Greed, What Have I Done To Deserve This?, Paper Moon, & The 40 Year Old Virgin

Greed was very enjoyable at it's four hour length. Maybe a little slow, but that is obviously a limitation of silent films, unless they're going to have intertitles almost constantly. But the restoration for this works much better than the restoration of Lost Horizon. It's much better in a silent film to use pictures, and they were panned across and only parts were shown, giving it a much more cinematic feel. Very well done, restorer. But four hours is a very long time. I don't know if it would actually work at 9 hours. That would be insane. As a condemnation of greed, it works perfectly. In fact, it may have just been a little too perfect, as it became a little preachy, and the intertitles mocking the characters may be too much.

What Have I Done To Deserve This? is actually a fairly normal early Pedro Almodovar, no crazy gay terrorists or nuns. It does have a very strong performance from Carmen Maura, somewhat predicting her role in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. It does have some of the typical Almodovarisms, with prostitutes, cab drivers, and homosexuals being a big part of the plot.

Paper Moon was a pretty interesting story of grifters in the Great Depression. The interplay between Tatum and Ryan O'Neal is excellent, and gives the movie it's chief pleasure. So cynical and pretty enjoyable. Madeline Kahn was also enjoyable in her early role.

The 40 Year Old Virgin was pretty funny, and it was nice that it was actually nice to the characters. That doesn't happen all that much in the recent string of comedies. And of course, Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen were the best part of the movie. They're almost always the best thing in whatever they're in. And for those of you who are interested, Space Nutz completely undeservedly won an AVN award for best film. And Stormy's breasts are terrible. Seriously, those things just looked terrible. Why do people insist on getting boob jobs if they're going to be that bad?