Everyone loves chalk art! This one is the coolest.
Jun 29, 2009
Movie Reviews @ The Temple
Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen – Okay, here’s what’s wrong with the first transformers: THE BOOF; Megan Fox, who is hands down the least hot girl people consider hot these days; John Turturro playing the worst character in the history of cinema; horrendous shitty sitcom humor; somehow killing off the only “black” robot'; and generally far too much human and far too little transformer. As for the second movie: even more too much BOOF, Megan Fox is still not hot, though she’s outdone in not-hot-ness by that nasty blonde chick; john turturro is actually halfway funny; humor almost as bad as the first except for the fortunate lack of a garden scene; replacing one offensive black robot with TWO offensive black robots (I think they were black, maybe white trash, either way stupid and not funny which is the most offensive part); and 30 minutes of humans for every 5 minutes of robots (seriously transformers, YOU are going to teach me both about love and father/son relationships?). This is all what I was very critically and fuddy-dud-ily thinking until Optimus Prime wrecked the SHIT out of some decepticons, and I was sold. To be clear, this movie is not good, it’s lame and stupid and you can barely suffer through any scene with a non-metallic based lifeform. But for the 25 minutes (total) that the robots really show up in this movie, it is some fantastic ass kicking fun. The CG is very good, I was amazed how well the robots blended into the live action. The battles are pretty confusing, but pretty cool (minus a massively disappointing finale). Whoever invented slow motion badassery in action movies (nearly perfected in 300) should win some kind of life time achievement oscar. I don’t care how much they messed with transformers lore, it’s not like I remember. I just wanted to see shit done get blown up, and it did. If you made a 45 minute clip show of the first two movies combined, you’d have a great 45 minutes, that’s the best I can say for it. Favorite part of the movie? When optimus prime blasts some decepticon through a wall and a 10 year old boy in the row in front of me flings his hands toward the sky and yells “YES!” I guess I can be content that they made this movie after all.
Up – I was kind of worried about this one. The previews made it seem so normal, like just another typical adventure cartoon. Not bad, just not special. The movie did overcome this impression, though not entirely. There is a lot of running around in the jungle with our friends dodging this danger and that, kind of normal. Of course you can boil all of the pixar movies down to an adventure of a couple heroes, but something about jumping over logs and running from creatures seemed pretty standard. However, the basis of the movie is very solid. You really can’t deny its heart, or at least I couldn’t. The opening was incredibly touching, reminded me a lot of this video I posted a bit ago. The relationships were a bit standard, but charming nonetheless. The end is very sweet and touching, of course. It’s not the best pixar movie ever, I’m not sure where it ranks. I think I was more charmed by ratatouille, definitely by Wall-E and the Incredibles. Those first 10 minutes and the reprise later on are beautiful, the middle is just fun.
Heckler – This is a Jamie Kennedy movie (I guess?) about hecklers and critics. It’s just interviews and footage of a bunch of comics talking about hecklers, which is pretty good. No one likes hecklers, we all think they are assholes, done deal. It’s funny to hear the way comics deal with it and some of the crazy stories. The second half moves to critics and they lose me. It becomes a bunch of comics and filmmakers whining and bitching about people making fun of them. The irony of people who make a career of observing and more often than not making fun of the world complaining about being critiqued is lost on them, if not the viewer. Filmmakers are slightly different, but they are still a bunch of baby bitches. Aww, poor actor had some nasty person with a blog (ahem!) call him a baby bitch, awwwwww. A couple claim that by nature of being a performer you are sensitive, have a thin skin, and therefore feel the criticism more. That’s an interesting point. But I still can’t summon any sympathy because a blogger said jamie kennedy should be stopped from making movies. It’s true, he’s lame and unfunny and untalented, so it’s funny to say he should be stopped. If you think that means I think also means are a fundamentally bad person, then you are stupid AND untalented.
Volver – Umm…. okay. Kind of a weird movie. Kind of a mix of a coverup caper and a ghost story and a family movie. Not really either of the first two things, though. I don’t think I really liked it. Penelope Cruz was about as likable as I’ve ever seen her, she’s not my style. The story of the story is really kinda silly. I wasn’t enjoying myself. Family movies have a tendency to come together in the end and make you feel good, and I suppose this one did that. But I don’t think it’s enough to make up for an otherwise unimportant movie.
