Angels in America, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, & Tanner '88

Angels in America is very good. I also very much liked the little Cocteauan touches in the dream and heaven sequences. I really need to see Orpheus. That's in my queue. Of course, almost everyone in it is very good. I'm not sure if Al Pacino is overacting or if Roy Cohn really was that big of a prick. But he just got on my nerves so much. Or maybe it was just that everyone else in the film was outstanding and his mediocreness just looked like crap. I'd have to rewatch it, and devoting six more hours to a strangely uplifting story of gays and AIDS in America in the mid-80s just doesn't fit with how I want to spend my time.

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is missing just about everything that made the first one good. Mainly any sense of actual goodness or Pride and Prejudice. And why, exactly was there a need for a sequel? Sometimes there are some stories that do just end with the characters riding off together into the sunset. The sequel is just Bridget embarrassing herself constantly. Blargh. So frickin' stupid. V. v. stupid. And you'd think I'd like any movie with a lot of scenes in a Thai woman's prison. But they're just ridiculous, like the rest of the film. And I know it's very shallow of me, particularly considering some of the women I've dated in the past, but Renee Zellweger looked horrendous in the film.

I also finished Tanner '88, which I thought was outstanding. I'm not sure how much I would have liked it without the bits of polling and focus group stuff. There are definite weaknesses, not the least being the horribly dated aspects of it. And it's loose as hell, and occasionally silly, but it's just very interesting and worth watching. Pamela Reed is the best thing, but there are good performances from most of the actors, except Matt Malloy, but the best of the playing themselves was Bruce Babbitt, someone I had pretty much forgotten existed. Which is a damn shame, because he was Interior Secretary under Clinton. And, of course, simply the fact that he wasn't anti-environment like Norton, he was a great Interior Secretary. The Altman and Trudeau influences were somewhat obvious, although Altman's fingerprints were all over it, while Trudeau isn't nearly as clear. Just the sort of political aspects from Doonesbury.

Eyes without a Face

Eyes without a Face is another little late 50s horror film, this time French not English. It's also very good, and pretty creepy. I was pretty impressed with the makeup effects. It's very impressive for a 50s film. Mainly that it was able to be shown in a movie. It was reedited and dubbed for American release, along with a supremely stupid title of "The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus". What the hell ass balls? The supremely freaky surgery footage made me somewhat uncomfortable. When that face got taken off... ewww... And then you notice that it was one take. With no music. And you realize that it was an absolutely outstanding piece of filmmaking. It's definitely creepier when you don't see edits that make it clear when they've made some different makeup or special effects changes.

Fanny and Alexander, Night of the Demon, & A Lion in the House

Fanny and Alexander is definitely a Bergman film, with its evil religious figure, the belief that there is no god, that we're all puppets, but the magic is real aspect is not something that really fits in with most of his other films. I liked it, but it was too long. It felt like it could have been cut a lot. I'm happy I didn't try to sit through the five plus hour long version. I've not enjoyed his later films nearly as much as his earlier ones. After Persona, I just don't like the films as much. His best period, the eleven or so years from Smiles of a Summer Night to Persona has his best films. Later films may be praised, but they just arne't quite as good.

Night of the Demon is Jacques Tourneur's entry into the demon and witchcraft genre. Not as good as Cat People, but still a very good horror film, even if the producers did force him to show the demon. That would have been better than the goofy looking thing they did finally use. The early English horror films all have a good bit of style to them, and this is definitely full of it. Tourneur also did Out of the Past, one of the best film noirs. He's very talented, and it's a shame that he didn't get better films and bigger budgets. I'm not exactly happy with the ending, but a lot of that can be blamed on the fact that the demon was shown. Would have been better if we never really knew if the demon was real or not. I wonder if the estate of Aleister Crowley was pissed about the movie? Or, more accurately, if he himself was pissed from his post-death state. Doctor Karswell is clearly based upon Crowley.

