Edge of (cinematic) obsession

No, not Mel Gibson for once, that bigoted, misogynistic asshole.

He may play an obsessed guy in all his films -- in fact, he surprised me by underplaying that role in Edge of Darkness -- but it's my own obsession I'm a bit worried about this morning.

You see, with last night's viewing of Edge of Darkness, I have now reached my record number of previously unseen films seen in a calendar year for the second year in a row. And for the second year in a row, it happened on November 22nd, with 39 days still remaining on the calendar.

The thing is, 211 was the total of new movies I reached on November 22nd last year. This year, it's 242.

Some of you may already think I'm too obsessed because I know the exact number of movies I see in a given year. You have a valid point. I'm a list-keeper, what can I say.

Knowing that I ended up beating my previous personal record by 31 movies last year, and that I might do it again this year, in a year when my first child was born ... well, that'll clinch the obsessive label for the rest of you.

The thing is, it's not just movies I'd never seen before that I've watched. I've also revisited 72 movies that I'd previously seen, almost twice as many as this time last year. That's far and away a record for a given year, made possible by three different projects: 1) Re-watching movies in order to rank my best of the last decade, which constituted nearly 20 revisited movies in January alone; 2) My Second Chances series, in which I re-watched a movie per week that I hadn't liked as much as most people, for ten weeks; and 3) My Double Jeopardy series, in which I re-watched a movie per week that I'd liked more than most people, also for ten weeks.

Some quick math ... that's 314 movies watched on the 326th day of the year. Yikes. Almost one per day.

Last year, I was proud of this milestone, as discussed here.

This year? I worry.

I'm starting to wonder: Do I do anything other than watch movies?

Yes, yes I do. I swear I do. I just can't think of what they are right now.

Actually, I really do. I play basketball and go rollerblading and see friends and listen to music. I attend the occasional museum. I go on the occasional hike. I love making mixes for people, even at age 37, especially now that I've got new high-tech equipment to create seamless transitions between the songs.

But one major thing that has suffered has been reading. After finishing off a book in the first days of January, I started another and read it until June. I've still only read 30 pages of the next book I started. That's probably because I'm having trouble getting into it (but refuse to abandon it), and because I'm a slow reader.

But you can always find excuses if you want to. The fact of the matter is, I've exchanged movie watching for reading almost totally. If I've got 20 minutes of downtime, I won't pick up a book and read a couple chapters. I'll put in a DVD and watch a couple chapters. Never mind the fact that I can't finish it right now. I'll watch this DVD like I'd read a book, in multiple sittings.

For many people, starting a movie with no definite endgame would be sacrilege. It would be a disservice to the filmmaker to break up his or her story by starting and stopping. Is feeding the obsession worth going to these lengths?

The thing is, this movie obsession is a bit like an eating disorder. The thinner anorexic people get, the fatter they think they look. For me, the more movies I see, the more movies I'm reminded I haven't seen. Which just feeds the obsession to seek out more eras, more genres, more directors, more stars.

I guess the real question is, how is this affecting the quality of my life? That's the real measure of the strength of an obsession.

So far, not measurably at all. I'm a good husband and dad, and I see friends as often as those two roles will allow me to. Back in that January in which I was revisiting films to rank the best of the 2000s, I did get into an argument or two with my wife about how much time I was spending watching movies. But that was a finite period of intense project-oriented tunnel vision, and she was in the hormonal early stages of pregnancy. Since then, my movie-watching has factored its way into our mutual schedules in a mostly amicable way. And I can probably trace back my highly productive 2010 in part to the fact that my wife was going to bed by 9 o'clock for most of the spring and summer, leaving me a great opportunity to watch a whole movie after she went to bed.

But it's the covert effects of this obsession that I sometimes worry about. Maybe all these hours glued to the television (we also have a huge number of TV shows we keep up with) are steadily degrading my vision. Maybe I'm getting less healthy as I eat more and drink more soda in order to stay up late enough to finish the movie. Maybe I'm becoming a less interesting person as I find myself more and more inclined toward discussing movies, and less and less inclined toward discussing other things.

I guess all film lovers have moments in their lives when they come to Jesus about things like this. It's the moment you realize that there are sacrifices you're making in order to watch as many movies as you do. It's the moment you realize that your friends who only watch 50 movies a year, rather than 250, are doing other things with those extra hours, things that you might benefit from doing -- reading, making things with their hands, learning career-related skills that will help them advance. Of course, even in this realization, there's the opportunity to make excuses. For example, I like to think those friends fill up the extra time with video games, which does not happen to be a passion of mine, and which I can comfortably say feels objectively less useful than watching movies.

Then again, I am who I am. I'm a person who loves movies, and I've committed myself to that like never before in recent years. One big change from 2009 to 2010 is that I'm making a much bigger effort to read other people's movie blogs, as well as to listen to some podcasts. But reading other blogs just fuels my desire to watch more movies.