A Simple Curve – Random little indie family movie. Father and son up in alaska, I think, who own a woodworking business. Business is rough, trying to balance art and money. Drama with another man in town, and with the son’s dating. It’s a well enough done movie. It feels real in a simple (no pun) straightforward way. The script and acting is done honestly, so I appreciate it. It also isn’t about a whole lot, so it’s easy to leave by the wayside, in my mind. I can certainly imagine it having some resonance for the right audience. It didn’t fail for me, it was perfectly adequate, it just didn’t have a special spark for me on top of that.
End of the Spear – Yech. This movie didn’t have to be bad, it seemed like. It’s about some missionaries and a tribe in some jungle somewhere. It’s filmed really amateurey. I mean, they used a good camera, but somehow you can just tell it’s a dude and a prosumer, not professional stuff. I would never be the type to discount non-“professional” contributions, but it was distracting here. The real problem is the ridiculous vantage of the movie. First of all, it’s about missionaries who try to convert savages and get killed. Science has not invented a scale small enough to measure the amount of sympathy I had for these jackfucks. Second of all, it’s preachy and annoying and selfishly from the point of view of the missionaries. It’s not blatantly offensive, I’m more annoyed in retrospect than I was while actually watching the movie, so I shouldn’t be so harsh. But it is simply not a good movie, to me. The showed some footage at the end of the documentary about this apparently real life story (woudln’t have believed it, seems too movie-ish, I’m going to guess they took some liberties) and it actually seemed moderately interesting. It’s too bad this movie soured me on the subject, now I probably won’t watch the documentary.
American Teen – Yeeeesh. I swear I heard this movie was good, I don’t know where, but I thought I did, but it’s really not. I don’t even like teenagers, I pretty much want nothing to do with any of them I’m not related to. Teenagers are dumb, that’s the whole point of being a teenager. I was extra dumb as a teenager, why would I want to watch an hour and a half of other teenagers being dumb? On top of that, they are unbelievably cliched. You can’t say it’s fake, I guess, because it’s a documentary, so it’s real, so life really just is cliched. But mostly its pretty annoying, drama is annoying, high school is annoying, reality tv is annoying, and seeing myself in this movie is pretty damn annoying. I already know how i was and what I did and how stupid it all turned out to be, no movie was required to provide an education. The only reason to see a movie like this is is to get some sort of insight into the kids, and I don’t feel it provided any of that. Maybe I’m close enough to kid-dom still that it’s not interesting to see what goes on, maybe an older person would say “oh, that’s how it is nowadays” I guess? I can’t imagine that’s true, cuz I’m pretty far from high school at this point. So if it doesn’t provide insight, what’s the point? It’s the Real World: Indiana High School, so…… ok? Annoying kids with standard lives living the same old story. Not that I’m blaming the kids, I was just as annoying as any of them, it just doesn’t seem interesting if we all already know this stuff.
Punisher – It’s been like 2 weeks since I saw this, but it wasn’t really worth rushing to review. It’s just a bloody action movie. It’s gory as hell, like seriously extraordinarily nasty with gross ways to kill people. Not really that cool of ways, certainly not interesting, just there. Nothing interesting about the story, nothing captivating about the punisher’s motivation. Moderately interesting revamp of Jigsaw’s origin, but besides that, super meh!
Pi – Faith in Chaos – Gah…. ok. So this is a weird one. Never saw it, even though it seems like the type of thing I’d see. Darren Aranofsky, who did the Wrestler, which I looooove, but was nothing like this. It’s more of a David Lynch film. It’s black and white, has dischordant jarring sounds/music in the background. All the shots are really tight on peoples’ faces who yell into the camera as often as talk. It’s very aggressive, offputting, and weird. It’s not bad, i guess, maybe if I was really really paying attention I’d have something to say. Mostly it was just kinda weird, kinda interesting, mostly weird. The math part of it doesn’t hold up in any realistic way. It’s quickly diverges into weird numerology bull crap and jewish mysticism of all things. So it’s not really cool in that way. It’s mostly interesting the way Lynch is interesting, it’s freaking weird and you probably haven’t seen a movie that was weird in this particular way before. Beyond that I can’t say much for it.
