The 12 Movies Meme

I'm deviating from the norm here. This isn't a review. This is a glimpse into my soul...or not. Piper at Lazy Eye Theatre started The 12 Movies Meme, which basically asks the question, if you could show 12 films at a movie theater, which ones would they be? After giving his own film-a-thon list, he tagged a few others to do it themselves, one of which was the LAMB's fearless leader Fletch at Blog Cabins, who tagged both Ms. Go at D.C. Girl at the Movies and Nick at R2D2, who both tagged me. Still with me?

So all the cool kids seem to have a nice theme running through their choices and since I'm a follower, I will too. It took me a whole 5 minutes to come up with it, but the shallowness in me won out and I will now present you with my Two Faces of Leading Men Film Festival. Here's the thing: a number of my favorite actors just happen to be drop dead gorgeous. Hey, they can't help it! But it seems that every now and again they don't get the respect they often deserve because of their good looks. So I present you with 6 nights of double features, one actor per night, one film where he's looking good and one film where he must mostly rely on his acting chops.

Monday: Brad Pitt Night
Fight Club and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Is there a cooler guy than Tyler Durden? No, and Brad looks delicious playing him. It's not that Brad's bad looking in Assassination, but he's got the rundown tired look going on.


Tuesday: George Clooney Night
From Dusk Till Dawn and O Brother, Where Art Thou?

I think it's the tattoo that does it for me in From Dusk Till Dawn. I had a difficult time picking one film for George's good side. And again, it's not that his turn in my favorite Coen Brothers' flick is necessarily unattractive, but he looks more goofy than anything else.


Wednesday: Cillian Murphy Night
Red Eye and 28 Days Later

Red Eye may not be a great flick, but Cillian is awesome, and awesomely gorgeous as the villain. And though he does an excellent job as Jim in Days, that whole I-haven't-eaten-in-a-month look is far from landing him on the cover of GQ. (EDIT: I just got back from grocery shopping and it obviously doesn't take much to be on the cover of GQ, because this month it's Seth Rogen.)


Thursday: Johnny Depp Night
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl and Blow

Now I'm going to flip-flop and put the Not Hot flick first. I know, Captain Jack is awesome. He's right up there with Tyler in the cool department. But if that guy walked up to me in a bar, I'd probably run screaming the other way. The gold teeth, the crazy hair, the smell of being at sea for an unknown amount of time. It's not on my list of attractions. Actually just about any of Johnny's characters could've easily gone here, but I just wanted an excuse to watch Pirates...again. As for Blow, Johnny does spend a majority of the film in sexy mode, but loses it toward the end with that beer belly.


Friday: Christian Bale Night
The Machinist and The Prestige

Bale's infamous loss of 60+ pounds to play Trevor in The Machinist was bold...and sickening. If you ever wondered what Batman's skeleton looks like, here's the answer. Thankfully he beefed back up to look more human when Batman Begins rolled around, and shortly after he was looking pretty good in The Prestige. There were even two of him!


Saturday: Leonardo DiCaprio Night
What's Eating Gilbert Grape? and The Departed

For Leo, I'm going way back to the days when he was all of 19 and playing a mentally retarded Arnie for the not hot category, but very talented nonetheless. Then in The Departed we get a hot performance (again) and a hot Leo.

There are still a fair share of blokes who got the axe here for various reasons, but the main one would be that I had a hard time finding films that I like in which the leading man looked unattractive for a majority of the time. So Clive Owen, Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Will Smith, Edward Norton, Sean Bean, Colin Firth, Ralph Fiennes and Nathan Fillion: consider yourselves lucky this time.

I'm suppose to tag at least five other people to play in our reindeer games, but how about six? I tag the above named gents to play. Come on guys, I dare you.

So that's it. Would you stop by my Two-Faces of Leading Men Film Festival?