Gunner Palace, Maria Full of Grace, Bright Leaves, Purple Butterfly, & Troy

Gunner Palace. After driving home and then going to a good dinner (Myra's Dionysus), I made it through about half an hour before I decided I needed sleep more than falling asleep during the movie. So I watched the rest of it later. Can't remember the last time I basically fell asleep during a movie. Well, except for when I rewatched the Star Wars Trilogy with commentaries, and fell asleep during each movie. That doesn't really count, since I'd seen the movies maybe a hundred times each. Anyway, back to Gunner Palace. If it hadn't been for the actual rating, I would never have thought it was PG-13, what with all the "naughty" words that aren't allowed to be said on a screen in front of kids but are allowed to be screamed in public. Woot! I keep getting distracted from the movie. It was pretty good, and a great anti-war movie, and completely blew the Iraq section of Fahrenheit 9/11 out of the water. Too bad there wasn't really enough else there. And I thought that there wasn't enough explaining. Lots of scenes, but short and sometimes confusing.

Maria Full of Grace was great. Beautiful movie, interesting story, plus it had women learning how to suppress their gag reflexes. Which is always hot. Ok, plus, it was all about how bad situations lead to being abused by the drug trade. I'm not sure how comfortable I feel about supporting illegal immigration, but then again, illegal immigration is better than drug importation. Great performance from the lead actress as well.

Bright Leaves was boring. Way too much focus on showing pictures of his kid, and not nearly enough discussing the history of bright leaf tobacco. Those parts were good. But it never really kept my interest for very long.

Purple Butterfly has Zhang Ziyi (or Ziyi Zhang, I'm not sure what she actually is going by now), so it isn't all bad. In fact, that's never a bad thing. Plus it's an interesting story. Gets bogged down in not having enough dialogue. Cut half an hour, and then maybe it'll be better. I didn't realize it was by the same guy who did Suzhou River, which gave me a bad case of motion sickness, even if it was a really good movie.

Troy was long and boring. Who thought it would be a good idea to ruin the Iliad? Who thought it would be good to piss off the only people who might actually like a 3 hour long sword and sandal epic by changing the entire plot? Who thought that this movie could make any sense? Ugh.