111 - Fitzcarraldo - 3 stars
A film that is as much about Herzog's obsession with making the film as it is about a man's attempt to build an opera house in the middle of the Amazon jungle.
183 - Le Samourai - 3 stars
Really wanted to watch Breathless after reading an excellent article in The Observer but we are screening it at work when it is re-released on the 25th June, so I picked out another French film instead.
Alain Delon rocks the Rorschach look of fedora and raincoat as the assassin who struggles to live by his moral code when he is betrayed by his employers.
If you need any further proof you can go and watch Mesrine and A Prophet, but Le Samourai is yet another example that nobody does crime films any cooler than the French.
140 - As Good As It Gets - 3 stars
As good as it gets? No, not really. This is just the Jack Nicholson show with his usual brand of crazy filtered into a more mainstream mode.
Fine support from Greg Kinnear as his gay neighbour but I didn't like Helen Hunt in this film, or in general really, and wasn't convinced by their relationship.
Highly overrated on this list in my opinion.
Trivia: Yes it really was Shane Black, director of Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang and star of Predator, as the manager of the restaurant!
92 - Once Upon A Time In America - 3 stars
Sergio Leone's attempt to do his version of The Godfather Trilogy, in one film. At 4 hours long and years spent in the editing room it does have a feeling of being incomplete; Joe Pesci's character feels like he got forgotten about, other characters seem to be left out to focus on the main relationship between Robert DeNiro and James Woods' characters, continually jumped back and forward in time, etc.
I can buy into movies where you follow the main character who is a criminal if it sets out te reasons why they became one; bad upbringing, need to survive but I lost any empathy for DeNiro's character when he forces himself on and rapes his friend's sister who he has been romancing. Sorry Bobby but after that there was no emotional connection with the story for me and I couldn't care about what happened at the end.
So now I have 100 days left and feeling pretty good about my chances of completing this mammoth task in time. I have only 115 films left and secured all the hard to find titles, got my Lovefilm list down to under 50 films, and down to an average of 1.15 films a day. The aim is to get to 90 films left with 90 days to go so I can truly focus on one film a day. Of course I still have the 15.5 hour long HEIMAT to go though!
Days remaining - 100 Films remaining - 115
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