Jun 23, 2009
Hard Times
So Ze Frank has been back for a little bit, in a limited capacity. It’s not as good as having The Show back, but at least we get something. This one’s pretty dang funny.
Jun 12, 2009
Jun 7, 2009
Jun 3, 2009
May 30, 2009
Sorry I’m Late
Another stop motion. Kinda boring at first, but they do some cool things with the foreground that make it worthwhile.
May 26, 2009
Heroes jizz in their pants
Mostly funny cuz I haven’t heard the song in a while, but whatever, gigz.
May 25, 2009
Map the Fallen
Wow. It’s not like I usually jump at the uber patriotic or emotionally manipulative stuff. But this is a pretty amazing union of tech and honoring soldiers.
May 24, 2009
Movie Reviews @ The Temple
Terminator Salvation – Now that’s a good damn movie! It was great! I couldn’t help but spend the whole time comparing it to star trek. I’ve been slightly annoyed that everyone loves star trek so much. In retrospect, it really was a fun but soulless movie. It didn’t have any interesting themes or structure, it was pure story. Now that’s still a fun movie, but it is ultimately forgettable for me. Terminator isn’t fun, I mean it’s action fun, but it’s not funny fun. It’s not lighthearted, so you can’t really compare the two, but they do share that “remake”ness, and they both did it well. Terminator had a number of nods to the first two (there were only two, ps!), almost all of which worked great. Once they messed it up w/ cheesy music, and one thing they did one too many times, but besides that I liked them a lot. But it really shared a common sensibility with especially the second movie. More than just “that other guy used to say that line!” nods, it had a theme and some plot devices that perfectly echoed the older movies without being dorky. There are only really minor annoyances with it, little bit of product placement, really bad CG when Marcus first gets to LA and middling CG with the T-800 (but fantastic CG everywhere else), some crappy acting from the extras, some really stupid tech/science things. But those were 30 second annoyances. Star Trek had movie-long annoyances when it came to 5th grade humor and permanent retinal damage via lens flare. So instead of enjoying the rest of star trek (which is really good) as much as I should, I spent half the movie being annoyed. Terminator didn’t annoy me, it was cool and actiony and a good summer movie. The filmmaking is actually really good, the first half is done very quick and confusing, which normally I hate but it mostly fit. They did overuse it a bit (I don’t need steadycam on john connor’s face, for instance). But the helicopter scene (is it just me, or would I be scared of helicopters now if I were connor?) in the beginning was really cool. The plot wasn’t anything surprising, but it did it’s job and we saw lots of cool terminators. The humanoid terminators do still fight like morons, but they always did, whatchagonnado. Overall I’d say this is the winner for the summer so far (I’m just assuming wolverine isn’t very good, I haven’t seen it yet). Then again, rotten tomatoes would tell me star trek is 95% and terminator 34%, so clearly I’m smoking a whole different kind of crack than most people.
Donnie Darko – One of those classics/cults I never got around to seeing. It’s a weird ass movie, on purpose. I can’t think of anything intelligent to say about it. I do know that I liked it, but I don’t know why. It’s weird and random and doesn’t seem very cohesive. The artifice of the movie doesn’t really hold up, for me. It kind of wanders some and feels pointless, but then it seems to have a point by the time it gets to the end. I’m not sure, I do like it, I just can’t exactly say why. I don’t like time travel, so that’s a minus, but it’s not really time travel, it’s just a plot device. It’s not a mechanism that I feel needs to be understood except in its most obvious form. Good, I guess.
Black Book – Hm, I was into this movie for at least half of it. It’s another WWII movie (sure have seen a lot of those, and I’m pretty excited for Inglorious Bastards too). It’s set in Holland, among the resistance and a jewish woman who (kind of) spies for them. It’s fairly well done, acted and written and such. And though it wasn’t exactly exciting or edge of my seat, it was a good movie for a lot of it. It starts relying a little too much on coincidence though, becomes too melodramatic. It’s got sort of a mystery to wrap up, so it has to twist and turn for that, which was completely unnecessary. The whole last bit is pretty unnecessary. She just experiences too much and just happens to get here and there and things happen to happen and it gets old. The front half feels pretty honest about a really horrible situation (obviously) and her finding a place in it all. But then it feels… I guess too Hollywoody, it gets cheesily structured, plot-wise, and becomes sort of ridiculous and it becomes a much lesser movie. It’s still not bad, but it went from pretty good to kind of annoying in about 20 minutes.
