The Flower of My Secret, Waydowntown, Winter Kills, & Lackawanna Blues

The Flower of My Secret is, I think, one of the few Almodovar's I haven't seen yet. Well, at least from Dark Habits on, I only have to see High Heels, and it will be complete. This one is actually reminiscent of a lot of his other films, but it's not like he doesn't really deal with the same type of characters or plots in his movies. It's clearly in his mid-period of some crazy things, but mostly a normal movie with some very strong female characters. In that sense, it's actually less strange than most of his earlier films, so I guess it really isn't all that strange, but there were some very strange things, like the whole scene at the beginning of the organ donation, and the boots, and the bizarre family, and the oedipal ballet at the end. I mean, it's fairly normal within the scheme of Almodovar, but it's not normal. And I haven't even mentioned the NATO peacekeeper husband. Just overall enough to make me call it strange, but still, a good Almodovarian film.

Waydowntown is a little Canadian film about going insane after not going outside for around a month. Disjointed editing, dope smoking, a French version of Downtown by Petula Clark, a klepto boss, a coworker who goes crazy by stapling inspirational phrases onto his chest, and a two-liter bottle of marbles. I would say it's good, but it's definitely not for a lot of people. The editing style distracted me a lot.

Winter Kills is probably the most paranoid of the paranoid 70s thrillers. It's a not-very-well disguised theory about who killed Kennedy, based on a book by Richard Condon, writer of The Manchurian Candidate and Prizzi's Honor. Too bad this wasn't nearly as good as those two. It's not bad, but it's a mess of a movie, going from one theory to another without enough time for the audience to figure out what was going on. And it wasn't like I figured out what the end of the movie was going to be (even with the "big twist" ending) very soon after the beginning. Not to say that some things didn't surprise me (like, why did the maid-assassin have to have her shirt ripped open? I mean, I know it's the 70s and all, but huh?), but none of the big reveals did much for me. Maybe I have seen too many paranoid thrillers to be surprised by one that is mainly notable for Sterling Hayden's facial hair, but it just was a mess.

Lackawanna Blues is an HBO movie about a small kid at a boarding house in upstate New York in the 50s and 60s. It's full of a lot of fairly well-known (at least to me) black actors in small parts, like Michael K. "Omar" Williams as a knife obsessed boarder, and Jeffrey Wright as a murderous scrap-booker. The movie is basically an excuse to have S. Epatha Merkerson get an Emmy. That isn't to say it isn't enjoyable, but there are a couple of scenes, especially towards the end that are Emmy bait.

My Own Private Idaho, Jacob's Ladder, The Virgin Suicides, Piccadilly, & Long Day's Journey into Night

My Own Private Idaho has a great performance from Keanu Reeves, although it's similar to his performance in the Matrix, as in, he's supposed to have no emotions. River Phoenix on the other hand, just reminded me that Joaquin Phoenix sucks. Seriously, what an outstanding performance. I didn't care for most of the characters, and the faux-Shakespeare was distracting. So basically, it was really good, but should have been better.

Jacob's Ladder was a strange and twisted film. I'm not entirely sure what to think about it, because it's one of those movies that I generally hate because of the ending. But it was crazy with the whole thing. Very Ambrose Bierce, which I like as a short story, but seems cheap as an approach to a movie. It's the sort of thing that screwed with Stage Fright. Messing with the audience and showing something as true when it's not is just messed up. Of course, that was mainly just after watching it. With a little more time, it was clear that most of it makes sense in the sense that it's a struggle between heaven and hell for the soul of Tim Robbins. It doesn't really matter who won or who lost, because the movie was very superficial, and Adrian Lyne isn't a particularly deep director. All the deep aspects of the film are there in the script, but it loses a lot because the film is of his crappy movies. And even the script seems like an utter mess, not something that would surprise someone after finding out the guy also wrote Ghost, Deep Impact, and Stuart Little 2. Seriously, Ghost sucked and is a horrible blight on 1990 movies and the Oscars. Jacob's Ladder has some interesting things in it, not the least of which is Elizabeth Pena, someone I will always be excited to see in a movie, and was the only good thing in Tortilla Soup. Well, the only good thing that wasn't food. Well, all the girls in that were attractive.

The Virgin Suicides, which I'd seen before, and vastly enjoyed, was just about as good as I remember, and definitely captured the feel of the book perfectly. Kudos Sophia. I mainly just wanted to watch it again because I'd reread the book this summer and I am that excited about Marie Antoinette, and I would've seen it if it weren't for those meddling... job. Yeah, job really limits my ability to do what I want when I want. Damnit. And I hate that it got So Far Away stuck in my head for a day. Not as bad as the day I had This Is Our Country stuck there, though.