A Lion in the House is for people who want to cry for four hours. Because if you aren't crying very soon into it, you have no heart. I also thought it was nice to see Cincinnati Children's Hospital again. I recognized a lot of the doctors. Not that I knew them all, well, I did watch Dawn of the Dead with one of them, and I definitely have talked with a couple others during my two plus years working there. I had to wander around these halls for various job related things, and seeing these kids, and kids just like them struggling to live would make me happy to be working on improving their care and lives as much or as little as I was. Working there was a very important part of my life, even if I regretted every time I saw the kids in the cystic fibrosis area, knowing about it. I recognize just about everything in the movie, when they're going around Cincinnati. It's very nostalgic for me as well as a powerful film. I cannot recommend this film highly enough.

Missing, The American Friend, Madadayo, & Kids Return

Missing is the based on a true story about the disappearance of an American in Chile. Except that the movie doesn't actually use Chile as that would probably cause some problems. Although it's really freakin' obviously Chile. Well, I guess it is, if you know anything about South American history in the 70s. Man, America really messed up a lot of countries with our desire to involve ourselves in coups and corrupt dictatorships all the time. Now that the information showing the most controversial aspect of the film, that the US knew about the disappearance and death of Charles Horman, is true, the movie actually may not have gone far enough in its denunciation of the American government. The movie itself has a strong performance from Jack Lemmon, but the most important aspect of it is the coming out against American involvement in foreign coups. Which is really the sensible position, all considered.

The American Friend is Wim Wenders doing Tom Ripley. It doesn't actually feel like a Tom Ripley story. Maybe it's that I'm not really familiar with the Patricia Highsmith novels, and he's a secondary character in a lot of them, but this was all about Bruno Ganz coming to terms with his disease and keeping his family well-provided for after his inevitable death. That one character just happened to be Tom Ripley was very much secondary, except for the fact that you just knew the guy was going to be a crazy killer.

Madadayo is Akira Kurosawa's last film, appropriately titled Not Yet and all about growing old. That's appropriate since Akira Kurosawa was very old when he made this film. Is it as good as his earlier films? Of course not. It's very episodic, full of Japanese drinking songs, and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope... I mean a cat. I imagine the cat was a very nice cat. I like cats a lot. I hope, one day, to have someone who likes cats as much as me and then we could have a cat together. I just found it sort of strange about how the cat seemed like the only thing that was keeping the guy sane. Although, really, he was pretty crazy from very early on in the film. Or maybe it's normal for people to be afraid of the dark and lightning. And I'm not sure about the final shot, it seemed sort of a strange thing to end on. It was, as is typical of Kurosawa, well made and interesting, just felt a little more Japanese than I was quite able to handle. If I were more Japanese, I might have liked it more.

Kids Return is Takeshi Kitano's first film after the motorcycle accident that almost killed him, and it's very different from most of his films. It's also, interestingly, one of the better boxing films I've seen lately. Definitely better than that last boxing film, the vastly overrated Million Dollar Baby. Of course, it's not really entirely about boxing. It's more about young people in Japan, and how much they can struggle to find their place in a society that honors conformity above almost all. And there's the typical slapstick scenes as well, because what would a Kitano film be without some humor. I really don't know. It's a very good film, not as good as his best, but certainly worth watching. Especially if you like good movies. And finally, I wanted to mention that Joe Hisaishi, the best film composer in Japan, and probably everywhere, has another great soundtrack, including a few bits that sound like they would fit in perfectly towards the end of Civ III, which has my favorite music in any Civ game.

Amarcord, Vincent & Theo, & Kamikaze Girls

Amarcord just tells me that I need to stop watching Fellini movies until he is responsible for more of his earlier films, and less of his later films. I just don't like them much. I think I'm going to go avoid watching anymore Fellini for a while.

Vincent & Theo has a great performance from Tim Roth. It actually doesn't really feel much like an Altman film. Very strange that, since it is. There're some shots that are clearly Altman, with zooms on tracking shots, but there aren't so many overlapping dialogue heavy scenes. There are some gorgeous shots based on Van Gogh's paintings. So it's generally a great and beautiful film, but it doesn't quite reach past the biopic aspects. It's a little more about the creation of the paintings rather than the biopic, but it still is one.

