So I'm putting this on hiatus for a few days.
Watching a movie each day has become somewhat burdensome, plus I feel I don't gain as much from movies if I'm watching so many in a short span of time. I'm considering tuning it down to 2-4 per week to make it easier.
-Ben
Full title: Dr. Strangelove (Or: How I learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb)
I really enjoyed this film. Not because it was exciting (it wasn't especially) but because it had a very interesting message.
Essentially, Dr. Strangelove explores the likelihood of an imminent nuclear holocaust. In the film, such an event takes place within a matter of about three hours. Scary stuff. Strangelove demonstrates man's rash nature and even man's immaturity in areas of foreign relations. This issue is brilliantly highlighted by absurdist humor.
This is one of Stanley Kubrick's earlier films (1964), yet it does not fail to impress.
Had a hankering for some Kevin Costner today. Yes, such a thing exists.
So this is a pretty fun movie. Full of wonderful paranormal goodies and such. That's really about all there is to it. Costner is as cool as ever. Yeah.
I would write more tonight. But I'm not.
I know I've been watching more "cheap entertainment" type films lately. But you watch an art movie every day. You'd rake out your eyeballs. Not that they're not enjoyable (they are), but as with any "art," you can only handle so much at once. Like fine wine, or something.
No, I haven't read the book.
Yes, I wanted to watch a documentary-ish movie anyway.
Sue me.
That being said, I don't think I'll be watching too many more movies that aren't intended for art/entertainment (at least not for this blog) as they don't leave me with much to talk about.
I can say things like "this is a very interesting movie" and "they make some very valid points." However, the book is probably even more interesting, but this isn't a book blog. And I'm entirely unqualified to judge whether any of these points are valid. So the only things I can say with assurance are along the lines of "I like this" and "that seems reasonable." Hardly earth-shattering.
Yet, this isn't really a documentary, so I see no reason why I wouldn't watch those. After all, movies "based on a true story" are just documentaries with actors right? (Sarcasm.)
Holy Bale, Batman (see what I did there)!
Yay for my first in-theater movie of this streak.
This post is terribly late (I watched the movie last night); I've been way too tired to write this.
The Fighter has a very authentic feel. While Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) is the protagonist of the film, his character is pretty static. His older brother, Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale) is a much more colorful character, and Bale truly steals the show with an incredible performance. Bale's character is nothing like that of his recent movies. He is excitable, thin (Bale lost something like 30 pounds for the role), and incredibly authentic. That's not to say Wahlberg wasn't good, he just didn't have as much to work with.
This movie breaks many of the stereotypes of athletic movies. Not. But I won't complain, because it fits those stereotypes in a non-irritating way. Yes, there are the trademark obstacles and the epic, edge-of-your-seat, final match, but they are presented amidst a slew of subplot-related drama, which serves as a sort of buffer.
This is incredibly un-Clint-Eastwood, despite his directing it. On the other hand, this is an incredible film.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil features John Kelso (John Cusack), a writer for Wine & Country Magazine from New York who has come to Savannah, Georgia to cover one of the wealthy Jim Williams' (Kevin Spacey) famous Christmas parties. But, when tragedy strikes, Kelso's purpose in Savannah changes.
This is an incredible performance both by Cusack, who plays the role of the skeptical journalist very well, and Spacey, who incredibly accurately captures the warm regality of the southern upper-class. His Georgia accent is nice too.
The film is an intriguing blend of criminal trial and cultural exploration, and it definitely demonstrates Eastwood's depth.
The thing about preachy movies is they're only annoying when they do not have a legitimate message. This one does. A really legitimate one.
Essentially, Pay It Forward speaks to how good deeds on a small scale can really add up, yet it does not overlook how significant they can be on that small scale as well. In doing so, the movie does a very effective job of doing its preaching (the good kind).
Unfortunately, as nearly all of the thematic content in the film is plot-based, I can't go into much detail about it. I refrain from spoiling movies because I think any movie can be sufficiently discussed without giving away the plot, and because I have this little fantasy that at some point I'll inspire someone to watch one of these (lame on my part, I know).
If you've been reading these in the past week or so, you'll know what I think of him, but it just needs to be said that Kevin Spacey is an incredible actor. I'm trying to watch more of his movies to get a better feel for his acting range, but he really does a great job in every film I've seen him in. I look forward to more.
Well this is a grim one. It's also pretty trippy/creepy, so forgive me for not writing a whole lot. I'm in a strange space at the moment.
Shutter Island is quite an interesting mystery flick. Sort of like an Agatha Christie novel, but less happy. A lot less.
