"The Trip"

Films like this are what make Michael Winterbottom such an awesome director. His films are daring, and made creatively inexpensive. This is a feature length version of the acclaimed television series. Winterbottom, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are brilliant. The improvised dialog the two leads have is hilarious! Watching the two battle with dueling Michael Caine impressions had me rolling.

What makes this such a compelling film is the psychological turmoil the two experience on their edible road trip and how you feel for them, each at different times.

Coogan's brave portrayal of himself, full of insecurity as he ruminates on aging, fame, love, life...

Rob Brydon very much comes across as one who is very sweet, loves his wife and baby, and comedy seems to come from him easily in almost any moment.

"The Trip" is a different kind of film, if you really find that you love it, it could become a yardstick film that you play as a test to see who is worthy of your friendship and love. This is quiet and contemplative, but also more importantly, laugh out loud hilarious.

"Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill a Mockingbird"

I hadn't seen this documentary by Mary Murphy before so I had no idea what to expect and no expectations. One could be disappointed because Harper Lee hasn't been interviewed in something like 50 years, and Oprah Winfrey talks of meeting Harper Lee and how she discovered that Lee would never ever agree to an interview, with her or anyone else. We do get interviews with her friends, neighbors, siblings, authors and fans.

It still amazes me that Lee lived just 3 houses down from Truman Capote, who is of course is represented by the Dill boy in the book. You just never know where your friends will go.

What are the chances that two of the greatest writers of the 20th century would be neighbors in a small Alabama town?

"It Might Get Loud"

This is a documentary on the electric guitar from the point of view of three significant rock musicians: the Edge, Jimmy Page and Jack White. Directed by Davis Guggenheim.

I found it to be a truly absorbing 90-minutes on how the electric guitar can change lives. I wish they would continue this kind of documentary with other guitarists.

In trying to describe it to friends, it always sounded boring, but that is not the case at all.

"The Shining"

"The Shining" by Stanley Kubrick is a psychological horror film starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and Danny Lloyd. The film is very loosely based on the novel by Stephen King.

Portraying a writer, Jack takes a job as a caretaker at a snowbound and isolated hotel that is closed for its off-season.

His son Danny possesses a psychic ability that lets him see visions from the past and future, none of them good. Jack, too seems to share Danny's psychic abilities.

Jack gradually becomes influenced by the supernatural presence, or possibly his past life self. He descends into madness and attempts to murder his wife and son, just as a caretaker before him had done.

Does the past and the present exist at once? Is the hotel doomed because it was built on an indian burial ground? Is this horror film really an optimistic film with a happy ending because, if it is about ghosts, as it suggests, then anything that purports there to be life after death is optimistic, that is, unless one believes in hell.

I saw this film on opening weekend and loved it! I still very much enjoy it, watching it again on DVD, as part of The Stanley Kubrick Collection that was my Christmas gift from my wife, who had never seen it before.

"The Cat's Meow"

Day 1 of 2012 and I thought I would begin again with some daily films I've watched.

This is one I've seen a few times before, but I enjoyed Peter Bogdanovich's, "The Cat's Meow" and I know it's historical fiction, possibly rumor and gossip, about the death of film pioneer Thomas Ince, who met his demise on media mogul William Randolph Hearst's yacht… But there's something about it I enjoy. Mainly, it's Eddie Izzard's portrayal of Charlie Chaplin.

I know it's not a great film, or even a good movie, but for me Eddie Izzard is wonderful in it and it really begs for more of him. Kirsten Dunst is also very good as William Randolph Hearst's mistress Marion Davies and her singing at the end credits is pretty awesome.