Piccadilly was only worth seeing for probably one of the least stereotypical portrayal of an Asian on film for a western film for, well... many many years. It was 30 years later that we still had Mickey Rooney doing "Japanese". Anna May Wong, while still being a quiet Asian woman, is, at least, a real person with feelings. There were so many crappy ways to use her talent, and, unfortunately, she suffered from the horrible racism that dominated Hollywood. She was clearly very talented (both as an actress and a very attractive woman), and that she lost out on roles because she was Asian is just wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. The film itself was nothing particularly special, except for some very impressive camera movements and stylistic effects, impressive for 1929.

Long Day's Journey into Night has good acting, but I just don't care. Sorry. Three hours of a family collapsing under drug use, alcoholism, and miserliness just was too much for me. Sorry, everyone involved.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated, The Departed, The Island, Walk the Line, & Bad Education

This Film Is Not Yet Rated continues the Great Documentary Revival of the last few years. Yay for that, and the movie was extremely satisfying for someone who has read multiple books about film censorship (some of them were even for fun) and finds the MPAA a bunch of morons. The interviews with the filmmakers were definitely worth seeing the movie for, especially if you want to see just how silly the rating system is. The private investigator scenes were sort of funny, because she was so insane, but also it was disturbing because these were vaguely illegal things being done to people, who, while perpetuating a stupid and ineffective system, are still human beings. Then again, the MPAA is full of crazy people who don't mind lying, so they deserve pretty much everything in it.

The Departed is my pick for best film of the year. And if Paul Haggis wins another frickin' Oscar I will have to come back here and complain about how stupid the academy is. Anyway, the accents were good, everyone in it was excellent, Nicholson didn't bother me, Leo again proves that he's not just a pretty face, Wahlberg had some of the funniest lines, and Baldwin was just Baldwin (who has been the best thing about 30 Rock, as well). Knowing how everything was going to pan out and most of the plot points allowed me to savor the little things, like the accents, the perfect cursing, the good musical choices (even if I did get Comfortably Numb stuck in my head for a while, and I don't even like Pink Floyd), and Walhberg making fun of his brother. Little things like that make me happy.

The Island, on the other hand, didn't make me happy. So much talent in front of the camera, why did there have to be so little behind the camera. Because Michael Bay is a no talent hack. A two hour chase scene is a great idea there, genius. No one will ever get bored by characters running from one implausible escape to another. Nope. All perfectly reasonable for Scarlett and Ewan to fall many many floors on an R and then get saved by a conveniently strung netting. Yep. Apparently, my intellect is far above what was needed not to have my intelligence insulted by the movie. At least it did allow me to play a lot of Ninja Gaiden Black, which is both insanely fun and insanely hard. I suck at it, but the opportunity to decapitate multiple people at once is... well, worth the many, many, many deaths you will suffer before you figure out how to do all the crazy moves.

Walk the Line is the white man's Ray with worse music and the least talented Phoenix. Man, why did River have to be the one to die? Couldn't it have been this one instead? Ugh. And I wanted Cash to stay with Ginnifer Goodwin instead of running off with that tramp Reese Witherspoon. And the music wasn't half as good as Ray either. And I say that as a white male semi-hipster who should enjoy outlaw country. But little in that movie was as good as Jamie Foxx doing What'd I Say.

Bad Education felt like a little bit of a retreat for Almodovar from the brilliance of All about My Mother and Talk to Her, and a move back to his crazy 80s roots, but with the artistic maturity of his more recent work, but it didn't work particularly well, in my opinion. I should have really loved the film within a film and the messing with the audience's expectations of what was real and what wasn't, but I just didn't entirely connect with anyone in the film. Was it just that I'm not gay, or a transsexual, or a pedophile priest? I'm not sure.

A Letter to Three Wives, Kwaidan, Touchez pas au grisbi, & The Scarlet Pimpernel

A Letter to Three Wives is the movie Joseph Mankiewicz made the year before All about Eve, one of the classics, and one of the few times I didn't hate Bette Davis. This one also won an Oscar, but I really don't know why. I mean, yeah, it's a movie from 1949 all about infidelity, but I think we should all have been beyond that. I mean, Kirk Douglas just gets to play an insufferable ass of a schoolteacher. Beh to the movie.