Kamikaze Girls is a crazy full film. There's some crazy ideas, crazy shots, and it has some really terrible jokes in bad taste. It's also very alive, funny, and covers an interesting and not completely freaky group of fashions in Japan. I really enjoyed it. I'm not sure about the title change, since Kamikaze Girls sort of fits, but it also just sounds like an attempt to create a vaguely Japanese sounding title. It does feel very Japanese, and the Kamikaze aspect sort of describes Momoko's actions near the end of the film, but it also has a connotation for most Americans of Japanese pilots flying planes into ships. Doesn't really fit with a story about two 17 year old girls trying to find their place in a society that seems to ignore them. Well, except when they're not staring at their strangeness. It's strange that I entirely agree with Manohla Dargis's review. It's a movie that's just immensely satisfying. Even being someone who has no experience with either Lolita or Yanki culture, having just seen pictures of some of the Lolitas in Harajuku, linked as examples of how crazy the Japanese are. Then again, this does have Universal-Versach (yes, that is misspelled, and Universal and Versach are bleeped in the film) shirts, jackets and hats, which just adds to the ridiculousness for anyone who finds Engrish silly.

The Purple Rose of Cairo, Margaret Cho: Revolution, & Cross of Iron

The Purple Rose of Cairo is sweet and depressing. And the ending was extremely sad. Farrow was great, as was Jeff Daniels. It's definitely a little out of place with some of his more serious films and out of place with his comedies. I gotta love all the scenes in the film in the film. Very well done, Woody, very well done.

CHO Revolution or Margaret Cho: Revolution or whatever was funny, although it really does go over the same ground as a lot of her other comedy routines. It was funny, but just didn't work as well as her earlier ones. Although I guess I should just say I'm the One That I Want, since I haven't seen Notorious C.H.O. That's in the future, along with Assassin.

Cross of Iron is Sam Peckinpah doing the Eastern front, the most violent and deadly front in the war. Well, at least it was much worse than the Western front. As it's a typical Peckinpah film, there're needless slow motion shots, gratuitous violence and ummm, a "de-penis-tration"... I only wish I had come up with that word. It's a brilliant word. And a horrible thing to see. Teeth shouldn't be used. And, of course, the entire movie is really freakin' anti-war. I am very happy that I saw the full version rather than the bastardized one from the DVD released here. What's up with that? You're supposed to have a longer cut on the DVD not a shorter one. What the hell?

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic would have been better had it been longer and had new jokes I really hadn't heard before. It's a problem that she doesn't seem to have new material. Shock only works for humor the first time. Over and over again just ruins any humor that existed in the first place. The new stuff was sort of funny, but there was too little. 70 minutes of film was short. Longer longer longer. And funnier. Which hurts, because I really like Sarah's humor. Too bad the music wasn't all that good, and there were some completely unfunny things in it, because she's talented. What the hell was she thinking? If only we could have just had a straight comedy show, it would have been enough. If only there had been new material, dayenu.

Tess & Debbie Does Dallas Uncovered

Tess is another of Polanski's films that are very much influenced by Sharon Tate, although in this case it's a direct influence rather than a sense of violence. No that there isn't in the movie, but that's from the book, at least what I remember from reading it in high school. I didn't particularly care for it then, and I'm not sure I particularly wanted to see an almost three hour long version of it now. That said, it's a gorgeous film, and Nastassja Kinski's very good in it. I'm not sure how closely this all follows the book, as really, I've forgotten almost everything except for the basic plot.

Debbie Does Dallas Uncovered goes behind the scenes of one of the most notorious porn movies. But one thing I wanted to know is will Debbie ever actually get to Dallas. Apparently, she never did, since she disappeared before they could do that movie. It's very different from a normal documentary, but fairly similar to Inside Deep Throat, although it's a little less involved with the history of porn and the effect of the movie on the industry, as opposed to the effect of the movie on the actors in it. It's really not that impressive of a film. I love the FBI agent in the film, especially his list of of things he hates, because I'm basically there with him, as he's anti-scat, bestiality, vomit, and child porn. All of which are disgusting. I guess violent porn should also be added. It's interesting, but not a really good film. And it's more of a mystery of trying to find Bambi Woods rather than looking at the movie. It gets a little better and more interesting, but never too fascinating. Although it's crazy that one of the stars of the film actually was in Cannibal Holocaust, the most notorious of the Italian cannibal movies. That's just insane. I didn't know that at all. Pretty damn cool. He was also in Eaten Alive and Concorde: Airport '79 and No Way Out and Spider-Man. Wow.

