Jan 4, 2007

Movie Reviews @ The Temple

Apocalypto - Hollllly shit.  I can't say this movie had much of a chance, I went in expecting it to be pretty bad, but still.  Yikes.  There is some good action and all that, but the rest, jeez.  There's lots of details that could be used as examples, but I found myself wondering something else: which of these categories is sadder?

1) The movie makers are sorta racist and stupid - i.e. the white people are clean, the brown people are dirty and savage, etc.

2) The movie makers expect us to be sorta racist and stupid - i.e. really colloquial dialogue, a whole opening scene that I would absolutely believe was copied out of a sitcom script.

3) That we actually ARE racist and stupid - i.e. the people in the audience laughing just because a brown person w/ crazy tattoos and piercings made a face.  That's not a joke!  That's just different than you!  Jesus!  And, no, I don't give the guy who said "woah, that was badass, man" the credit of thinking he was laughing at the filmmakers.

Anyway, it's worth seeing just to know how crazy it is.  But I sorta wish I hadn't given Mr. Gibson 10 bucks.

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World Trade Center - Who's the fuck idea was it for me to watch this while I was feeling crappy?  Dumb!  Anyway, it was what I expected and good for that.  You have to expect it to be a microcosm, it's not about the whole thing (except that it, of course, is).  It was done well enough, hard to judge, emotional movie, emotional state of mind, not the best perspective to analyze film making skill, I suppose.

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 Monster House - Eh, I guess.  It was cute and funny.  Not as much as people seemed to say though.

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Blood Spell - Off the beaten path, here.  This is a machinima, filmed in Neverwinter Nights.  It's not all that well acted, written, or filmed.  But still, it's a huge effort for a new art form and for that reason alone I wanted to watch it.  In 5 years when some amazing movie is filmed entirely in a video game, we'll have seen its roots :)

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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - Wow, strange strange movie.  Very good, but very strange.  The first 30 minutes are pretty amazing.  I dunno how you make smell into sight, but it's dirty & visceral and does the job.  Then it gets into sort of a normal (albeit twisted) murder story.  Then it goes batshit insane.  But it's really quite good.

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