Abel Raises Cain – Hulu had this on its front page and it’s really pretty cool. It’s about this guy named Abel who made a career of tricking the media. An unkind description would be a career as a prankster or hoaxster. That’s a thing for me, cuz I don’t like pranks at all. Whether its Punk’d, or a hidden camera show, I don’t like them, they are stupid and cheap. You can trick anyone if you put enough effort into it, and anyone would be tricked, so it’s just stupid. So this guy could be on my bad side, because once you give someone permission to be a trickster, it’s up to their own character whether they do it right or are dicks. Kind of like how the daily show could be considered pranksters for giving interviews in character, when they are mocking their interviewee, but I love them. I actually love this Abel guy. The media is his target, his tricks reveal their laziness. He creates fake protest organizations, or scandalous causes or groups, and the media buys it. The film shows local news after local news after NATIONAL news report of his bullshit. They don’t check into his story, they don’t do any research, they just put him on the air because people will watch a news story about an organization that wants to clothe indecent animals. It’s really genius. Some of his antics are childish, but they generally still reveal an idiocy of media. When he goes on the talk shows is odd. Of course jerry springer (well, the 70s equivalent) is stupid and scandalous and probably fake. The movie claims that his fake talk show stories are what started the trend of them being so fake now. That rather than expose their ridiculousness, it merely ushered them into an acceptance of “anything for ratings” Don’t know if it’s true, hard to say. That’s an interesting point, by the way, this whole movie could be fake! I don’t believe it is, but it could be, and I’d be sitting here typing about it as if it were real, and it could be the biggest lie. That’s why it’s hard to ever be on the side of a liar, he could be lying to you too. Also interesting: this shit wouldn’t fly as well nowadays with the internet. For all the tricksters there’s as many debunkers. But I’m sure you could still pull it off, you’d just have to be better. Anyway, it’s a very interesting movie about an interesting subject, and it’ll only cost you an hour and a half.
American Gun – This is a little indie type movie. Made as a reaction to columbine type shootings, it’s about youth, mostly school, violence. There are several stories, completely disconnected from each other. The brother and mother of a school shooter, a girl who works in her grandpa’s gun shop, a principle of a high school, and a kid who works nights at a gas station in a bad neighborhood. It’s four different perspectives on the issue. Unfortunately the movie doesn’t really have a strong impact. It’s got good actors in it, marcia gay harden, forest whitaker, a couple kids I recognize. They do fine, but I’m missing some connection with this movie. It might be that I’m uncomfortable with media coverage of the subject. I suppose i ought to be more afraid, as someone who is close to a soon-to-be teacher, but I’m just more annoyed with the coverage. school shootings are an incredibly rare way to die, it’s like being scared of terrorism, so coverage of it can’t help but feel exploitive or manipulative. I can’t seriously say art shouldn’t be allowed to examine it, but I can say it doesn’t work for me. The perspective of the brother/mother is certainly the most interesting, I don’t know how you keep living that life. The grand daughter is uninteresting, the gas station kid is handled too lightly, the principle is interesting, but can only go one of a couple ways and nothing insightful happens, it’s just sad. It’s the kind of movie that you probably read as an actor and say wow this is really powerful and interesting, I should do this. But then it ends up kind of boring and simplified with a few good moments but mostly not getting where it was aiming.
Planes, Trains, & Automobiles – I’d never seen this little bit of the 80s! Supposed to be one of those great movies, maybe if I saw it growing up I’d agree, it was just okay. It had funny parts, a few out loud laughs, but I wasn’t rolling. It’s no Uncle Buck, or Parenthood, just a kinda fun, in the end sweet 80s movie. Nothing much else to say.
Stranger Than Fiction – This movie was surprisingly charming. It has a style - the narration, and the diagrams, and will farrell’s purposefully bland acting - that could easily have annoyed me, and I kept wondering when it would. But it didn’t, it stayed charming and heartfelt. Love stories can be cheesy or feel right, and this one was the latter. I didn’t like the lady playing the author, but that’s ok. Will Farrell did a good job, he can be non-manic, though he did go to the opposite extreme, hard to say if he could safely act the middle ground. But it’s a sweet and likable movie, worth it’s time.
