Am I too old, or too drunk for parties? THE NAKED KISS (18) and TASTE OF CHERRY (45)

You know, I'm only 26 and I think I might be starting to fade out of the party circuit. I know, I know, call me lame, call me old before my time, but if you looked at my sordid history with parties, as well as the swollen yellow mass some people might call "my liver" you'd probably think it was about time I retired. I mean, I went to a pretty big "rager" this weekend filled with expensive, free booze, some very attractive women, and honestly a ton of people having a good time ... and I just sort of felt out of place. This could be a product of the three glasses of wine, one expensive glass of scotch, and several beers consumed (in a 1986 mini-van) before hand, but in the past I've usually found large amounts of alcohol help me to acclimate better to parties. Sadly, this time I felt sort of like a blacked out slug of human, sort of sludging my way through the crowds, intent on finding unattached friends to talk to me. Sure, I later realized that I only remember streamers, flashing lights, and the above mentioned attractive girls, but still, I felt awkward and I hate feeling awkward. I don't know, maybe I'm just done with parties full of drunk people I don't know or care to know. Maybe I need to shift my priority list from "Drinking, Drinking, Drinking" to something else. My friend Anne is talking about picking up hobbies, maybe I should pick up a hobby? Hmmmm ... any idea which hobbies girls find more attractive? So far beard growing and "showering less" haven't worked out for me. I'll look in to it though.

Before I start my mini-review of Taste of Cherry (45) let me just apologize for assuming that this film was Lebanese. It's not, it's Iranian and I completely showed my stupid colors yet again. Hopefully you're getting used to my stupidity by now, and me painfully misidentifying the geographical culture of a film doesn't turn you against me too much.

Taste of Cherry (45) could of been titled "Creepy Guy Drives Around and Talks To People About Offing Himself, No One Really Cares", as that's pretty much what the movie was. The main, Iranian character, for some reason has decided to take a bunch of sleeping pills and lie down in a hole next to a tree to die, but he needs someone to fill in the hole when he's gone. Thus, he drives around the city (mainly the desolate hills around the city) and creeps four people out with his weird questions and sort of lecherous stare. I'm a plot based film lover, so I spent much of the film trying to figure out why he was doing this, but in the long-run, the movie is less about his motives and more about a discussion of life and why it's worth living. This movie wasn't exactly, er, riveting, but it was beautifully filmed and the various interactions often times crept in to the interesting zone. If you sleep easily during films, maybe leave this one alone.

Sam Fuller is a great director, one of the first really hard-nosed filmmakers to make it big, and I'd seen a few of his works before diving in to The Naked Kiss (18). This is one of his earlier works and I guess I was hoping it would be a little more noir and a little less, uh, dark-ish soap opera. The story revolves around a former prostitute who enters a small town and is blackmailed by a sleazy man who she won't sleep with. It reeks of the 1950s and honestly bored me a lot more than I expected. Luckily, the next film in The Collection is Fuller's Shock Corridor (19) and this movie flat out ruled. If you're a classic film dork, like myself, you need to check out The Naked Kiss to keep your street cred high, but aside from that I'd leave it alone.

Tuesday: The Most Dangerous Game (46) and Shock Corridor (19)