Kwaidan is a collection of four Japanese ghost stories made in 1965 and so not really scary as much as very creepy. They were all good in their own ways, but they have the moral of don't lie or cheat and be faithful and make sure your ears are covered with the holy word when you think a ghost is coming or else you won't have any ears. And really, really, don't mess with anyone who says that they'll kill you if you tell a secret, because they just might. And everything was done on a soundstage, which was obvious most of the time, which was intentional, but still somewhat distracting.

Touchez pas au grisbi felt like just another French heist film. Or at least a post-heist film. It just suffers from comparison with so many other, better French heist films. I'm sure I should have liked it more, but I just didn't.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is something I am pretty sure I had seen before, but back a long time ago, when I was watching stuff like The Fighting Prince of Donegal all the time. When I would watch anything because there were some sword fights. My taste wasn't entirely discriminating. Anyway, watching it now wasn't too bad, because it had Ian McKellan as the bad guy, who was awesome, and Jane Seymour who was hot. Even if her hair was enormous.

Thieves' Highway, Night and the City, & Attack the Gas Station

Thieves' Highway was weak. What's up with trucker movies? This and They Drive by Night were both bad. Oh, and Over the Top. Truckers just make for crappy movies. I know that there are probably good movies with trucks or truckers in them, but most are bad. I don't care about golden delicious apples, and I didn't care about anyone in the film short of Lee J. Cobb, but I just cared that he got to overact in a few scenes before he got his comeuppance, which, as this is a Hollywood film, would come soon enough.

Night and the City was a much better Dassin film, this about trying to corner the market on wrestling in London. Richard Widmark is great as the crooked guy putting everything in motion. And Gene Tierney is still very attractive.

Attack the Gas Station was insane. And bizarre. And crazy. But man, it was insanely, bizarrely, crazily awesome. Of course it was all a metaphor for the Korean society at the turn of the century. Which was obvious. I'm pretty sure it's obvious. I mean, otherwise it's just a crazy movie about four young men who knock over a gas station, and then rob it again a little while later all while making a lot of the people they were involved with have better lives. Well, except for the jerks. They got what they deserved. So many parts of this film were insanely awesome, like the backstories, the stick, the fights, the game, and head down. Really, it's just a movie that deserves to be seen by anyone with an interest in film.

Thank You for Smoking, Casque d'or, The Notorious Bettie Page, Shanghai Ghetto, & Last Man Standing: Politics Texas Style

Another long couple of weeks and half-assed reviews. I can't wait for election day.

Thank You for Smoking was pretty good, but a little weak in the satire part. I enjoyed it, but it just felt like it should have been much more pointed.

Casque d'or was not nearly as good as Le Trou. I just couldn't care about it.

The Notorious Bettie Page was a pretty good film, although with Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner behind the camera, it was expected. Well, apparently Turner wrote BloodRayne, so it's not a 100% thing, but American Psycho was great. Gretchen Mol was definitely better than I was expecting. And David Straithairn kicks ass in everything he does.

Shanghai Ghetto was a movie I'd seen trailers for when it came out. I saw movies in the same theater every week for a while, and it was before each film. Made me consider watching it in the theater, until I realized it's a Holocaust documentary. Doesn't need to be seen on the big screen. It's about something in history most people never knew about: that the Japanese allowed a large amount of Jews to get to Shanghai in the late 1930s. That they did so because they thought that the Jews controlled the world was a strange thing, but it could have been worse. They at least saved many lives. Their approach to enormous Jewish power was to try to be nice, while the Nazis clearly went in the other direction. I am continuing to see every single Holocaust documentary out there. It'll happen someday. They have to run out of interesting angles at some point.

Last Man Standing: Politics Texas Style was a really interesting look at a local legislative race in Texas, with a look at the 2002 Governor's race for Texas, which was just a big mess of a race. Seriously, why would anyone vote for Rick "I'm not a gay Governor" Perry? Is it just that he's a Republican? Because it's a shame that someone that much worse than Bush gets elected.

Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries, The Long, Hot Summer, Rhapsody in August, The Boys of Baraka, Notorious C.H.O., & The Science of Sleep

Stupid work has been keeping me from watching and keeping up on this nearly as much as I would like. I also have watched the second season of Veronica Mars and the third season of Arrested Development (both well-worth watching), along with worked insane hours of work, so that really explains why my movie watching was so low the past couple weeks. Probably won't increase much until after November 7th, either. Oh, and go Bengals and Buckeyes. So these are more half-assed than normal.

Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries was better than I was expecting. I really felt like I needed another show to make sure I never cleared off my DVR, and this was it. Lots of recommendations from Sci-Fi nerds and the promise that it was much better than most TV Sci-Fi. Well, it's not as good as Firefly/Serenity, but very little is. Certainly a worthwhile add to my Series recording list. Now, I just have to finish the first and second seasons before the third premieres on October 6. Or else I will continue to be someone who is alone in watching it among friends, rather than joining people at a Frak Party, or some such. Maybe I'll just try to watch as much as I can and still go. The effects were actually pretty good, the acting was generally not bad, and the story was interesting. (plus Grace Park and Tricia Helfer are attractive...)

The Long Hot Summer was another of those movies in the late 50s that should have been made a few years later, because the restrictions from the production code were driving me crazy. Yeah, they did get to say that women think about sex, but you could tell that if this were a little later, the son would have been made impotent and the daughter's non-Paul Newman beau gay. Damn them for neutering films. Then again, All the King's Men was a pretty neutered version of the book, and the remake is supposed to keep all that in and still be boring as hell. Not that the original was boring, I happen to really like it. It was weird to see Orson Welles, because at first I thought, "Orson Welles", and then "It can't be him", and I went back and forth until I just checked the IMDB.

Rhapsody in August is Akira Kurosawa making everyone feel really depressed because it's all about how people were affected by the atomic bombs. A little later than Hiroshima Mon Amour, but I still got a little weepy-eyed when the kids were wandering around Nagasaki looking at the various monuments and the like. Maybe some Americans don't want to remember that we're the only country who've ever used nuclear weapons in war, but it's pretty hard to forget that. Using the children as a way to get people to connect to the story was pretty effective as well, since there were four of them and most people could identify with one of them at least. And, of course, it was strange to see Richard Gere speaking in Japanese. I couldn't tell if it was halting or if he was mispronouncing words, but he seemed fairly up on it, at least when he wasn't supposed to be muffing words.

The Boys of Baraka was an interesting look at the Baraka program, which takes high risk kids from Baltimore and sends them to Kenya to try to get them out of the areas where they're likely to go to into the drug trade or get into trouble with the law. It was interesting, especially comparing that to the somewhat bleak view that the Wire is seeming to get into this season. I'll have to think about them together at some point in the future (may not actually happen).

Notorious C.H.O. is Margaret Cho's second concert film, and this one was more about sex and, consequently, I didn't care for it nearly as much as her other films that I've seen. Just wasn't nearly as funny to me. Eh.

The Science of Sleep was strange, in the wonderful way that a Gondry film can be. It felt much less organized than had it been written by Charlie Kaufman, and it was much more visually impressive, like his videos. It reminded me of Eternal Sunshine, as they're both about relationships, although clearly opposite ends of them. I'd like to think that I don't go quite as bizarre when one of mine starts, but then again, my imagination does like to get way ahead of reality. Can't quite remember my dreams, though, so I can't tell whether I've ever gone so far as to have them end up becoming real. And that is, if there is even one, the problem with the film. If you're looking to find a movie with closure, or one that isn't going to confuse you at all, you're not going to like the film at all. In fact, you may even hate it. I can see someone hating it very easily. It takes both an ability to separate dreams from reality and an overactive imagination in the realms of love and relationships to get, and some people don't really want to work that hard while watching a film. It's not as immediately brilliant as Eternal Sunshine, but really, few films are. It's more of an earworm, slowly burrowing in, taking over your life, until you'd be happy to ride around on a mechanical horse below cotton ball clouds with the woman you love (and may or may not love you back). Then you wake up.

Smiley's People, Igby Goes Down, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, Silkwood, & Norma Rae

Smiley's People isn't as good as Tinker, Tailor, but it's still a superior miniseries. Neither of them have nearly enough Patrick Stewart, and really, that's a damn shame. I know that the books didn't have more, but it's like Hearts of Darkness with the Kurtz section down to a page or two. Seriously, I hate when someone is all over it all and doesn't really appear. Damnit. Guinness is brilliant again, and the supporting cast is also good.

Igby Goes Down has some very very good scenes, and some very very good things in it, but there are some things that don't seem right at all. Good cast, even with not one but two Culkins. It just sort of felt like a movie that was trying to do way too much with not nearly enough. I think it has to do with the Culkins. I still can't get past them. He wasn't bad at all, just felt slightly off. I can't even put my finger on why I found the movie slightly off-putting, except that I also hated The Catcher in the Rye. Young angsty jerks don't tend to agree with me.

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is an early Bresson film, but I really didn't care for it. Had a feeling of pointlessness. And it was slow, even at only 86 minutes. I think I'm going to hold off for a long while before I check out another Bresson film.