Ikiru – This is one of those old timey foreign movies that does not hold up for me. It’s very strange, likely due to its age and its culture, and doesn’t work. It’s a Japanese movie about a man who finds out he’s going to die, and tries to find a way to make his life satisfactory with the time he has left. Pretty simple moral, but it works. The first I’d say half of the movie is monotonous, purposefully (I think) plodding and tedious. It’s really boring to watch. That and the fact that it has subtitles and I was tired basically was putting me to sleep. The acting from the main dude is horrendous, he just makes this pained, drawn, bug eyed groaning face for the whole movie and i hated it. It wasn’t subtle, it didn’t make you feel for him, it didn’t make you connect with him, it was just ugh. Maybe that’s a culture thing, hard to say. With 45 min or so the movie starts to get good. After the big event it jumps back and forth in time a bit in a really effective way. It’s mostly at this point about bureaucracy and people being assholes and it does it well. Unfortunately even this is far too drawn out and beaten to death, and it gets old and frustrating again. The end works really really well, it bring the moral back to the forefront, instead of the red tape stuff. The last 5 minutes, at least for me, are pretty touching. But it’s really not worth it to go all that way, it was just too long a journey for maybe a total of 25 minutes worth of goodness.
The Ruins – So I forgot to talk about this (and the next two) for a week, I’m not sure how much I’ll remember (the whole point of these damn things is to make me remember). I remember thinking it was surprisingly decent. Nothing amazing, but I liked the different kind of enemy (I also liked that the podunk brown people were NOT really the enemy and actually smarter than the dipshits). The flow of the movie is pretty good, though it gets all rushed at the end. I wish the cast wasn’t so standard, two white couples, and their European friend. BORING! But it was a halfway decent way to watch a scary type movie, if yer into it.
Lakeview Terrace – Meh. I didn’t really expect it to be anything, but it was kinda standard. Samuel Jackson is unsurprisingly a good intimidating asshole. The race issue was neither effective nor particularly obtrusive, just there. It’s one of those annoying stories cuz you are tempted to say what would I do, but it’s also out there enough that there’s no satisfying answer to the question. Overall very average, nothing much to say.
Let The Right One In – This one gets super points for being different. I guess it’s been a while since I saw a vampire movie, I realized as I watched this. 30 Days of Night was the last, unless you count I Am Legend. And I’m not part of the true blood / twilight / vampire chronicles revolution because it all looks silly goose. But this was more the solo vampire, interaction with a person type movie, not the monster action movie. More Interview with a Vampire than Blade. It’s swedish, so it’s kinda strange. Swedish people are kinda creepy. Blonde haired skinny little swedish boys are very creepy. It’s a cool take on it, though. I wouldn’t say it’s an amazing movie, just that it was an interesting way to go about it. Somewhat uncomfortable in a few parts, but worth watching for its differentness.
May 22, 2009
Crush the Castle
What? Yeah I’m at work, so what? I’m copying files! There’s lots of them and it takes a long time! I’ve got to do SOMEthing while I wait!
