Elephant

So, this was among the bundle of movies that I bought for my birthday. It's slow-paced, but that, if you're paying attention, lends itself to an air of constructive confusion. The characters are regular teenagers, and they do alot to establish how normal it is to be screwed up nowadays. The types of characters that would normally be demonized for picking on the underdogs are brought to a pittiable level instead. One thing that really threw me off about the presentation is the gunfire. The guns that the charcters are carrying are real guns loaded with blank shells. A real gunshot is so loud that a microphone set for human voices won't pick it up normally, so it sounds fake. I thionk gus Van Saint did that on purpose as a kind of demonstration of our perceptions of reality. We're so used to hearing something fake and thinking it real that when we hear something real it sounds fake.

Total: 69

Dr. Strangelove or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

If you're a Kubrick fan, you've probably already seen this. If you're not a Kubrick fan, then this is a good accessable movie to start with. It's quite odd as a whole, but there's still something charming about it. the only thing that ticked me off was that three times while we were watching it I was asked the exact same thing: Is the whole movie in black and white? Yes. When was it made? 60's. So it's black and white on purpose? Yes. Oh.
If you're looking for a rip-roaring comedy that leaves you sore from laughter, this is not it. this is a subtle movie, a dark comedy that plays off of little references and satires about how and why we do things the way we do. Watch it while you're awake and can pick up all the little nuances and you'll have a great time.

Total: 68

Hidalgo

As much as I love the Blade Runners and Fight Clubs of the cinema world, every now and then we need a movie that has no great depth, is fairly predictable, or at least assumable, meaning that we can take certainthings for granted ie the good guys win and the bad guys lose. This is where movies like Hidalgo come in. They're made with a love that almost makes you believe that money never came up as a motivation. But seeing as this is an industry and people do this for a living, we know that 99.9% of the movies we see aren't some giant UNICEF box. Whatever, Hidalgo will probably not find it's way into my permanent collection, but it did a really good job at entertaining us for the evening.
Viggo Mortensen is believable as a half Sioux half white cowboy. Believable enough that you don't wonder why he doesn't just pull out his sword and off these guys. Hidalgo is a horse, so we had alot of fun making jokes about going to see a horse movie. There was also a tall guy sitting all alone right in front of me, so I had to keep leaning around his lonely bitter head to read the subtitles when people were talking in Sioux and Arabic. He turned around and snapped at me when we were talking through the trailers. It's not my fault he's going to the movies alone.

Total: 67

Spiderman

I love Spiderman. He is so dreamy. There, I said it. There's something about grown men and the superheroes that they grew up with that's a little close to unhealthy. That may very well be at the core of the whole re-marketing of every franchise ever developed before the current day. Whatever, if all of them were as good as this movie, we'd be swimming in a sea of ecstasy. I still have yet to see The Hulk and Daredevil, but I think I'm caught up on every other Marvel movie to come out in the last little while, and I must say that they're doing pretty well for themselves.
My sister got me this on DVD for my birthday, so we watched it after dinner yesterday. I probably could go on and on about how much I like Spiderman because of what it reflects in society and everythign else that goes along with that. I could rave about Sam Raimi's treatment of the story, all the little Raimi touches that come out showing you that this was a film made by those who love Spiderman. But I won't. I'm just going to say that Spiderman 2 comes out next week. I almost wet myself when I sw the trailer for the first time at the beginning of Return of the King.

Total: 66

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Second in the HP offering, I have a similar view to these as I do to the Lord of the Rings movies. I don't really view them as individual movies, but as some sort of long sequential movie. With Lord of the Rings that's actually closer to true than it is to false. It's not quite as true with HP, but still not too far off. It's been a couple years since I read the books, but I still remember my first impression of the first two movies being quite faithful to the books, choosing to leave out information rather than events. I actually like the ending of this episode better in movie form than I did when I read it. Because I read the first two books in rapid sequence I feared that the series was going to become a series of "oh no! Voldemort is back!" and they would find some new way of defeating him every book. Fortunately it doesn't. But I digress from my point about the ending. When I read the whole anagram thing from Tom Moldova Riddle to I am Lord Voldemort it seemed quite contrived, but for some reason seeing it in the movie made it a little easier to believe that Voldemort actually used to be named Tom Riddle and spent some insane number of hours sitting there thinking up an anagram of his name. I guess you need something to do during defense against the dark arts, since they never seem to have a teacher who actually teaches the class.