One year anniversary & iTunes meme revisited

Since it's the one year anniversary of this version of my blog, I felt I'd go back and redo the iTunes meme from last June, although I'm adding in some new words this time and a new sort. And note that I'm now at 3035 movies, meaning that in the last year I saw 400 movies. Yeah, that's right. I watch lots of movies. And yesterday was again the gay pride parade and I was annoyed by craptacular music played way too loud when I was busy not listening to craptacular music. And Comcast still hasn't really been on time yet. It's always been either almost late, late, or not at all. Saved me some money though.

How many total songs?
14846, that's 37 days, 12 hours, 41 minutes and 17 seconds. Or 55.11 GB. That's 4368 more songs than last year. Although if you go by when I added songs to my iTunes now, there are only 10226 or 4620 fewer songs. Since I deleted songs and replaced mp3s with rips from CDs purchased since then, that explains a lot of the difference.

Sort by Song Title - first and last?
'Round Springfield from the Simpsons' Songs in the Key of Springfield
Zürich Is Stained from Pavement's Slanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Deluxe
Interestingly, it's exactly the same.

Sort by Artist - first and last?
!!!
Zoot Sims
Last year was 13th Floor Elevators and Zoot Sims. I have a feeling I had a !!! song last year, but I probably deleted it.

Sort by Time - first and last?
Bonus Track from Ani DiFranco's Not a Pretty Girl
Symphony no. 9 from the BBC Philharmonic's Beethoven's Symphonies
Last year was Symphony no. 3, because they hadn't released Symphony no. 9 yet.

Sort by Album - first and last?
! from Dismemberment Plan
Zooropa from U2
Last year was Zen Arcade from Hüsker Dü.

Top Five Played Songs:
Some Small History from Portastatic on Old Enough To Know Better
Kicks in the Schoolyard from the Rosebuds' The Rosebuds Make Out
Art Class (Song for Yayoi Kusama) from Superchunk's Here's to Shutting Up
I Summon You from Spoon's Gimme Fiction
Galang from M.I.A.'s Arular
That's pretty different from last year, although it did have Spoon (I Turn My Camera On, which is still near the top), and Art Class. Since I don't play songs all that often, it sort of screws with my ability to figure out which are the most popular songs, so I had to sort of combine tracks and use my Last.fm account to figure it out.

Ten Last Played
Do You Still Hate Me? from Jawbreaker's 24 Hour Revenge Therapy
I Will Follow from U2's Under a Blood Red Sky
Game of Pricks from Guided by Voices's Alien Lanes
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da from the Beatles's Anthology 3
Candy from the Magnetic Fields's Distant Plastic Trees
This Is Just a Modern Rock Song from Belle & Sebastian's Push Barman To Open Old Wounds
Blinded by the Light from Bruce Springsteen's Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.
I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone from Sleater-Kinney's Call the Doctor
Just like Heaven from Dinosaur Jr.'s You're Living All over Me
Dollars & Cents from Radiohead's Amnesiac
None the same as last year, although that would have been pretty strange.