The best thing I can do is say that this is not a bad thing. If a materialist's life goals can be summarized as "He who ends up with the most toys, wins," then maybe mine would be "He who sees the most movies, wins." And the thing is, I still won't be a contender. There are others out there far more obsessed than I am, who may average two movies a day rather than "only" one.

So I accept my life for what it is and for what role movies have in it. After all, I am a critic who gets paid for some percentage of the total movies I watch.

But there I go again with excuses and justifications. Why not just say that I love movies, and that I love loving movies? It's who I am: An obsessive guy.

Unlike Mel Gibson, though, I like Jews, blacks and women.

The vigilante

Starring in a film for the first time in eight years -- or, more importantly, the first time since he went on a drunken, anti-Semitic rant -- Mel Gibson decided to return to something familiar.

Something very, very familiar.

In fact, I didn't realize how familiar until a Facebook friend of mine posted a question in his status update earlier in the week. This guy is a working journalist who, I suppose, was trying to come up with a story related to the release of Gibson's Edge of Darkness. I'm only assuming that, because this was the exact phrasing:

"A little pop culture help, please: can anyone think of any other movies in which a dad wreaks bloody vengeful havoc after his child or wife is hurt and/or murdered? A la Taken, Death Wish? What movies am I missing? And no, I am not curating a film festival."

What turned me on to the Gibson angle was the responses to this post. One commenter said "Isn't that the plot of every Mel Gibson movie ever made?"

The answer is, yes, pretty much. With the exception of Bird on a Wire and Forever Young.

(And sorry to steal your idea for a story, if this was in fact what your idea was, o friend of mine. But blogging anonymity prevents me from giving you any more credit than I already have. Besides, you'll never read this anyway. Nor will many other people.)

Let's consider, chronologically, all the way back to when Mel Gibson was just a glint in superstardom's eye:

1) Mad Max (1979, George Miller). Gibson plays a police officer whose family is murdered by a gang in retaliation for the death of one of its members. After this, Gibson's Max becomes mad.

2) The Road Warrior (1981, George Miller). Same Max, still mad.

3) Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985, George Miller & George Ogilvie). Same Max, but not quite as mad anymore. Tina Turner guest stars.

4) Lethal Weapon (1987, Richard Donner). Gibson may have become something of a jolly court jester in later Lethal Weapons, but not here. This deadly serious movie features Gibson as a suicidal, nearly psychopathic cop who is stewing in his own misery after the death of his wife. Will act crazy for food.

5) Lethal Weapon 2 (1989, Richard Donner). Martin Riggs is a lot funnier in the second installment, but he still gets a chance to go fist-swinging, gun-blazing crazy after they deposit his new girlfriend at the bottom of the bay.

6) Braveheart (1995, Mel Gibson). William Wallace becomes a freedom fighter after his intended is murdered, but don't think his eyes don't go into the back of his head in apoplectic rage in a couple slightly less noble moments.

7) Ransom (1996, Ron Howard). This is probably the first one everyone thinks of, though neither his wife nor son is actually killed here. However, Tom Mullen gets so pissed about his son's kidnapping that he actually puts a ransom on the kidnappers. My friends and I were saying "Gimme back my son!" in loud, spittle-filled Gibson rage for several years after that.

8) Payback (1999, Brian Helgeland). In this film, Gibson is perhaps more a strict vigilante than in any of the others -- what prevents it from fitting the terms of my friend's query is that his "payback," from what I remember/can glean from the internet, doesn't have anything to do with a wife or a child. However, I've called this post "The vigilante," so it certainly fits into my own modification of the theme.

9) The Patriot (2000, Roland Emmerich). Gibson's Benjamin Martin is a pacifist until one of his sons is killed by the British during a skirmish at his plantation. After that he gets all angry with his muskets and gunpowder.

10) Signs (2002, M. Night Shyamalan). Yep, this even fits into the theme, sort of. Although Gibson's Graham Hess is a reverend and most certainly a man of Godly non-violence, his wife was killed by a driver who fell asleep at the wheel (Shyamalan), and it's at least implied that Hess wants to do this man physical harm.

11) Edge of Darkness (2010, Martin Campbell). I don't know if Gibson's detective goes all Charles Bronson on anyone after his activist daughter is murdered, but the hopelessness and screaminess of a lot of his dialogue from the ads certainly suggests that possibility, doesn't it?

Okay, so it's not every movie he's in. But 11 movies is more than a trend. And besides, it's not really satire if you don't exaggerate a little bit.

Now, five movies in which Mel Gibson should have played the grieving dad/husband:

1) Mystic River (2003, Clint Eastwood). "Is that my daughter in there? IS THAT MY DAUGHTER IN THEY-UH?!?"

2) Taken (2009, Pierre Morel). "What I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."

3) A Time to Kill (1996, John Grisham). But he'd need a race change. "YES they deserved to die, and I hope they burn in hell!"

4) The Limey (1999, Steven Soderbergh). "You tell him, you tell him I'm coming. Tell him I'm FUCKING coming!"

5) Gladiator (2000, Ridley Scott). "At my signal, unleash hell."