May 20, 2009
May 18, 2009
May 12, 2009
May 9, 2009
Movie Reviews @ The Temple
Star Trek - I'm kinda torn about this one. I hate to say it, I heard such good things the past week, I had pretty high hopes, and it fell short. It's a very fun movie, it's a good summer movie, it certainly has mass appeal, the casting is spectacular, the effects are beautiful. Believe it or not, I'm totally on board with the method of the "reboot" even though it involves, gasp, time travel! I didn't necessarily need a reboot, I don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with the star trek universe. You can make shitty movies in a universe of any quality. Besides the fact that this is before everything except Enterprise, so how burdened are they by the mythos? But, whatever, they wanted to reboot, JJ Abrams wanted to stamp his little feet and make his mark and it's a new universe - fine. I actually like the way they did it even though it has stupid fucking time travel and I'm fine with going forward from here. A friend described it as Marvel's Ultimate line, which I find to be spot on. It's a different time line (the movie went out of the way to obnoxiously point this out to the droolers) with its own share of stories to tell. Granted, this isn't comics, if we go with this one we have to leave the other one be for a while or for good. Nonetheless, it's a good analogy and I like the universe they've set up. I hope it stays limited to TOS times though, I don't need to see a slightly altered Voyager where 7 of 9 is 5 of 6 and Chakotay has a vagina. So the movie is fun, the casting really is great, Simon Pegg kind of steals the last bits. But the movie has a lot of little faults. The "science" pushes it even for star trek. The faults with star trek, as always, aren't when they do things and just expect you to accept it (no one defends warp drive or phasers), it's when they try to explain things and it's dumb (a supernova that destroys the galaxy? you are stupid and fired and stupid). That and just common sense things that take you out of the movie. Just because it's star trek doesn't mean you can be dumb. But whatevs, star trek is silly, it has time travel and happy magic lands (the nexus), and heisenberg compensators, nothing new. My biggest problem with the movie, honestly, is that it's just so... plebian. The humor, fully 50% of it, is slapstick cheesy bullshit. There are truly clever moments (again, pegg is great), but so much of it is just shit comedy. An short little alien sidekick? really? hitting your head on the bulkhead? seriously? hands accidently on boobs?! come on! It just had so much stupid amateur shit jokes for the masses. If this is what it takes to make star trek palletable for the mouth breathing Dance Flick attendees, fuck 'em, I'll keep star trek in my nerdy corner that will never see any real or sustaining success. This crap is what's wrong with the latter star trek movies and the star wars prequels (though it did spare us the puns, thank you jesus). I expected a lot more from JJ Abrams and from the critical response I've heard so far. It's not a bad movie, it's a good movie, it's a fun movie, I hope they make another. But I hope they fire the half of the writers they borrowed from According to Jim and give more money to the other half. Also: why do romulans design their ships based on that quake 3 jumpy level? also also: why does everyone in the future have slanty sideburns? also also also: did the lens flare button get stuck down or something? seriously, we get it, the bridge is glowey, now cut it out.
Frost/Nixon - Finally my Oscar movies of 2008 are pretty much complete. There's gaps, but the main ones are finally seen. Perhaps more than any other of the movies, I was really anticipating this movie. The subject matter, or the buzz around it, I was very excited to see it. That might be why I was slightly disappointed with the movie at first. Not that it was bad in any way, there's no real faults, but there is a lot of set up. A lot of stuff I didn't know would be in the movie, I had this idea that it would be much more play-like, and almost entirely focused on the interview itself. The first half is setting up Frost, and some insight into the social form of Nixon, but it was just good, mostly unamazing. The best part of the first half was Michael Sheen. He had such a fantastic permanent veneer on his face. An eternal facade, pretending to be something he clearly wasn't. The dread and insecurity and fear of failure all but bursting around the corners of his smile and the tip of his eyebrows. It was really quite good. Unfortunately, that was all the first half held for me. All the other actors do a very good job, though, Bacon in particular is perfect. The other guys on the Frost team are good. But as soon as the interview started, wow. Sheen is once again on point, for the first three interviews just cringing under the dominating Nixon presence. You could see him wilt and crack and try to play it off as okay, it was great. Frank Langella as Nixon in the first half was kind of boring. A good job, but just being a boring droning storyteller, which can only be exciting. But when he became impassioned, he was a force on screen, I can only imagine what it would be like in person in the play. During the late night phone call, and during that last interview, Langella is just a master, completely captivating. It may have been a long way to go, but the interview is so great, it makes the movie great. I think this movie and Doubt are a perfect pair. Plays made into movies characterized by two masterful performances. Sadly, neither have the resonance or lasting effect as what are still my favorite 2008 movies, the Wrestler and Slumdog. But still really good movies.
