Scream 3 (2000)

There's some suggestion in this one that shit may have just gone supernatural, the same way we jump from Jason's disgruntled mother to an undead Jason himself in the Friday the 13th movies: I remember Sidney (wait...that's her name, isn't it?) in like a fake haunted house where suddenly it appears that maybe the actual ghost of her mom is coming for her, under a sheet? But then it turns out no: no ghost. I think Sidney shoots somebody in the head on a stage at the end, but that might be in Scream 2.*

Pretty sure this is from the opening scene of Scream 2, but it
came up when I searched for Scream 3 images, so fuck off.

* BLOG-INAPPROPRIATE NOTE: I just recently rented Scream 4, and [SPOILER ALERT] isn't the whole movie basically just a not very good set-up for the actually relatively worthwhile final 20 minutes? What a character or two refer to as the "alternate ending" is way more interesting than everything leading up to it. I might be wrong about all this: I was half-asleep when I watched it (and also high on uranium).

Extract (2009)

Jason Bateman?...gets dumped by someone, or has a bad marriage with someone, and gets involved with...Mila Kunis? (yes, Mila Kunis, because I remember seeing an interview with her where she said she had fake breasts for the movie and everybody treated her differently on set)...and they go to a motel and she steals his wallet and/or car. Something else happens with some lawsuit...riiight, some guy loses a testicle in an accident and is going to sue Jason Bateman; I'm pretty sure that's it. This is a Mike Judge movie and it basically just came out and I'm sorry I don't remember it. I'M SORRY, OK?

In other news, Jason Bateman and Mila Kunis are in every movie. (Yes including Schindler's List.)

Oh, right...CGI smoke? That was dumb.

Transformers (2007)

For some reason Bumblebee is not a Volkswagen beetle.* Shia LaBeouf buys Bullshit-Bumblebee, Megan Fox leans over the hood of a car in short shorts, and then Transformers start fighting. They fight on a highway, they fight in a city, they fight in a way that is impossible to tell which one is which—just a bunch of indistinguishable metal-colored CGI. John Turturro's a crazy general, Optimus Prime has a sword, and soldiers comport themselves with grace and nobility (because Michael Bay masturbates to Army recruiting commercials). This movie is one of the most disappointing-ever products of man.

I remember this part pretty well.

* This is very difficult for me to move beyond. It would be like making an X-Men movie in which Wolverine has baseball bats coming out of his hands [see also].

The Anniversary Party (2001)

Some guy looks like Peter Sellers, and I'm pretty sure that's the only part of the movie I liked. Jennifer Jason Leigh is pregnant...no, she tells Alan Cummings that she had an abortion without his knowing, and they yell at each other outside in the dark—Hollywood Hills? John C. Reilly tries to drown himself in the pool, maybe, and some actress I like swims naked (but I can't remember which). I know I felt like this was a movie by and for actors, and I wasn't too into it.

[Another thing I'm not too into: this post. I wrote it, like, a million years ago and keep postponing it in favor of newer ones I write. Time to just get it out of the way: fuck off, Anniversary Party post!]

It's probably a function of the title, but it was very difficult to
find photographic evidence of the existence of this film online.

Swordfish (2001)

Wolverine is a hacker and John Travolta is a master criminal who tests his hacking skills by seeing whether he can crack some kind of code while getting a blowjob with a gun to his head. Maybe Wolvie's an undercover cop? I think Travolta's getaway plan for some kind of big bank robbery involves a school bus being picked up by a helicopter with a huge magnet, and somehow that's supposed to be a brilliant, unstoppable maneuver. Halle Berry might be in this.*

Also part of the process if you apply for a job at Google.

* Ohhhh, right. Topless, reading a book.

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Russell Crowe is a total genius whose mathematical insights border on the superhuman! He sees patterns other people can't! He—

Hold on, scratch that. He's bonkers.

Don't be crazy, Russell Crowe! Those symbols don't mean anything!

Minority Report (2002)

Creepy bald naked people in amniotic fluid predict the future so Tom Cruise can arrest criminals before they've had the chance to commit a crime, but then the creepy bald naked people say he's going to commit a crime, so he has to jump on vertical elevator-trains and maybe pull out his own molars—although, no, that seems like I'm remembering Twelve Monkeys. Does he maybe do a home eye transplant? I think I saw this movie drunk with a friend of mine in her parents' house in Massachusetts and she got scared.