Total: 65

Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman

Here's an interesting offering. the story follows a blind samuri who comes into a town overrun with gang activity. In the course of his daily wanderings he manages to eviscerate most of the gang members and scare off the rest. It's a modern period piece in Japanese with subtitles. Inside this movie is a really tight 90 minute touching samuri movie, but there are quite a few scenes that are of the quality we're getting used to seeing in the "deleted scenes" features on DVDs. they're in charcter and are usually amusing in some way, but they do something that interrupts the flow of the movie or breaks the atmosphere of the moment. For example there is one scene where our Incompetant Comic Relief attempts to teach several other boys how to swordfight, and they just keep hitting him in the head. Is it funny? yes. Is it what the characters would probably do? Yes. Is it Zatoichi disembowling gangmembers? No. Now, I'm not saying that all I watch this for is the violence, but the point is that the scene could have disappeared and things would keep moving instead of pausing for some nonsense. A really nice touch in the movie is a number of scenes with some tap-dancing peasants who, Stomp style, match the percussion of the soundtrack with their daily actions like working in the field or building a house. They only become a nussance during the final few scenes after Zatoichi has defeated the Ronin the gangs have hired when the whole town decides to throw some type of elaborate party where everyone is doing a Riverdance-meets-Kurosawa routine in a frameing style reminicient of the cast call at the end of a play, when even the dead characters come out for their applause. Interspersed with that are short segments where we learn Zatoichi's true identity and see the defeat of the real masterminds. Still quite the enjoyable movie, but I thought it could have been trimmed. Plus the graphics are really bad. Almost all the blood and half the time the swordblades aswell are computer generated. this makes some effects look really odd,a nd the blood is never believable except in the few cases where they use real blood. the kvetch I have with this is that Samuri dismembering people on film is practically an industry in Japan. They've been finding ways of making it look believable for forty-odd years now, there's no real reason to switch to CG. even ultra low budget films have the capacity to make us believe a man just had his hand chopped off. Come on, give us a little more corn syrup.

Total: 64

The Virgin Suicides

We've been meaning to watch this movie ever since we saw Lost in Translation because of the whole Sofia Coppola thing. Add onto that the fact that I have the orriginal score composed by Air, and it is amazing. But it did somethign to the movie. The score is very intense, and the movie not quite so intense. In some ways I'm still up in the air about how I feel about Sofia Coppola as a film maker. She has a very very understated style that sits on a fuzzy line between beautifully skillful and loose. This, unfortunately, but also not surprising since it's her first film, feels a little too loose. It's not a bad movie, but it's not as tightly wound as it ought to be. this is what I was refering to with thte score. The subject matter is quite heavy and passionate and the score reflects this better than the movie with a sound that brings up images of a longing for intimacy and all the chaos that comes from hormones and being a teenager. The movie, however, is more of a cold, impassionate attempt to understand those feelings in a distant retrospect. it's not a bad idea, looking at a group of boys trying to come to grips with the lives and deaths of these girls fifteen years after the fact, watching them acknowledge the impact their fantasies had on their future lives (there is a great comment towards the end, in a voice over, about how none of them were able to find in their wives what they had imagined in the Lisbon girls) but the presentation only comes to the present time of the narrative occasionally for brief talks, interview style, with one character, distancing us from the present plight of the characters, and not totally involving us with the past plight of their story. What this means is that you don't feel like you know any of the characters enough to fully connect with their situation because you don't get to know them enough, except for Trip Fontain who is the one we meet in the present interviews. Alot of really good ideas and presentations here, but what needed tohappen is Sofia needed to pick one and run with it.

Total: 63

Kill Bill Vol. 2

Quite different from the first one. It's still quite enjoyable in it's own way, and quite thematically consistant with the first half of the film, and here's why: one of the things that really impressed me about the first one was the mechanics to the violence. The violence matched the setting. when she attacks Vernita Green at the beginning of Vol. 1 they're in California, and the violence is very American Hollywood, albeit a little bit faster paced, thought that is more a consiquence of timing, not violence. I digress. The violence is American Hollywood: not alot of blood (comparativly), lots of broken glass, alot of falling over and scrapping on the floor, and ultimately the rules of combat are discarded when Vernita pulls a gun. Then she goes to Japan to face O-Ren (even though, strictly speaking time-wise she's already killed O-Ren, but we're sticking with film order here) and the violence changes dramatically. Suddenly we have ten-foot gouts of blood, limbs being chopped off every-which-where, exotic weapons, and people flying trough the air. Where American violence drops their characters to the floor in a leveling symbol of ultimate helplessness, Asian films send their characters to the skies as a symbol of superiority. I could go on about the theory for some time, but I won't. You know the visual difference. In an american film Sofie Fatale would have died (or at least disappeared from the screen) as a consiquence of having her arm cut off. Instaed, here, she survives for another almost forty minutes of screen time. Enough said. In Vol. 2 we find ourselves following The Bride into Texas. We're now into another movie style with it's own distinct rules: the western. As another aside, I do find it qutie amusing that David Carradine is in a movie that brings these two settings, Chop Sokey and Cowboy, together seeing as he made his career with Kung Fu which was the orriginal at melding these two genres together. It really is quite a natural blending too since they fill an equivalent hole in the cultural background of their respective cultures. So, the western. While vol. 1 had some American elements but remained predominantly Asian, vol. 2 is reversed. There still are some Asian elements carried over, but the movie is predominantly a Western. One of my favorite indicators of this (though I didn't like it at first) is David Carradine's character, Bill. In vol. 1 Bill wasn't a person, he was an entity, like irony or humor; vital to the progress and feel of the movie, but not actually there. Why? Because Asian villians aren't revealed until the end of the movie when the final showdown comes, or are at least kept mysterious until then. That's why the genre change, and the subsiquent very sudden change in the quantity and quality of Bill's screen time, is a little unsettling at first: we're not at the end yet. So you have to get used to it. Vol. 1 all we ever saw were his hands, Vol. 2 we frequently see him walking around like a normal person. We even see him making a sandwich for goodness sakes. But Carradine makes the transition easy to take. So, the violence. What makes it a western? Budd takes the Bride out in one shot, right off the bat, then he buries her alive. The Capture is probably the oldest Cowboy plot out there. If we go way back to the old weekly westerns (Lone Ranger and company) there was a delicate art of the cliffhanger. The hero would be put in a certain death situation then the movie would end and be resolved the next week. Impossible situations were usually solved by starting the next week's movie with a flashback explaining how the hero is able to do what they're about to do to get out of the impossible situation. Cut from The Bride in a coffin to the cruel tutelage of Pai Mei then back to the coffin for her escape. I'm running out of steam here with my explination and this isn't an essay for a film class, so there really is nothing to hold me to finishing it. It's not like there are a whack load of people out there reading this anyway.