M - What a fascinating movie! This movie has a lot of history. It is made by Fritz Lang, later a nazi propagandist. It was his first "talkie" after (I'm told by the commentary) strong resistance to sound, as he was one of the founders of german silent films. It's also considered the first serial killer movie. It also stars this guy Peter Lorre, who I didn't know the name of, but certainly recognize from these old movies. So that's the framework, I kind of expected it to be interesting for it's cinema history importance, but not really much beyond that. But it really was very good in several ways. There are lots of themes, most of which I got, and symbols and motifs, much of which I did not (hearing them in the commentary). The movie covers a lot of social issues (it is essentially a statement movie). It covers mob mentality, mass media, mass fear/hysteria, police procedure, capital punishment, subjective morality, governmental control, and more. It covers a lot of ground, mostly pretty well. It all has a lot of resonance today, for me, espeically with all the swine flu bullshit lately. It's hard to cover that much and do it well, and each issue has probably been done better since with 80 years of cinema as practice. Yet in the end I'm pretty blown away by how effective it is. I do have a big problem with the movie, which is its final social message "Protect the children!!" It's not a failing of the film to deliver its message, I just don't like that message. It's surprising, with all the commentary on mass media leading to mass hysteria, I was on board, I thought the point was that it maniuplates and controls us, that we needn't be so afraid of that dangerous evil out of sight (or off screen, in this case). Then it has this plea to the audience to watch our children, that punishing criminals (or not, it's not perfectly clear) will not protect them, only our vigilence can. I have a big problem with this culture of fear and control through fear, and it seems like the film gives in to that at the end, and I'm confused.
Stop-Loss - Well, this movie was average. At first I thought it had a good chance. It wasn't amazingly acted, or written, or filmed. But, believe it or not (produced by MTV!), I felt like it had the angst of a young person. That rather than slick as shit killers, or archetypical place holders, or plain ole dumbshits, the soldiers felt like actual kids and more importantly the story was being told as if an actual kid was making it. That's not totally a good thing, but it seemed perhaps a bravely appropriate thing. But it doesn't really last, it becomes a fugitive story and a depressing story and a generally average story. An so in reflection I think maybe the perspective was just trying to appeal to kids, not an honest attempt to give insight. So the movie loses me, not a bad movie, maybe the right movie for some, just ok for me.
Downfall - Oh man, really good movie. It's about the end of the WW II in Germany, Hitler and the generals and his secretary and how the last few weeks played out. I've never seen this part of the story. I suppose there is no lack of movies about it, but I havne't seen them. Every WW II movie I've seen ended where this one starts. And the most amazing thing about it is that you almost feel sorry for the nazis. You know they are murderous evil bastards, but at their end, you feel pity. And that only succeeds because of the wonderful way this movie is framed. You never see the murder or the evil. You only see the generals and their maps, making plans, sending troops this way or that. You don't see the troops dying, you don't see the civilians suffering, you sure as hell don't see the jews, polish, gypsies, or others being round up, gassed, or tortured. And that is exactly the point. This movie is nominally from the perspective of Hitler's secretary. It's not first person, it's not narrated, it's not only what she sees, but it's the kind of things she sees. The movie is bookended by footage of the real woman, near the end of her life, reflecting on her choices. The point is she didn't see any of the evil, she was just doing her job and seeing the day to day. Of course we all agree that isn't enough, that you can't be blind to it, but the movie does such an amazing job of only showing those things, that it allows for that inch of pity to work it's way in. As I'm typing it it's hard to beleive I felt that way, but I know I did. The movie also shows the way different nazis dealt with the failing of their world, which was equally amazing. Some held on to glory, or to duty, or loyalty, hope, family, politics. They each had a thing they clung to as the russians came crashing down upon them. And then each of them gave it up in some way, also different for each person, though often with the same result. Tragic choices, despairing excuses or justifications. It was really fantastic. I suppose everything I've talked about is plot/script related, but everything in the movie stood up and supported that script. The acting was perfect, from a truly insane hitler to the naive devoted secretary, the actors had to carry a lot of weight to express all these attitudes. Such a fantastic movie.
Vicky Christina Barcelona - So.... people like this thing, eh? I have a fear that I'm prejudging it, as I've never seen a Woody Allen movie, yet I'm pretty sure I don't like Woody Allen movies. Still this movie seems like what I wouldn't like about his movies. It seems so self-involved and narcassistic and pointless. The narration, which I at first thought I would really like, became annoying, intrusive, and at times literally telling me what I was watching happen and didn't need description of. The investigation of love and relationships seems cliched and uninspired. The characters have a simplistic view of relationships, on both sides of the debate. If I'm kind, the movie just isn't for me, but it will speak to some people who will find insight in these silly relationships. If I'm unkind, Woody Allen really wants to be that sexy guy who can swoop in and steal a taken woman off to another place and fall in love with her.
May 5, 2009
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