August 12, 2005
Even though there were only a handful of horror movies that came out in the summer of 2005 I did not bother to see THE SKELETON KEY. And I believe it was a conscious choice. I tended to dislike Kate Hudson in movies and I think I snobbishly assumed her participation meant it was some phony mainstream horror movie for the normies or whatever. Also I think I still (correctly) distrusted screenwriter Ehren Kruger because of SCREAM 3. Being surprised to like THE RING didn’t fully change my opinion of him.
Hudson (between Garry Marshall’s RAISING HELEN and the Russo Brothers’ YOU, ME AND DUPREE) plays Caroline Ellis, who quits her job at a New Orleans nursing home, disappointed with how dehumanizing it is, and takes a private hospice gig looking after a stroke victim in a plantation house in Terrebonne Parish. Friendly lawyer Luke (Peter Sarsgaard, K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER) convinces fussy Violet Devereaux (Gena Rowlands following THE NOTEBOOK) to hire her to look after her husband Ben (John Hurt not long after HELLBOY), who is bedridden, doesn’t talk and seems terrified all the time. (read the rest of this shit…)
Some time around the mid-‘90s I took a weekly screenwriting class for a while, and the teacher loved Paul Schrader. He seemed to bring him up in every class. The guy who wrote TAXI DRIVER. The guy with the strict Calvinist upbringing. Eventually he had us watch a Paul Schrader movie, and he chose LIGHT OF DAY – the one where Michael J. Fox plays in a rock band with Joan Jett. I had seen it before and I didn’t dislike it but I thought it was a weird choice to represent Schrader. I think maybe the teacher hadn’t seen it yet.
“Like Popeye says, ‘I yam what I yam,’ right?”
This is Jarmusch’s fifth film. It’s possible I’d seen STRANGER THAN PARADISE and DOWN BY LAW already, but I suspect I rented them after seeing this. (I know I’d never heard of PERMANENT VACATION and saw 
I don’t watch these twisty suspense thrillers too often, but they can be fun. I honestly don’t know what drew me to TAKING LIVES right now, but the only thing I knew about it other than that it stars BY THE SEA director Angelina Jolie is a really absurd thing that happens at the end that somebody told me about back when it came out. That turns out to be the best part of the movie, but I guess it’s okay I had it spoiled 11 years ago because otherwise I don’t think I would’ve watched it. There is no scenario where I see this fresh. It’s kind of like how I saw both 