Find "sex," how many songs show up? 69 (by track is 36, and Song against Sex and You Sexy Thing tie with 5)
Find "death," how many songs show up? 98 (by track is 36 as well, and no song has more than 2, meaning I deleted one copy of Death & Destruction from last year)
Find "love," how many songs show up? 752 (by track is 481, with 12 Love Will Tear Us Apart's winning, well ahead of the 8 (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding?'s, meaning that it doubled it's lead from last year)
Find "peace," how many songs show up? 21, with the same amount by track, WSFBPL&U? winning this one (16 last year and WSFBPL&U? having 5)
Find "rain," how many songs show up? 253, with 128 by track, having Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head winning with 5, although these numbers include things like train and brain (last year was 92 by track and 181 by all, which means that It Takes a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry ties with RKFOMH with four)
Find "sun," how many songs show up? 211. with 139 by track, and Island in the Sun winning with 5 (last year was 119 and 92 by track, with IITS still having 5)
Find "you," how many songs show up? 1690, with 1165 by track and I Wanna Be Your Dog, Here Comes Your Man, I Summon You, and Anything You Want with 6 (last year was 1123 and 798 with IWBYD and HCYM having 6)
Find "home," how many songs show up? 88, with 65 by track and Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) with 4 (last year was 65 and 46 by track with When Will You Come Home having 3)
Find "boy," how many songs show up? 433, with 141 by track and Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone? with 8 (last year was 354, and 86 by track with This Boy and I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend having 3)
Find "girl," how many songs show up? 300, with 185 by track and I Wanna Know Girls with 5 (last year was 220, and 120 by track and Girl with 4, but all different songs, so it should be Another Girl, Another Planet with 3)
Find "hate," how many songs show up? 68, with 35 by track and no track having more than 2 (last year was 43, and 27 by track)
Find "wish," how many songs show up? 48, with 31 by track and I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine and Blown a Wish for 3 (last year was 30 and only 13 by track, so none had more than one)

Deathtrap

Deathtrap is a very good twisty mystery. Although you just know that some of the twists are coming. But you won't get all of the twists, because that's insane. Too bad the DVD was full screen, which really annoyed me. Why do people ever want to fullscreen a movie? It sucks so hard. As for the movie, Caine and Reeve are very good. Dyan Cannon on the other hand was horrendously bad. So bad that you're happy she dies. So horrendously annoying. And that sort of twist isn't still in the first of two acts. There are so many other twists, both reasonable and unreasonable, that it does devolve into self-parody. But it is all intentional. That it's intentional is clear just from the fact that the people plotting it are mystery playwrights. It felt very play-ish, as the attempts to expand it from a play to a movie failed pretty much. It feels like a five-person play, and the other characters and scenes just felt tacked on.

A Prairie Home Companion & the finale of The City of Lost Souls

A Prairie Home Companion is great Altman. It's not a brilliant film, there's not too many cool film things in it. But it's full of hilarious lines. Almost everything Guy Noir (Kevin Kline) says is hilarious, mainly because he's such a horrible cliche. And Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly are also hilarious as well, especially their song titles and the Bad Joke song may have some of the best worst jokes ever. And, of course, what would the movie be without Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin? They're the most Altman-esque aspect of it, with them doing the overlapping dialogue telling crazy stories about their youth in the industry. But the best surprise in the film was just how good Maya Rudolph is. Vastly better than anything she's done on SNL. The movie is just fun. Pretty good music, as well, especially knowing that everyone in it is singing and playing their own instruments adds to the impressiveness.

I also finished off a different DVD of The City of Lost Souls. I think it should have ended when the last DVD stopped working. Maybe it was trying to tell me something. I didn't care for the epilogue. End with the blood in the alley.

Primary Colors & The City of Lost Souls

Primary Colors is a very cynical film. Beh. And I guess it's sort of a very sensationalized version of Clinton, or something. Too bad it goes so far over the top by the end that I just thought, "This is crap, and Joe Klein can suck it. Hard. In the private office of the President." Too bad that George Bush doesn't have the conscience to deal with his coke use and gay past, unlike Picker. I guess the movie was well made, but it was such junk that I didn't really care. And it's also too bad that Allison Janney didn't get a bigger role, but at least she did get the role as C.J. because of this.

