This is a thread that I've seen and participated in on other boards, and is always interesting (at least to me). My memory is really, really bad (thanks to college), so something like this I find really useful. I keep a record like this at my blog (linked below), but it's only updated every couple of weeks (usually a dozen movies at a time) and I'd be interested in seeing what the rest of you filmspotters are watching. So, hopefully, this catches on.
I've watched two movies so far today.
The Hurricane - Part of the 6 movie John Ford marathon on TCM today, 5 I've which I hadn't seen and tivo'd. It's hurt by weak, ethnically inappropriate, and mediocre, lead actors (Jon Hall and Dorthy Lamour), but gets fine supporting performances from Thomas Mitchell and Raymond Massey. Massey plays the French colonial administrator of a small South Seas Island who unbendingly enforces the law against an unjustly convicted native (a hero to his people, played by Jon Hall). After repeated attmpts at escaoe from prison, Hall finally makes his way home, only to see the entire island wiped away by a massive hurricane. The special effects in the final sequence are amazing for any time, but especially for 1937. There are even echoes of themes Ford would develop fully in The Searchers (and certainly the mileu is something he'd return to in his late light classic Donovan's Reef). Mary Astor (from The Maltese Falcon) is largely wasted in a supporting role as Massey's wife.
Short Cuts - Watched in honor of Robert Altman, a DVD I bought months ago (used, at Hollywood Video of all places, for about $6). I hadn't seen it since it was released when I was in high school, and frankly, I'm still not a big fan of it. The scale of it is impressive, the sheer volume of characters and the creation of an entire world is something Altman did as well as anyone in film history. But the world he creates is truly hellish, lacking anything close to the redemption and meaningfulness I find in the film's most obvious descendent, Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. Maybe it's just the romantic optimist in me, but I love Magnolia and can only respect Short Cuts. I have it as the 17th best film of 1993.