Quadruple Feature Sunday

We dove headfirst into the ever-expanding DVD collection today.

The end result?

A quadruple feature Sunday.

It yielded a surprising, and thoroughly satisfying collection of films running the gamut from an Oscar-winning indie flick, a squirm-inducing hit comedy from last fall, an early film from an animation wizard to one of the seminal movies in cinema history.

We covered a lot of ground today.

Screening #1: Superbad

The whole Judd Apatow cult of reverence sometimes goes right by me. I am simply not rushing out to the movies for the squirm-inducing entertainment in which he and his minions seem to excel.

It goes against my idea of what makes the escapism of movies fun.

So, just as I avoided The 40-Year-Old Virgin when it hit the theaters, I also managed to miss both Knocked Up and Superbad when they were selling tickets like gangbusters last year.

And just as I ended up being thoroughly charmed by Steve Carell's take on abstinence, I hesitate to admit I was pleasantly surprised by the high school boys club that is Superbad.

Again treading that fine line between heart and squirm, the flick is a typical teenage outsider setup, where some dorks are desperate to get some booze to impress the hot girls as they near graduation. This is not new territory, but somehow, by making me squirm a bit, these characters grew on me and quite simply made me laugh -- often.

Michael Cera hits it out of the park again, expanding his awkward teenager shtick he honed so well on Arrested Development. As Evan, he grounds the movie with his typical understated humor and allows the more ridiculous elements to soar.

Jonah Hill is thus given the ability to take the whole scheme to score with the ladies into ridiculously dark corners of the high school comedy canon. Christopher Mintz-Plasse provides enables serious comic relief as he embraces his Hawaiian fake ID and ends up on a wild tour because of it.

Needless to say I loved the movie, even when it made me wince (there is something VERY wrong with the mark of a woman that Seth has to try and wash out at one point). I am definitely coming around to Apatow's commitment to fleshing out what could easily be paper-thin characters. Even the girls being chased manage to flesh the whole object-of-their-sex-crazed-obsession cliches with some pleasant surprises.

All in all, not only did we watch the movie, but we had to go back for the outtakes and extras. We just were not quite ready to say goodbye to these characters when the credits ran.

Screening #2: The Iron Giant

If you are a Pixar fan then should be familiar with Brad Bird. He is the genius who brought The Incredibles to life and won an Oscar for Best Animated Picture this year for Ratatouille.

There is a reason Pixar snapped him up for those movies: The Iron Giant.

A more-traditional animated feature, The Iron Giant won rave reviews for Bird -- and a lackluster box-office. I can imagine the marketing nightmare Warner Brothers faced trying to sell a Sci-Fi tale of a boy and the robot that lands in his backyard.

That challenge has earned the movie a loyal fan base that has kept the film alive on DVD.

I am glad for that because, quite simply, this movie is animated perfection.

In telling the story of a boy named Hogarth and the Iron Giant he befriends, Bird quickly does away with the cutesy trappings of the Disney-style canon. This is a modern tale, planted firmly in the context of Cold War hysteria. It is a smart, intelligent story that skillfully dives into thorny concepts including friendship, family, loyalty and the drumbeat of violence.

When The Iron Giant came out, traditional 2-D animation was already being eclipsed by the computer animated glory of Pixar's Toy Story and Bug's Life movies.

It is a shame, because The Iron Giant's traditional animation soars visually.

While Bird clearly saw the writing on the wall and joined Pixar to excel with computer animation, this earlier masterpiece is a worthy companion in scope and vision.

Screening #3: Once

If you watched the Oscars this year, then you might remember Glen Hansard getting his chance to accept the award for Best Original Song only to see his co-star, Markéta Irglová get cut off for a commercial break.

Having now seen Once, I can only say "hats off" to the show's producers for letting Jon Stewart bring her back onstage for her moment in the limelight as well.

Hansard and Irglová's clear collaboration make Once soar. A small modern musical about a pair of musicians who meet on a street in Dublin, the movie floats on the chemistry of the two leads.

The moment these two start singing together it is movie magic. Rarely have the Academy Awards been given such a worthy nominee to recognize.

The music, in this case, is the movie. Cowritten by the stars, the songs are the element that draw you into the story and leave you smiling as the characters decide to live their lives the way they are meant to when the closing credits roll. This is not your typical Broadway musical awkwardly transposed onto the screen. It is a much more organic creation that quietly sweeps you away.

I dare you not to be charmed by this modern Irish fable.

Screening #4: Breathless

The heart of the French New Wave, I have long waited to see Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless.

A groundbreaking moment in movie history, Breathless challenged many of the established rules that had defined cinema up until that point. Godard's use of handheld cinematography and quick-cut editing changed the way movies could be made.

It amazes me how fresh Breathless still feels in this technicolor era. Filmed in black-and-white, Godard manages to evoke a definite lushness from urban Parisian life. Every angle and every element serves to set a mood as you follow Jean Paul Belmondo's con man as he races to stay ahead of the police while wooing Jean Seberg's American ingenue down the Champs Elysees.

While you could nit-pick a lot of imperfections from the vantage point of half a century of cinema this movie has influenced, it is practically beside the point. Godard clearly wasn't aiming for perfection. A more independent minded filmmaker, he broke away from the narrative expectations of the time, focusing his energy instead on masterfully evoking a feeling for the era he was presenting.

Between the copious cigarette smoke, the use of the automobiles as status symbols and the gritty feel of the much more bucolic Parisian streets of the 1950s, Godard manages to take a snapshot of an era that manages to feel relevant today. Far from ignoring that which came before him, the movie overtly acknowledges the films it draws from, while at the same time charting it's own bold new path.

Godard's camera is almost a character in itself acting as a voyeur framing the flirtation between the intriguing Belmondo and the stunningly complex Seberg. The story itself is a thin existential tale held together by their performance. Godard's camera focuses in tightly on his muses, allowing their every gesture to evoke an emotion. Just like Marlon Brando and James Dean exemplified cool, Belmondo is a clear contemporary.

The shadow of Breathless clearly looms large across a large swath of cinema that has come since then.

I know I already want to see it again and again.