The City of Lost Souls has a CGI kung-fu cockfight. That spoofs The Matrix. Plus it has the gorgeous Michelle Reis. Is there any reason not to like this movie? Maybe its incredible focus on defecation. Except there's Michelle Reis turning vodka and a lighter into a flamethrower. Which is hot. In both senses. But at least it's a pro-immigration and getting along with those who are different movie. Maybe Tom Tancredo should watch it. Although he'd probably give up after the shot of the main actor's ass very early on, since it's a very nice ass. He'd probably think he was going gay. And the violence. He'd be all turned on by the violence since it's all brown on yellow and yellow on yellow violence. And we know he's all about there being fewer whites to pollute his precious bodily fluids. Well, I shouldn't just limit this to him, it's also Inhofe and a lot of other crazy friggin' Republicans and (to a much lesser extent) Democrats. Anyway, it's fairly typical Miike, well, that's not entirely true, it's a fairly typical restrained Miike. There's craziness, like there always is, but it's not so overwhelming like a lot of his films are. And it's all about Brazilians in Japan, some of whom wear Brazilian jerseys, so it's a very appropriate movie to start the World Cup season with. Inadvertently. Had I wanted a soccer movie, I'd have gone with Victory, which sucks because they cripple Pele. Or Shaolin Soccer, which I have already seen as well. Or Trainspotting, but that's getting a little obscure on the soccer references, even if they play soccer and a porn tape in a soccer video case is a plot point. At least I didn't mention Bend It like Beckham or Kicking & Screaming. Eesh. I think I'll stop doing this now. Oh, wait, one more: Just for Kicks, the worst movie according to the IMDB with soccer in it. It has Tom Arnold and Cole & Dylan Sprouse (the male version of the Olsen twins (I'm not sure there are any Sprouse countdown clocks though)), is written and directed by someone named Sydney J. Bartholomew Jr. who hasn't worked since, but was a production designer on a bunch of Farrelly brothers movies, and the "visual consultant" on the visually stunning There's Something about Mary. Anyway, I keep getting away from discussing the movie. There's ping pong, though. And the ultimate in final statements. Or at least I think it was... the DVD I got was so scratched it wouldn't play on one of my DVD players, and stopped on my backup with about five minutes to go. And then it just wouldn't play. So I think I got it all.

Drop Dead Gorgeous & Millions

Drop Dead Gorgeous is intermittently very funny, but also it's very easy satire. Especially if you think that mocking small town midwestern people is easy satire. However, those very funny bits make the movie worth watching. Plus, it has a great cast (Kirsten Dunst, Ellen Barkin, Allison Janney, Brittany Murphy, Michael McShane, and, of course, Adam West). It's also cool that the director was Michael Patrick Jann, of The State, which needs more recognition for its brilliance. So basically, it's a fun little 100 minutes, with an interesting soundtrack.

Millions is an outstanding family film. But it has something for people who got completely confused by the saints, in that the soundtrack is typically good Danny Boyle. Any family film that uses Hitsville U.K. is good with me. It's just very well done, especially the neat camera tricks. The moral values taught in it are also a lot less in your face than an American film would be. Even if it's a very similar plot to that John Cusack movie, Money for Nothing. Except that was based on a true story, instead of just using some real events to add some reality. I did especially like the touch of how the robbers got away from the police. Brilliant.

Fellini's Roma

Fellini's Roma is only a half-assed movie so it only gets a half-assed review. If you want to see what Rome was like in the early 1970s, I'd recommend watching a different movie. Or at least fast-forwarding through large swathes of this bloated mess. Because there's nothing else to call it. That also seems to fit well with Fellini's idea of what prostitutes look like. I never need to see anyone who looks like that naked again. Thanks Fellini for ruining my dreams for days. Well, not really, since I actually watched this late last week, and just forgot about it in its total boringness, and I haven't had any dreams about BBWs since then. Not that I ever have them, just saying Fellini didn't make them start.

Boiling Point, Yi yi, Bush's Brain, & The Hospital

Boiling Point is Takeshi Kitano's second film, and it's my least favorite of his. In fact, you could say that I was supremely disappointed in it. If you don't want a spoiler for the film, just go on to the next paragraph. Why, exactly, did he decide to make the movie into one big dream sequence? What the hell? There were some nice scenes in it, but I hate movies that end up being completely in the head of one of the characters. Boo to him. If this were the first of his movies I'd think he was a terribly hacky director. Good thing I've seen almost all of his other films.

Yi Yi is long. Long long long. Three hours of Taiwanese family drama. Bits and pieces kept reminding me of things from other movies, especially other Asian films, but this had everthing in it. It was very well made, well acted, and interesting, just left me somewhat cold.

Bush's Brain is another film that had little to no new material for me. I think mainly because, while I haven't read the book, I have been reading liberal blogs for years now. It's good to have an hour and a half of how bad Karl Rove is, but eh now. I guess it would have been good to get this thing out to more people before the 2004 election. Oh, yeah, it was released in a bunch of blue states and Texas. Well, that seems like a very useless release. Why no red states? Probably because the movie never would have played there. Oh well.

