No. More. Movies. Today. Please.

In the past 36 hours I’ve seen 10 movies. It's like running a marathon of film. As sad as that may sound it may not even be a record for me, although I can proudly proclaim I’ve never sat through the 312-minute TV version of Fanny & Alexander or the 15-hour snooze-o-rama Berlin Alexanderplatz. See I have Sundays and Mondays off. I started late into the night Sunday and just kept going and going and going. Duracell, I’m expecting a check.

I started with some older movies I had Netflix’d, and then Full Metal Jacket, which was sent to me as part of the recently released Stanley Kubrick collection. By the next morning, Monday, I had a 1:20 p.m. screening of Local Color, a 4:05 p.m. screening of No Country for Old Men, and then a 7 p.m. screening of The Mist. The first two screenings were at the same theater, but No. 3 was about seven miles down the road and into another city. By the end of the night, my lower half was sore, and my neck was aching, but that wasn’t it yet because I still had Redacted and Benny’s Video, which I snoozed through at parts. And if all goes well tonight, I’m going to drop in to see Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium and American Gangster, two films I’ve missed screening with the press.

Here’s a wrap-up of what I’ve seen, in no particular order:

• Funny Games — Michael Haneke’s brutal Austrian/German torture porn before the genre torture porn was even invented. In it two twisted teens take a family captive and play some not-so-funny games with them. Example game: “I bet you won’t live until tomorrow morning at 9 a.m.,” one of the teens says. And off we go. I’ve been reviewing Haneke’s work and I’ve noticed he likes to indict the audience in the crimes of the characters. He’s the only director I know who wants you to feel guilty for watching his work. Still, though, it’s terrific. I was thrilled to see an ad for the English version of Funny Games, also by Haneke and starring Naomi Watts and Tim Roth, run during the trailer pack for No Country For Old Men.

• The Mist — Stephen King has turned into a hack writer. And his movie adaptations have lately been pretty lame. But this one is spectacularly enjoyable. See the full review in the next post.

• Bug — Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon claw at their skin in this psychological thriller from William Friedkin. Usually when I hear the label “psychological thriller” I cringe because I know that everything that takes places exists in a character's mind. It’s all imagined. That applies here, but in a different way. The movie doesn’t exploit the fact that there are no bugs, but it uses it to show you how far into madness Judd and her new friend are going. Very trippy thriller.

• No Country For Old Men — Perfect in every way. Yes, it is just as good as everyone is saying it is. Go see it. Now.

• Benny’s Video — In No Country, the Javier Bardem character kills his victims using a captive bolt pistol, which is a device that shoots a piston out of a gun like a bullet and then retracts it back. In the right hands it can kill cattle without stopping their hearts. In Haneke’s Benny’s Video, teen Benny (who also stars in Funny Games) uses one on girl … in his parents house … and videotapes it … and then shows it to his parents. Not the brightest kid. Not Haneke’s best.

• Full Metal Jacket — It improves with age.

• Redacted — Brian De Palma’s angry love letter to the Iraq War and all branches of the military is poignant and haunting … in theory. The film itself is boring and poorly acted, regardless if it’s supposed to feel real and gritty.

• Local Color — A boy wants to paint so he enlists a local celebrity artist, who paints representational art when the world is clamoring for abstract nonsense. The old foul-mouthed painter is Armin Mueller-Stahl, who also appeared in this year’s terrific Eastern Promises. Ray Liotta has a role as a homophobic dad that’s pretty funny: “You want to go into the woods with an old man?!?” he screams to his son. The movie is good intentioned enough, but it’s as sappy and sentimental as Patch Adams.

• The Squid and the Whale — Wow! This movie is awesome. The dialogue is punchy and fast, and the settings and locations are perfect. The costumes, wonderful. The mood and tone, exquisite. I wanted to watch it again as soon as it was over.

• Bottle Rocket — Wes Anderson’s first movie, and it’s decent. It’s no classic, but it’s enjoyable and really quite funny. The character Owen Wilson plays is basically the same one he plays in The Darjeeling Limited: a controlling, obsessive loner with a motor mouth. My favorite scenes were with Luke Wilson and his sweetie, Inez, the housekeeper at the crap motel he stays at throughout the middle of the movie.