Silkwood is an excuse for Meryl Streep to use another accent. And to put another Confederate flag on screen. I'm just wondering if there's a point to saying that she was very good in it? That Kurt Russell and Cher were good was only a little more of a surprise. Craig T. Nelson was a bad guy, rather than a dad in this film. You know that he only has two roles, right? Dad and bad guy. The ending of the film is way too mawkish. Can't there be a ban on endings just like that? Amazing Grace over a montage is just eh.

Norma Rae is a movie I had seen the most famous scene in my true film class back in college. One of our projects was to use a scene from a "true" movie and then write a paper on it. I wanted to do the famous one take call in All the President's Men, but that was too long, so I apparently wrote about a scene in Erin Brockovich where she gets a phone call. Clearly I wanted to deal with phone calls. Actually, looking through my papers from that class, I wrote about a different phone call in All the President's Men. I was obsessed apparently. Norma Rae is a better film than Silkwood. Probably would have had an even worse impression of Silkwood had I not seen Norma Rae right afterwards. Of course there are problems with this movie as well, but those are fairly minor compared to Sally Field as Norma Rae.

Yeah, I watched two straight 70s liberal films. So?

Cure, Our Brand Is Crisis, & the entire Sharpe series

Cure is the movie that made Kiyoshi Kurosawa a star, and it is very good. It's also somewhat disappointing in that I think I had it built up in my mind as a great film, and it's merely very good. Of course, the very good film Fallen is similar, so it's not like I don't like movies like this. It's more about the detective rather than a supernatural being inhabiting the bodies though. It's not as good as Pulse, but it's better than most serial killer movies made of late.

Our Brand Is Crisis just makes me happy I never work for bad candidates... oh, man. I could tell some stories, but I won't. At least I don't work for Bob "0 for 7" Shrum. Just watching these guys try to struggle to reframe the election explains why Democrats have been screwed for a while. Ugh. I wonder, though, can we blame Bob Shrum for all the deaths in Bolivia during the revolt? I'd like to. It's not like we can't blame him for a lot of other deaths through his incompetant campaigning.

Sharpe (and his miniseries of now 15 movies (which I've watched over the last fifteen weeks)) follow Lt. Sharpe (and his various promotions and demotions) and British troops from Portugal through Spain, France, England, Belgium, and on into India during and right after the Napoleonic wars. As I'm a fan of the Bernard Cornwell books and had seen the first few when they originally aired on PBS back in 1993 and 1994, I enjoyed them all. Until it got to the one not based on a book of Cornwell's, Sharpe's Justice (although Sharpe's Mission wasn't based on a book, it was at least still set during the war), which is set in Yorkshire after Napoleon was exiled to Elba. And is horrible. Really, just very out of place in otherwise superior TV movies. The series has a lot of people I enjoy in sometimes small, sometimes large roles, ranging from Brian Cox, Pete Postlethwaite, Elizabeth Hurley, and Paul Bettany to Alexis Denisof, Alice Krige, and Phillip Glenister. And that isn't to forget Sean Bean as Sharpe and the very good Daragh O'Malley as Sgt. Harper. The main cast is generally very strong, and the theme song (of sorts), Over the Hills and Far Away, gets stuck in my head quite a bit.

Superchunk at the Cradle 9/1/06

Because I was out of town for Labor Day weekend, I didn't get to watch as many movies as normal, but instead, you, dear readers, get something much more rare: a concert review. Yep, I actually went to a concert. In a club! And not just any club, but one of my favorite places to see a show, especially now that it's smoke free. The Cat's Cradle is very nice. And a concert there with one of my favorite bands of all time is very very nice.

Cadmium
Animated Airplanes over Germany
Rainy Streets
Art Class (Song for Yayoi Kusama)
Learn to Surf
Song for Marion Brown
Nu Bruises
Winter Games
Package Thief
Seed Toss
Sunshine State
Why Do You Have To Put a Date on Everything?
From the Curve
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The First Part
Detroit Has a Skyline
Cast Iron
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Slack Motherfucker
Precision Auto

Opening band was Tenement Halls, who were... boring. I mean, it wasn't bad or anything, but they barely talked, the music all sounded the same and I just couldn't get too excited. Could've been the migraine I had though.

Superchunk just continues to be lots of fun. Good setlist (although no Driveway to Driveway or 100,000 Fireflies or Brand New Love, and I don't really care for Seed Toss), and the two new songs were good. After The First Part, I was thinking I really hope they play Detroit Has a Skyline, and then they did. It made me very happy. In the second encore, I tried to get them to play Brand New Love or 100,000 Fireflies, but apparently, my power was used up on Detroit. I think I need to work on improving that. That power could be used for good. Or evil, but I doubt I'd go to the show and use the power to play Swallow That. Anyway, now that I've just made a joke that very few people will get, mainly because it's not funny, I will mention that they said there'd be a new album in 2012 and it would be beamed directly into our brains. That'd be awesome. Not the 2012 bit, but the brain-beaming of new music.