The Hospital is one of those movies that probably would have been more effective if it hadn't been made in the 1970s. Well, it's quite possible that Paddy Chayefsky is a one hit wonder. I haven't seen Marty or The Americanization of Emily, so maybe he has done other good movies besides Network. Too bad this movie is a complete mess of a 70s film. Yeah, it may have been a good decade for films, but it also has more than its share of complete freakin' messes. The comedy doesn't work, the satire only intermittently works, and it's all way too heavyhanded. Good thing he eventually did get work again, since Network is outstanding.

Memento Mori, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, & Elevator to the Gallows

Memento Mori is actually not a horror story. Unless you think sympathetic portrayals of Korean schoolgirl lesbians is horrific. Which basically means I'm clearly out of that group. It's a sort of sequel to Whispering Corridors, but only in the sense that they're both about Korean schoolgirls and are sort of ghost stories. Whereas Whispering Corridors was more about the actual horror film aspects of it, Memento Mori was almost entirely about the relationship. Which was, of course, a complete shock to the backwardsness of Korean society. Because apparently, they measure heights, weights, and breast size in class and announce numbers in front of everyone. And 71 cm? That's frickin' tiny, even for a 17 year old Asian girl. It just seems like the uber-repressive society is just backwards when it comes to how to not have a lot of teenage girl suicides. And, again, there's a bit of teacher-on-student violence. Is this acceptable? And if so, what the hell, South Korea? Seriously, that's just really messed up. Maybe you should be a little less repressed and then you'll have more sex. Even if [redacted] is what caused the major problems in the story in the first place. Anyway, it's very good, very good at building suspense, only occasionally confusing near the beginning (it's those damn uniforms, I really can't tell them apart when they all dress the same), very much about the characters, and only the ending, which makes the ghost story aspect explicit, has anything I didn't entirely care for. Apparently there's a six-disc set of the movie, with an edit of the film that's about twice as long as the one released here. I can't imagine. Well, actually, I can, because the movie originally was much more explicit in the treatment of the physicalness of the lesbian relationship (note that it's a Korean movie, so it's not really explicit nudity, if any at all). So you'd have more kissing and touching and probably even more dealing with the societal backlash against their holding hands and kissing in public. Or maybe just more of them on the roof. Either way, I think it works very very well as it is.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie has an outstanding performance from Maggie Smith in the lead, and a good performance from Pamela Franklin as one of her students. I was bothered by the apparent love of fascism, but then again, I think it was supposed to be bothersome. Definitely a movie worth watching.

Elevator to the Gallows is both Louis Malle's first film, and it has a score by Miles Davis. One of those is just of some interest, and the other is absolutely imperative. Miles Davis was just reaching the height of his talent, and while it wasn't his best backing band, it wasn't too shabby. As an early French New Wave film, it's a very strong little thriller, and while it's not quite as visually stylish as some of the later movies, the score and performances are very much worth it.

Finding Neverland & F for Fake

Finding Neverland was much better than I was expecting. Very emotional movie, and my biggest complaint about it is the fact that it's not really true. It's more effective in the fictionalized version of the events than in the true story, so it's not a big problem. Depp is, of course, amazing. What the hell was he doing for all those years of not acting well? Oh, that's right, he was just picking some bad movies. It's also nice to see Kelly Macdonald in a role, and Ian Hart. This was a much better film than Monster's ball, so at least that movie did one good thing.

F for Fake is outstanding. There is nothing at all wrong with it. It's a masterpiece of editing, fakery, storytelling, and just overall awesomeness. It's a shame that F for Fake isn't up there with Touch of Evil and Citizen Kane as Orson Welles's best films. Or maybe it is, and I'm just not up on the general consensus of film critics on Welles's films. It's just a magnificent little film, well worth watching. Just don't trust anything. Which Welles himself says early and often in the film. The use of his own history in the film, and his referring to filmmaking as the ultimate fakery just adds another level, along with his illumination that Citizen Kane was originally about Howard Hughes rather than William Randolph Hearst. Well, possibly, because why should we believe anything that Welles says in this film. I'm not really familiar with the Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving stories, beyond the very basic parts. I watched it on TCM, on a special night picked by Penn & Teller, meaning that they had both an intro and exit by them. Pretty interesting, and it really does fit in perfectly with their show. Their show is like little half-hour bits of them both exposing as fakes and completely misrepresenting everything in it, just like the 85 minutes of F for Fake. And I just love that it's an ostensibly true story, and a documentary, but so much of it is from such a biased vantage point, that it actually feels just like a normal political documentary of today. If Michael Moore hadn't seen this film, I'd be amazed.

