Midnight Cowboy - 9/10
It certainly didn't deserve the 'X' rating it got when it came out in 1969. I would probably consider it my favorite movie of that year (Just beating out 'Easy Rider', which I found to be very similar), so I'm glad it won the Oscar for Best Picture. Dustin Hoffman was AWESOME, just terrific acting. It seems like 1969 was a pretty slow year for this to win Best Picture, though. 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid', and 'True Grit' came out that year, I've never seen those... I am excited for the upcoming 'True Grit' remake, directed by the Coen brothers, seeing that may make me want to watch the original.
The Game - 10/10
Other than 'Alien3', 'The Game' was the only David Fincher movie that I had not yet seen (And I don't plan on seeing 'Alien3'). Seeing as I am going to be going to see 'The Social Network' next week, I wanted to watch 'The Game'. I am so happy I decided to watch it. I've owned it for a couple of months but kept putting it off in favor of other movies because the trailer didn't excite me very much. I can't stand trailers for 90s movies. The quality is always terrible and gives the impression of a poor movie. This movie had me on the edge of my seat for the entire 2+ hours, and even though I was less than thrilled by the ending it still managed to get a 10 out of me. On my movie ranking database I italicize movies if I think they are perfect. This movie is a 10 but it is not italicized because it is perfect all the way through up until the ending. It isn't a BAD ending, it just isn't what I would have wanted, and I don't understand how David Fincher made it that way after the harsh ending of 'Se7en'. This movie reminded me a lot of 'Eyes Wide Shut' and 'Lost Highway'. I'm surprised that I've never heard about 'The Game' from anybody I know personally ('The Game' has 74,000 votes on IMDb, whereas 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button', which is nowhere near as good, has 137,000). The action scenes were excellent, and there was a lot of psychological play in the story which most people know is my favorite quality to a movie as some of my favorites include 'Fight Club', 'Memento', 'Eyes Wide Shut', and 'Donnie Darko'. Michael Douglas is excellent in the movie, yet nowhere near as good as Sean Penn who sees probably somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes of camera time. I would definitely recommend that people see this movie. The first hour and a half are some of the most entertaining minutes you can ever spend watching a movie, but be prepared to be disappointed by the ending.