people". I'm really not sure about Criterion. Sometimes they just pick crappy movies.