Fighting Elegy & The Mosquito Coast

Fighting Elegy is a satire of the militarism that lead to Japanese involvement in World War II. It's very well done and touching, although the touching parts depends if you can handle a character playing the piano with his erection. Actually, it's not really touching. Well, the erection is touching the piano, but the movie is just touching in the normal way. The most interesting aspect is just how ridiculous everything is played out in the film, with Kiroku feeling frustrated by the fact that the Catholic girl he's in love with is not going to get physically intimate with him, and taking out his sexual frustrations with violence. And, by extension, suggesting that a lot of militarism is a result of not enough sex. I'm not sure where the writer was going with Michiko's statement about why they couldn't be together. Maybe there was something more explicit in the original novel, because that seems a little bizarre and like it came out of nowhere.

The Mosquito Coast has one of Jason Alexander's first roles. I didn't recognize him, but the IMDB did. Harrison Ford is very good, and it's an interesting premise, but I just don't understand how someone can be so obsessed with something so ridiculous. I mean, building an ice-making machine in the middle of the Honduran jungle is really crazy. A young River Phoenix was nice. It seems like something that probably would have been better in the original novel, again. Weird how that is.

The Great White Hype & Scarface

The Great White Hype is pretty darn bad. Maybe Ron Shelton did only have one good screenplay in him. And the cast (Samuel L. Jackson, Jeff Goldblum, Corbin Bernsen, Jon Lovitz, Cheech Marin, John Rhys-Davies, Jamie Foxx, Damon Wayans, and Method Man) is much better than the material deserves, but can't make up for the craptacularness of the material. And it is craptacular.

Scarface is a movie I hadn't seen in so long I couldn't remember much of it (but I still had on my list as having watched it, and with the same rating as I gave it this time...). Then I watched it and remembered why I had blocked it out. Overlong and boring. Oh, yeah, just like many other Brian De Palma films. At least the worst ones. And why are so many of the Cubans played by Italians? Ugh. About the only time I thought anything good about it was when Harris "Quentin Travers" Yulin showed up. I always enjoy recognizing actors from the Whedon-verse. The movie just doesn't end, is full of either cardboard cutouts or completely despicable characters, and is just another example of De Palma and his desire to remake everything. I know, Stone did the screenplay and De Palma joined the film late, but ugh. And the soundtrack is the worst of 80s excess in overuse of synthesizers. Moroder, ummm, really didn't do much good in soundtracks. Cat People has a good song, cowritten with David Bowie, but man, most 80s soundtracks sucked, and Moroder is at least partly responsible for that. Why the hell can this movie be so popular? I mean, I know why it's so popular, but why do people like it so much? It's not a good movie, there are much better gangster films. And why the hell would anyone want to be Tony Montana, unless you're seriously messed up in the head? A drug-addicted asswipe in love with his sister? Man, I want to be him!

Silver City, The Saddest Music in the World, & Princess Raccoon

Silver City was a disappointing Sayles film. It felt like it was going to build up to something much better than it ended up as. He's clearly very capable of putting together a sprawling cast and making a brilliant film, but in this case, it just didn't work nearly as well as it could have. Had I not been such a big Sayles fan, I probably would have been more forgiving to the film, but I can't. And I only seem to like Billy Zane when he's making fun of himself, which both doesn't happen nearly enough and is a really bad sign for him and his almost non-existent acting talents.

The Saddest Music in the World is bizarre. I didn't recall that it was filmed like an early talkie with a filter for an almost black and white effect. But it was, and it was um... strange in a funny way? I really didn't know that Kazuo Ishiguro wrote the original screenplay. If you haven't read Remains of the Day, you need to, by the way, because it's excellent. Beer-filled glass legs, a ridiculous contest that rewards winners with a slide into a beer vat, and a crazy Canadian family are some of the things that make this film completely unique. Plus, there were lots of stereotypes and (I hope, intentional) mergings of cultures of the other countries involved in the contest.

