Tommy's Mindlessly Stupid Project, volume 7

It worked as a finger warmup yesterday, though I'd probably not write another 1700 word post.

Christmas Vacation  (1989, D: Jeremiah S. Chechik)

Still works.  The strongest of the vacation flicks, to my mind.  Vacation is dark and hilarious, and European is not without its charms.  But of the first three?  This one's the best put together, with building in a nice madcap crescendo to a kablooey end.

I'll end up watching this one again, along with A Christmas Story, here over the next 5 1/2 weeks.  A couple years ago, I put A Christmas Story on repeat for about a month, and last year it was this one....

Clerks    (1994, D: Kevin Smith)

I'd mentioned that I'd be interested to see Kevin Smith revisit Chasing Amy, now that several years have passed, to see what his thoughts on that relationship were.  I'd been thinking about what I said about the movie, and I think Naive is probably the best descriptor, though it hit me that for how old we all were at the time (and Smith and I are in similar concentric circles of both age and bullshit), it worked.

I say all that to say this:  Clerks still works for me.  I need to remind myself to watch it every now and again.  I feel a little too much Dante in my character, here lately.  Hence, the writing.  Shit or get off the pot....

Clerks 2    (2006, D: Kevin Smith)

I'd kinda wandered the line on this flick, for a long time.  I liked it, but I couldn't decide whether it was because I was a minor Smith loyalist, or if there was something that holds up beyond that.  I'm not above admitting I'll like something somebody does, even if it's crap.

I watched this late in the summer (Christ...that's how fucking far behind I am with this bit).  Right as a buddy of mine was leaving our jobplace to move.  He's a friend, and it was good to have him there.

It didn't hit me until this viewing that this wasn't Dante's movie.  Yeah, Dante's got a couple big scenes, but at the end of the day, this is Randall's movie.  Don't know why I never really put that together until this movie, but Randall's working through some shit, and Jeff Anderson as Randall does a fine job putting that directionless man in your 30's feel up onto the big screen...