Oh, Samantha Morton! She was great in Sweet & Lowdown.*

* Woody Allen's last good movie. WHO WANTS TO FIGHT ME?

Gosford Park (2001)

Oh my God, they're in some mansion in the English countryside, like with maids and butlers and shit, and I think someone gets murdered, and the hot schoolgirl from Trainspotting might be in it, and people talk confidentially in the kitchen. I think this movie was maybe actually pretty good, although I can't see how.

Oh, that actress. (Not even actually 100% sure this is from Gosford Park.
Found out while Googling it that it's Robert Altman! Would not have said that.)

House of Mirth (2000)

Gillian Anderson falls on hard times and is forced to live in a New York City apartment far bigger than any apartment I've ever seen in New York City. Now that I think of it, I think the apartment looks out on a park, too. She is disgraced! Maybe she has to work in a hat factory. I did not like this movie.

Not sure whether she made this hat herself.

The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

Neo's blind now but maybe has Matrix powers outside of the Matrix, and there's a five-hour battle scene between those squid and guys in the robot suits from Aliens. Neo and Trinity crash and Trinity dies. Neo fights a million Agent Smiths (that's the guy's name, right?) and gets killed but then isn't killed, and Agent Smith is destroyed and Neo's body gets taken away by the robots, and then the Oracle and somebody else have a conversation on a bench with a sunset, and I think of myself as being pretty smart and narratively attentive but I have no idea what's going on.

Lilo & Stitch (2002)

A little alien who can be a huge bad-ass like the iron giant comes to Hawaii, pursued by bounty hunters like Critters. Actually, this movie is basically just The Iron Giant meets Critters...meets E.T. There is probably a single mom in it, and I think I remember that when the little alien got all bad-ass, it was actually pretty bad-ass. Maybe sometimes he has more arms?

More than a little Fizzgiggy.

Wonder Boys (2000)

Michael Douglas has a 7,000 page novel and smokes pot. Tobey Maguire is his student, or is guiding him around like in The Scent of a Woman. The car gets stolen or impounded and destroyed, somebody drops the novel down the stairs, and generally I think things sort of get a little heavy. I remember expecting to like this movie more than I did.

Robert Downey Jr. was in this? Do I have to watch it again, now?

Mystic River (2003)

Tim Robbins is mentally handicapped and may have killed somebody's kid. Sean Penn yells a lot in the street. Eventually Tim Robbins probably has to be put down, like Lenny in Of Mice and Men. Lots of intense feeling, lots of yelling—and I think there might be some kind of code being observed, like a code of the streets, or some kind of gang's code, or a code of brothers. Everyone is very unhappy. The kid who got killed might have been a sweet teenaged girl. The whole damned thing is a goddamned shame.

Aaaaarrrrrrrghhh, yelling!

You Can Count on Me (2000)

I was one of two human beings in the world who did not like this movie. Mainly I was bored. I think it starts with these two kids finding out that their parents died in a car crash, and then, decades later, Mark Ruffalo comes to hang out with Laura Linney and bonds with her kids—but their relationship is strained, these siblings, and there are laughs and there are tears and ultimately they realize how important they are to each other. Probably he's an alcoholic. Yawn.

An emotionally devastating uncle–nephew bonding scene from the not-at-all-boring family fishing masterpiece You Can Count on Me.

21 Grams (2003)

Oh, man, I think Naomi Watts's husband got run over by Benicio Del Toro in a car, or Benicio Del Toro's friend got run over by Sean Penn in a car, or somebody ran somebody over and then starts sleeping with that person's widow or sister or friend, and somebody else is out for revenge, and in the end nobody's happy. I seem to recall somebody getting shot in a motel room and Naomi Watts screaming. I also remember somebody trying to clean blood off the bumper of a big car. Two-word summary: "Oh, no." (21 grams of what, though, do you think? Somebody's probably a drug addict. Oh, no.)

Everything sucks.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Communist Cate Blanchett tries to get Indiana Jones to find something for her in a six-year-old boy's misconception of the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but he escapes and hides in a refrigerator while a nuclear bomb goes off. Then he and his greaser son drive a motorcycle through Yale University and fight ants until an alien makes a >: face and Cate Blanchett's head explodes (from too much knowledge!—take that, commie!), at which point the kingdom of the crystal skull blasts off into outer space and Indiana Jones puts his hand on his greaser son's shoulder and says, "Let's go home," or something.

Oh, right: the "Jones girl" is Marion Ravenwood. OK.