V for Vendetta, Waterland, & The King of Comedy

V for Vendetta is a problem for me, because the movie is actually pretty good, manages to fit in a lot of plot points from the comic, and doesn't mess around too much with it. That said, it does mess around enough that it bothered me about a few things. Why didn't they destroy 10 Downing Street at the end, not the Houses of Parliament? I know that Americans don't know what 10 Downing Street is and... Oh, yeah, it's the Americanization that bothers me. And it doesn't capture the spirit of it quite well enough to make the changes it does make to have it fit more as an American version of the story work. And I don't like the different ending at all. The ending to the comic fits much better with the previous story. The ending to the movie just doesn't work. Natalie Portman also is too old for Evey. And I didn't like the retelling of Guy Fawkes, which was just a blatant tip to the non-English audiences who wouldn't be familiar with him. Why should that matter? And no LSD trip? And nothing about how V blew up the camp or the poetic justice deaths for the torturers? And Susan is a bad name? And the simplification of everything in it bothers me. I agree with Moore that movies of his works generally don't work out. I really am not looking forward to The Watchmen movie. That will inevitably suck. Then again, I didn't hate this at all, and I feel that almost every one of my complaints is due to how much I really enjoyed the comic and that the movie succeeds on its own. Still a somewhat mindless action flick, but not too bad. And I wanted more Storm Saxon. So ridiculous in the comic.

Waterland isn't as good as the book. That said, it does somewhat capture the spirit of the book. And it has Maggie Gyllenhaal's first performance. Which was just a "Hey, that's Maggie Gyllenhaal. How'd she get that part? Oh, yeah, her dad directed the movie..." part. It's weird that I had a little unintentional Sinéad Cusack film fest yesterday. Didn't realize that was going to happen. I really liked the book, and I really recommend it to all. The weird bits of the merging of the past and the present sort of make the theme of the book obvious, and therefore don't bother me at all. I also liked that Jeremy Irons played a creepy old guy again. Seriously, he always does that. It's like he stepped out of the womb a fully formed old creepy guy. It's a good thing that he has already played Humbert Humbert, otherwise there'd be a serious deficiency in his filmography. At least he's married to Sinéad Cusack. That helps a little.

The King of Comedy doesn't work as well as I think it should have. I think the identification with the evil people has something to do with it. I don't like Sandra Bernhard at all, that also sort of hurts it. However, it's a good biting satire of the society that we really have become. Much better than Natural Born Killers. And it has Jerry Lewis's best performance ever. Well, according to Netflix, I've never seen a Jerry Lewis movie. So at least it's the best one I've ever seen. Much better than his weak performances on all those telethons. I couldn't believe he actually cared about all those kids. Just seemed fake. Good thing I don't believe in hell, or else I'm sure to go there for that crack.