Caseus Archivelox: Salvador, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Point Blank, The Girl on the Bridge, & Y Tu Mama Tambien

2002-05-06 - 11:22 p.m.
Salvador is really good, even though Oliver Stone showed his biases against the American military. Not that they aren't well founded, but it's colored a couple of his movies to the detriment of them. James Woods is incredibly good in it. It's just a little long. And of course, the fact that it agrees with my politics, and views of Reagan, helps it. I felt like I needed to see it, because it's an Oliver Stone film, and he is a very skilled filmmaker, even if insanely paranoid.

2002-05-07 - 8:16 p.m.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller had most of what I like about Altman (with great overlapping dialogue and nice camerawork, which was muted somewhat by the pan-and-scan tape), except that I can't like Warren Beatty in anything. He wasn't that bad in it, but he's such a despicable character that I didn't care whether he lived or died. The whores in the movie were much better, because they at least wanted the men to be clean before they had sex with them. Every time I think Julie Christie, I start singing "Tom Courtenay". That isn't that bad, but just slightly annoying. The Leonard Cohen songs were nice. Still, even with Beatty, the film was good.

2002-05-09 - 12:19 a.m.
Point Blank was a really good gangster type movie from 1967 directed by John Boorman. He also directed some other very good films: Deliverance, Excalibur, and Hope & Glory, and some trash: Zardoz and Exorcist 2. This one had a lot of flashbacks and forwards, partially because it may or may not be the case that the main character died in the first scene. That isn't really spoiling it because I doubt any of you who read this will ever watch it, and it doesn't hurt the appreciation of the film to know that. The movie was really stylish and Lee Marvin was impressively stoic and cool. I highly recommend it. In fact, the knowledge of his possible death makes the film much better than it would have been otherwise.

2002-05-09 - 5:27 p.m.
I watched The Girl on the Bridge this afternoon, and damn if that isn't one of the better love stories I've seen in a long time. It was made for the romantic film fan, with so many things to take a viewer out of the "real" world within the film, that had it been much longer, I would have found it frustrating. But it was so well made that it knew when to stop, when to push the viewer to suspend their disbelief fully, and be the incredibly romantic film that it set out to be. Very good film.

2002-05-13 - 5:56 p.m.
Then I saw Y Tu Mama Tambien, which was really good. I knew I had seen the main woman before, and it was because she was in Belle époque. And Emilio Echevarría from Amores Perros was also in it. But the movie was just good, with long takes, good acting, and excellent camerawork. The historical signifigance of the entire movie was not lost upon me either.