Princess Raccoon is another unique film. Well, actually, I find it sort of a weird amalgamation of the crazy musical stylings of The Happiness of the Katakuris, the tanuki of Pom Poko, the colorwork of Tokyo Drifter (makes sense since it's also a Seijun Suzuki film), and both Snow White and Romeo and Juliet for plot. Oh, and it's also done with CGI and green screen work to make it look like a play. Seriously, just a weird frickin' movie. Some of the songs were also terrible, and in the styles of Edith Piaf, classic movie musical, rap, Metallica-ish rock, mariachi, and Buddhist chant, of course some were going to suck. But it's very hard to get past the pairing of Zhang Ziyi and Jo Odagiri, two very attractive people. Oh, and the subtitles were typical horrible mistranslations and grammatical mistakes. And how much more difficult is it to write out Princess Raccoon rather than just Princess? I know little Japanese, but even I know that tanuki hime means Princess Raccoon. Well, tanuki aren't exactly raccoons, more like raccoon-shaped forest sprites, but it's close enough. I know I say this a lot, but there are no movies like this. Even the closing dance sequence, somewhat reminiscent of Zatoichi's (Takeshi Kitano's brilliant film), just messes with you.

The Great White Hope & Chris Rock: Never Scared

The Great White Hope has very strong performances from James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander. You can tell that Jones is comfortable in the role, and it makes perfect sense when you know that he played the role on Broadway before, which won the author, Howard Sackler, a Pulitzer and a Tony. It also features a horrible Uncle Tom's Cabin musical. In Hungary. The entire thing is just depressing, because this all comes down to a bunch of white racists tearing a black man down for being better than the whites at something (in this case, it's boxing). Fight the power! It's based on Jack Johnson's life, which really makes me want to see that Ken Burns movie, Unforgivable Blackness. Or, maybe I could just watch The Civil War another time. That always makes me happy. Man, I've seen that so many times. What a great theme song.

Chris Rock: Never Scared wasn't nearly as good as his earlier work. It's still funny, but it feels like retreads of other comics and his earlier work. Shame about that. Plus, his yelling style just gets on my nerves now.

Not One Less & Bill's Run

Not One Less is depressing as hell, I mean, it's about how horrible the education system is in rural China. It was gutwrenching, and the ending didn't fit at all with the rest of the movie, but that was required by the Chinese government, because otherwise it would just be about how kids are being educated by people only slightly older than them and communities have to decide whether they'd have chalk or fixed desks and education in the rural areas is backwards. It's really depressing. And it's painful to see that people live like that. Damn white male liberal guilt.

Bill's Run is about a political race in rural Kansas. Well, it's not like there's that much that isn't rural Kansas, and it's not even that rural for Kansas. It's freaky though, that this guy ran as a Republican. Seriously, he's a pro-education, tax-and-spend, and pro-choice guy. But he does have a good name in Kansas politics: Kassebaum. And is therefore, the son of Nancy Kassebaum and grandson of Alf Landon, two big names. It's short and not nearly as much detail as I would have liked. It's still interesting, and the woman he's running against seems entirely evil (and unfortunately, she's in the legislature).

FLCL

FLCL (or, Fooly Cooly, or Furi Kuri, or lots of other things, but not eff-ell-cee-ell) is insane. And I generally hate insane anime. I mean, really a lot. But this is... insane in a good way? I think that it's actually making fun of a lot of anime conventions, like the almost constant upskirt shots (and the rest of fanservice) and robot battles. I think, so I could be wrong. But it has a soundtrack by the Pillows, a band I first found out about a long time ago on a messageboard far, far away. Or, more accurately, the old Superchunk board when someone linked to Hybrid Rainbow and said they sounded like Superchunk. I sort of saw the resemblance, but mainly I saw just how good they are. Yay for Japanese indie-rock! Increase hipster quotient immensely! Woo! Anyway, the anime makes up for being completely crazy by also being about the love of a 12 year old boy for an older alien who hits him with her Vespa and a guitar. And his older baseball playing brother's pyromaniac girlfriend. Seriously, what the hell, Japan? It can't be normal at all, can it? This all being said, I did enjoy it. And I highly recommend it to anyone who can sit for almost three hours and just accept that you'll be confused, but that it looks and sounds pretty good.

Pulse & Nine Queens

Pulse is both very creepy and about the dehumanizing effects of technology. Plus, it was directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who, while no relation to Akira, clearly is very talented, as he'd have to be to have a last name of Kurosawa and direct films. I think there are good things about having an enormous Netflix queue, and one of them is the ability just to sit down and watch a movie without even remembering much about why you wanted to watch it in the first place. I knew it was J-Horror, and was supposed to be much better than run of the mill stuff like Ringu and Ju-On, but I really didn't expect it to be so much better. There were some typical horror aspects to it (especially that the typical Japanese ghosts look the same as they do in most other J-Horror, but Kurosawa is capable of making it slightly less than cliched), but it was just vastly better than most. Almost makes me want to see the apparently terrible American remake. Well, it's mainly for Kristen "Veronica Mars" Bell (and Samm "Neal Schweiber" Levine and Ron "Arvin Sloane" Rifkin). Man, put a bunch of TV people in a movie directed by someone who only has one other movie to his credit and remake a Japanese horror film that's practically perfect (as in, I can't see a way to make the film better than it already was), and of course you're going to get dreck. Well, I can't blame those three, I blame the fact that Hollywood feels the need to remake great foreign films because people can't read subtitles. SPOILER: And the best thing about it is you think it's just a normal little horror film about terrorizing a few college kids when you get to the end and realize that it's about the end of the world.