Munich, Soldier's Girl, The Horseman on the Roof, & The Assassination of Richard Nixon

Munich is now the best movie of last year I've seen. At least, until I think of something else. Syriana, A History of Violence, The Constant Gardener, Pride & Prejudice, Match Point, The Squid and the Whale, The New World, and probably a few others also would have been good movies to be nominated for Oscars over Crash (which still sucks), Capote, and Good Night, & Good Luck, none of which were particularly amazing movies. I still haven't seen Brokeback Mountain, but I'm pretty damn sure I'm not going to enjoy it as much as my list of great films of last year. Munich was a little long for my tastes, but it's a damn good movie anyway, and it's got an amazing central performance from Eric Bana. I'm not sure that Spielberg made quite the movie with no real moral judgments on terrorism and the responses to them that he says he did. The final shot sort of belies that doesn't it? Anyway, it's Spielberg's best film in years.

Soldier's Girl is really good. Too bad the DVD I got had no menu, frequently popped up a "Property of Showtime" message and just sucked. What the hell? Apparently, this has happened to a few others, who've purchased the DVD. What the hell Showtime? You make this good movie about a transsexual and the soldier who loved him/her and how the military is seriously messed up with respect to sexuality. Andre Braugher, Shawn Hatosy, and Troy Garity are all good, but Lee Pace is amazing. If I didn't know that Lee Pace was a guy (from the very excellent Wonderfalls, no less), I would have been shocked to find that out. Not an amazingly attractive woman, but still pretty good.

The Horseman on the Roof was weak. There are times when I just randomly added movies to my queue based on good reviews from the NY Times. This was clearly one of them. Sure, a story about cholera and revolutionaries in post-Napoleonic Europe sounds like a fascinating story, and Juliette Binoche and Olivier Martinez are both attractive, but there was just no there there in the movie.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon just sounded like too interesting of a movie to skip out on. Based on a true story of a guy who wanted to hijack a plane to fly it into the White House and kill Nixon? Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Don Cheadle? Where did it go wrong? Probably because I don't really care to see a man broken down throughout the entire film.

The Naked Kiss & Whispering Corridors

The Naked Kiss is a great Samuel Fuller trashy movie. That ends up being something much more than the sum of its parts, mainly because Fuller is so capable of turning the myriad clichés in the film on their head. A prostitute beats the crap out of her pimp with a shoe (very effectively filmed) and then two years later tries to go straight after sleeping with a cop and then plans on marrying a pillar of the community? Seems sort of cliché, but then the little twists, the little strange bits start coming up and you realize that it's a great feminist movie. And that murder can be justified if the murderee is evil enough. And there's Charlie, something that struck me as bizarre from the opening credits where he was credited as himself. That's usually a dog or a horse or some other type of animal. Not in Fuller's movie though.

Whispering Corridors has a lot of Korean schoolgirls in uniforms. If that does it for you, you will love this movie. And if you like Korean schoolgirls in uniforms and creepy horror films that are actually somewhat scary, then you will love this. And since it's me, I enjoyed it. A little difficult to tell the many many different schoolgirls apart, except for a couple of them. And it certainly wasn't a great film, or anything, but it was much better than a lot of the more highly regarded Asian horror films I've seen, since it doesn't just repeat what's been done before. Well, at least not as much as most of the other ones I've seen. The DVD was a little on the weak side, with pretty weak video and little to no extra content, as I'd be sort of interested to know if it's common for male teachers to be so sexually suggestive with their young female students or even have them beat the crap out of them. Anyway, it's fun that I went on a journey into my feminine side last night.

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.