Total: 62

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

I have this running in a small window while I'm working. Anakin is a brat. Obi Wan is hot. Padme is hot. Mace Windu is hot. Yoda is Haaaaaat. you actually have to give a fair bit of respect to the actors in this movie (Hayden Christiansen excepting) sheerly because they spend most of their time standing in front of a green screen talking to nothing in particular.
All-in-all it's not as bad as we like to make it out to be. Yes, there are alot of really crappy character moments, alot of unconvincing dialogue, and alot of see-through moments, but in many ways it's more fun than Episode I. Strange as it may be, I actually like the two new Star Wars movies. I've gotten over what I want them to be and am just accepting them for what they are. The only REAL flaw that Episode II sufferes from is Hayden Christiansen's whining. Sure you have the Blade Runner rip offs and the wasted time and pointless characters, but you also have Yoda, Mace Windu, Yoda, lightsabers, Yoda, and Yoda.
I always pictured Anakin as being a little more slick.

Total: 61

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

While I do realize that I just talked about how infrequently I see movies in major chains, I do need to mention that there are two movies that have guarenteed themselves of my viewing in their first-run position: Harry Potter 3 and Spider Man 2.
Harry Potter 1 is the topic of discussion today. Adrianna and I took the DVD, my iBook, and the car, curled up in the back seat and watched after dinner on Friday.
If you havn't seen the HP movies yet, why are you sitting here reading my blog?

Total: 60

Supersize Me

I havn't seen a first-run movie in a major chain theatre since Return of the King back in December. Actually, there really are only two theatres that I go see movies at: the local second run theatre, and the wonderfully atmosphered Uptown downtown. This comes from The Uptown. Immensely entertaining, this documentary serves as one more indicator of the many things that are wrong with our society. The fast food conspiracy is pretty much directly tied into the sugar conspiracy and the wheat conspiracy. But this movie doesn't concern itself so much with corporate conspiracies as it does with the sheer destructive nature of what we subject ourselves to regularely. The corporations are just doing what they're built to do (for a greater run down on that see the excellent, if long and occasionally unfocused "The Corporation") and we're the ones buying into it.
There are four specific scenes that make this film definitely worth seeing: the McPuke, the girlfriend's description of what has happened to their relationship, the doctors' reactions to what is happening to his body, and the lobbyist saying "we're part of the problem."
Alot of people out there are discrediting this with "dirthy science" or as simply a vehicle for Spurlock to get a real job. I really just think he's a guy who had some means to an end, came up with a wacky idea for presenting something he feels strongly about, and went about doing something most of us wouldn't have the constitution to handle.

totaql: 59

The Client

Let's get something straight before I got too far here. There are two people out there whos names I generally use as some kind of insult or derision, as if being connected with them is an indicator of some inborn evil that will some day sprout to devour nations. those two people are Jerry Bruckheimer and John Grisham. Maybe this is just because they lose more money into their respective couches than I usually see in a year. There, the foreplay is over.
This actually wasn't a bad movie, as a movie. It had some good moments, and Susan Serandon and Tommy Lee Jones are (almost) always entertaining or at least interesting. Beyond that it's comfortably predictable. Everything feels safe, nothing really catches you by surprise. you know what's going to happen. Maybe not all the particulars of how it's going to happen, but you know what is ultimately going to result from all the plot "twists".

total: 58