Nine Queens was, speaking of remakes of great foreign films, remade a couple years ago, but this time it was remade with John C. Reilly and directed by someone who hadn't directed a movie before, but had been assistant director on a hell of a lot of great films. And Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, but really, he's worked with the Coen Brothers, Soderbergh, Hal Hartley, John Sayles, and Jodie Foster, so he probably has at least some talent. Of course, since I saw the original Argentinian version, I don't entirely see the point of watching what is probably a weaker remake. As I have a weak spot for twisty little thrillers that don't entirely give their plots away, I should have loved it, and I did, to a certain extent. My problem was that I've seen so many movies, I knew that the big plot reveal was going to be one of two things, because really, with two con men joining forces you're never going to get a straight forward plot. I think the writer-director, one Fabian Bielinsky, clearly has talent, and the movie was very well-made, but unless he wants to be an Argentinian Mamet, he needs to show that he's capable of making something more than a complicated and twisty thriller. I'm not saying that's bad, because we certainly could use more movies that don't insult the viewer's intelligence, but it's sort of disappointing to know a little about Argentinian history and see where one plot point was going. I mean, really, I wrote papers about it in college.

The Lower Depths (again)

The Lower Depths by Renoir suffers immensely from being watched so soon after Donzoko, a superior film. That one feels more like a play than this one, but that one felt much more real. Probably because the ending seems a lot better in the Kurosawa one, as this one just seems too forced. And I really don't like that the beginning of the movie just feels like an attempt to expand the play from basically one set. I have never read the play, and I'm not at all familiar with it, but the expansion just seems a little forced. After doing a little looking (yay for Wiki), Kurosawa filmed it in a much more accurate fashion than Renoir. Sometimes I like a happy ending, sometimes I like a sad ending, but I just don't think a happy ending fits with the rest of the story. And I don't like Jean Gabin nearly as much as Toshiro Mifune. So, basically, Kurosawa version=excellent, Renoir version=good.

Slacker & Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story

Slacker is really a lot more like A Waking Life than I was sort of expecting. Well, it's a mess, but it's a strangely watchable mess. Some of the stories were great. Some were boring. The Kennedy assassination, Leon Czolgosz, and Mars stories were my favorites. And the Madonna pap smear, but come on, it's about someone stealing a pap smear sample.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story is pretty funny, and ridiculous. Especially the dueling Al Pacino impressions during the end credits. And pretty much anytime that Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are on the screen together. It's definitely a great movie. I think that this is my new, "Michael Winterbottom is a genius" film. Gillian Anderson and Kelly Macdonald are also great, and the cast is full of English actors I'm fans of, with Stephen Fry, Benedict Wong, Shirley Henderson, Naomie Harris, Ian Hart, Kieran O'Brien... It's just a long list of fun actors. Seriously it's just really really good. I really should read the book, but I have a feeling it might take me a while to get through it. Anyway, the movie's battle scenes were hilariously ramshackle, and the cast was bizarre, but brilliant. And the references to Fassbinder just remind me of my distaste for what I've seen of his work, but the Bresson was right on, sort of, but in an intentionally too emphatic way. And the use of the tongs to birth the baby was pretty darn disturbing. All the stuff about Tristram's nose was great. Anyway, back to the movie...

Mrs. Brown

Mrs. Brown you've got a... No, dear god, I didn't rewatch that. This is the Judi Dench-Billy Connolly movie about Queen Victoria and a Mr. John Brown. Who's body was apparently not lying a-mouldering in the grave. Important for the movie. Let's see... John Brown... Nope, I should stop making bad jokes and references. Anyway, it's interesting, and especially the look at Disraeli. I don't think I ever really put a face to the stories of Disraeli I'd read before. Didn't expect him to look so evil. It's the goatee. It makes pretty much every look evil. The acting is generally good, although a few characters were just there to be evil. Unfortunate. It's good, and it's certainly worth watching if you can handle British accents and not too much action, but lots of backroom political machinations.