Birthday Film Festival

My birthday is on Saturday, and as a way to celebrate this year my wife is giving me my own film festival. Every night this week we'll be watching a movie I picked that usually Joy would not be eager to watch. I'm lucky that we share similar movie tastes overall, and where we don't converge, Joy is gracious enough to barter - one "Andrew movie" for one "Joy movie." That means for every noir film we watch, I also suffer through one meaningless chick flick.

Compromise is the stuff of good marriages.

This opportunity is rare, so over the past two weeks I've agonized over what to watch. I've come up with several lists, some involving complete viewings of The Godfather trilogy and some nothing but foreign films. Below is the official list, along with a link to essays by Roger Ebert on the films:

1. The Seven Samurai (1954)
2. Chinatown (1974)
3. The Producers (1968)
4. Vertigo (1958)
5. The Rules of the Game (1939)

I've only seen one of these movies, Vertigo, and it was in high school so I remember very little of it. But I've heard two papers on its music, both of which made me eager to see it again.

You'll also notice the three main categories of "Andrew movies" represented here: classic foreign films, film noir, and slapstick. It should be an interesting week and I'll post quick reactions to the films and, at the end, the experience, for those interested.