I know you're up there 'cuz I can smell your brain

We've been watching more movies than usual, lately.

It all started last weekend when I went to GameStop to pick up a copy of The Incredibles (Pixar, 2004, Collector's Edition) for Tim, and ended up buying two other movies along with it in order to take advantage of their "three for $19.99" sale.

With the exception of Cars, Pixar can be counted on to regularly crank out some pretty great entertainment. (Sidebar: Hello, Pixar? I'm going to assume that Cars was the trick you had to turn to keep pimp daddy Disney from roughing you up in an alley and taking all your crack; therefore I'm willing to overlook that one indiscretion. You had to do what you had to do... but now you'll never do it again. Right? RIGHT?) Even though I've seen The Incredibles approximately 823,742 times (thank you, children), it is indeed full of all kinds of geekgasm-inducing technology which makes owning it worthwhile for just that reason alone. But that wasn't the reason; it was because Tim made The Face, and The Face is how Tim gets whatever Tim wants... which here means "Tim and his Face wanted The Incredibles on DVD".

The other two purchases: Bourne Supremacy and The Aviator, neither of which I'd seen.

Bourne Supremacy: The second installation in the Bourne franchise (imdb tells me there is a third in production), was good and enthralling and mind-candy-esque and enjoyable. I liked it, and I don't regret spending $6.67 to own it. And just FYI, as I typed that just now I was all 'damn, dude, that's less than the cost of a movie ticket!'.

The Aviator: I expected to dislike this film strenuously, or at the very least, fall asleep while it was on. Neither happened, actually, and in fact I enjoyed it quite a lot. Listen, I have to say that it annoys the crap out of me when I am forced to go against my natural loathing of certain celebrities, and that's what happened as I watched this film. Screw you, Scorsese, you bastage. This is the second time in as many months I've seen a film in which you've managed to pull a beautiful performance out of DiCaprio, totally ruining my perfectly comfortable sense of contentment with being unable to tolerate him whatsoever. Feh.

Anyway. The Aviator? Great movie. What a great character Hughes was in life, as if he lived so that he would be immortalized in film. Really, I've always been fascinated by brilliant, odd, bizarre people (have you met my husband?), and Howard Hughes took those characteristics to the extreme and then kept right on going until it ultimately killed him. Killed him dead.

After watching the film, I began noodling around the web for more information and then yesterday ended up at Books-a-Million to purchase _Citizen Hughes: The Power, The Money, and The Madness_. It isn't very often that a film will motivate me to go out and obtain more information on the topic/characters/etc., but I totally love it when that kind of thing occurs. It's just so rare for me, to have something new come along and catch my jaded, old, uninterested eye. When it all clicks, though... oh how sweet it is. When something sparks my serious interest, I want to get right down and wallow in it. Roll around, writhe, get it all over me, soak it all in, learn as much as I can about every little last bit on the topic. Mmph. It's times like this that I remember just how dearly I love to learn. Thanks, Howard.

And so, bringing our week of movie gluttony and this behemoth of a post to a close, I move on to talking about how we went to see Apocalypto after Friday's bomb of a dining experience. Otherwise known as "I am Jaguar Paw. You killed my father. Prepare to die.", Apocalypto is the movie I was referring to when I said I just don't think I'm old enough for R rated movies, anymore.

Maybe it's age. Maybe it's motherhood. Maybe it's hormonal. I don't know what it is; it seems to have come on suddenly, and now it's standard me-ness: I can barely tolerate movie violence.

Used to be, I could take in whatever violent media came my way. Horror movies? Alrightie. Scary books? Bring 'em on! And here I am, still ultra-interested in the psychology of serial killing and everything that goes along with that; you'd think that with the amount of media I consume on said topic I'd have built up a tolerance. Or something.

Apparently, not so much.

I spent the majority of this ultra-violent movie with a) my eyes closed, b) my face buried in Tim's shoulder, c) a lump in my throat, and/or d) the urge to make this the first movie I've ever walked out of. It was gut-wrenching... and it made an impression, that's for sure. I won't be forgetting it any time soon. Is that the earmark, the benchmark, the somethingsomethingmark, the magical special flobotsam of a worthwhile film?

I just don't know.