Bubble, Heading South, Cloverfield, Triad Election, Voices of a Distant Star, She and Her Cat, The Descent, Mouchette, & Life on Mars? series finale

Bubble is Steven Soderbergh messing around with HD on an extremely low budget. Which is really obvious from the film, with completely inexperienced and bad actors in it. It's filmed in Belpre and Parkersburg, West Virginia. There was a brief period of time where I considered applying for a job at the Bureau of the Public Debt in Parkersburg, and then I was told never to work there unless you are married and have a family. Because Parkersburg is horribly boring. West Virginia in general is a state I prefer to avoid, but I had to drive through a lot, and so I became familiar with the interstates. And while the scenery was occasionally very nice, it's certainly no better than Virginia, or rural Ohio, or Pennsylvania, all states I have far fewer problems with. But apparently, Parkersburg does have black people, so that's a bonus I wasn't expecting. Anyway, bad acting, a boring story, and the only good thing is that it was only 73 minutes long. Even at that length, I was bored.

Heading South is set in Haiti in 1978, at a resort for older white women who have sex with younger black men. It was probably a movie my parents liked more than me, and looking, yep, they did. I guess that Charlotte Rampling was good, but I just didn't care about the characters. I didn't see myself in any of them at all.

Cloverfield probably was a better idea than execution. The plot holes were big enough to drive an enormous monster destroying New York through, let alone that I didn't want any of the characters to live. So I guess the film was ok from that aspect, but the shaky cam just made me horribly sick. But yeah, its immense opening weekend was at least partially due to me. Sorry everyone.

Triad Election is the sequel to the quite good Election, set two years later, and just as effectively mocking the Triads, although I think this one is better. Not much more to add than that, because I recommend it.

Voices of a Distant Star is a 25 minute anime film done in seven months almost entirely by one guy, Makoto Shinkai (who currently works for an eroge company making opening films). Based on the talent he shows here, maybe I should check those out. You know, for research purposes. No, really, he's pretty talented, and the short is the heartbreaking story of two junior high school friends/more who are separated by the need for the girl to go into space and fight aliens in a giant mecha suit and they keep in touch by sms which takes longer and longer to get back to earth due to the traveling through space thing. So sad, and so freaky to think that we will eventually start having to worry about how long it takes for messages to travel, even as the delay on satellite feeds now drives me crazy. If anyone wants to know why I will never leave this planet unless I have to, that's why. Because I need my messages to arrive immediately.

She and Her Cat is a short five minute piece also done almost entirely by Makoto Shinkai and included on the same DVD. It's about a cat falling in love with his owner and well done.

The Descent is a slickly done caving horror film. And through the beginning of it, all I could think was that that was a bad idea from a safety standpoint. Yes, I'm a caving nerd. I had problems telling a few of them apart, especially after they got all dirty. But it's very effective, and Neil Marshall shows that Dog Soldiers wasn't a fluke, and that he knows horror well enough to not just fall into the tired old tropes all the time.

Mouchette is another Robert Bresson film about people who don't fit within society, this one about a 14 year old girl who is the daughter of a dying mother and a drunken bootlegger. Unfortunately, I felt like Bresson just put all the things in the film without ever really trying to show any empathy for the characters. Lots of bad things happen, and there doesn't seem to be any real point to it all.

I also, this weekend, watched Infernal Affairs, The Departed, and The Wizard again. One of these three is not like the other. And the first two were just as good as the first time I saw them. The Wizard was another of my childhood memories ruined. Did make me want to play Super Mario Brothers 3 again. I want to praise Life on Mars? as an excellent show. And fear for the David E. Kelley written remake that may appear on TV when the writers' strike is over. The only thing that could have made it better was if BBC America didn't have to edit the shows to fit in commercials.