I don't really know what else to say about this one. It was very well produced, but I guess I was expecting it to be more of a thriller than it is.
However, if this film does one thing well, its immersing the viewer in the chaos of the plot. As the story unravels and insanity emerges, the viewer is right there, swimming in every detail of artificial worlds and false realities.
I'd really hate to be crazy.
There really is nothing like a good Clint Eastwood war flick. I'm just about ready to go on a commie hunt after this one.
In Heartbreak Ridge, Eastwood plays Thomas Highway, an aging, tough-as-nails (no surprise there) Marine Gunnery Sergeant in the '80s unwilling (or perhaps unable) to let go of the Marines he knows and loves, whipping a platoon into shape along the way.
Just imagine the stock Eastwood character's (Dirty Harry, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, etc.) reaction to hot pants and the Moonwalk. That's pretty much what this movie is.
This isn't a traditional war movie in the sense that for most of its duration, the film focuses on Highway's training of his platoon. Think Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket with less combat and without the... gloom.
So I was adding all of the Kevin Spacey movies on Netflix instant watch to my queue the other day, and today I wound up watching this one. He doesn't star in it, but Dustin Hoffman does. So I'm not complaining.
Outbreak is a thrilling film about (you guessed it) an outbreak of a new highly lethal and contagious virus. It's scary.
The plot is fairly simple so I won't go into that too much. The best acting in the film is probably Morgan Freeman's, as unfortunately Dustin Hoffman's and Kevin Spacey's characters were too static to do much with.
With that said (and that's mostly all there is to say, as Outbreak is fairly simple), I'd like to go off on a little tangent. It has to do with the fact that this movie has a 59% on Rotten Tomatoes and how little I care about that.
My view is that movies (the ones we see, at least) are inherently good, for one reason or another. The folks who spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours to create movies wouldn't do so if they didn't think they had something good on their hands. As such, the bad ones tend to get sifted out and aren't made. But this poses a problem to the consumer. If every movie is good, how do we know which to see? I doubt there is anyone who sees every movie that hits box offices, and many see very few at all. Thus, people need a mechanism by which to make decisions about which movie they should spend their twelve dollars on. Therein lies our demand for critics.
Film criticism is very easily accessible (handy sites have even developed ranking systems created from scores of critic reviews) and so, for simplicity's sake, people have come to rely on them. Yet, with so many critics out there, the consumers who'd like to read actual reviews have come to prefer critics who provide a greater spark to their reviews. After all, everything (even reviews of entertainment) is entertainment. This has given credence to more critical critics and, as such, this has become the norm. Because of this, every movie that isn't the Mona Lisa on film is regarded as sub-par. For the sake of not beginning to rant, I'll end my tangent right about here.
I can't help but feel that we're moving in the wrong direction here. I have no means of uprooting societal tendencies like these, but what I can do is present a view of the films Hollywood spits out as they are: inherently good.
Watched another one with my main man Kevin tonight.
'Twas a good decision.
In Shrink, Kevin Spacey plays Henry Carter, a Hollywood therapist to the stars who turns to smoking pot after the tragic death of his wife. While the first half (or so) of this movie is mildly depressing, it ends with quite a bang and is actually pretty moving and heartfelt.
Shrink flows like one of those many cheesy romantic comedies that incessantly ooze from movie theaters. They present several parallel stories of different characters who, through fate, wind up interacting and solving all of each others' problems. Because of this, I was prepared for something similar. Yet, while Shrink does follow a similar plot construction, the mood of the film goes another way entirely. It is a much more grounded movie in that it doesn't merely glorify everyday relationships (not necessarily the romantic kind), but rather presents them as being as necessary as the air we breathe for a healthy life. Shrink teaches that nothing is ever as grim as it seems, and Kevin Spacey does a fantastic job of shedding light upon the dark spots of life.
...and on the seventh day, he made Kevin Spacey.
As Kevin Spacey is my favorite actor and I love him, I will proceed to watch more of his movies. Moon counts.
This one is like a cool inverted version of Die Hard. But I love hostage movies like this because of the way they make you think; one false move and it's game over for mr. hostage taker.
What's neat about The Negotiator is it's pretty much the opposite of any traditional hostage movie. The usual format is as follows: Heroic-type protagonist established, sinister hostage-taker established, hostage takeover, clever and risky police victory.
The Negotiator, on the other hand, is a story of a police negotiator who is framed for a crime his comrades committed and starts a hostage takeover of a federal building to learn what has happened to him.
Pretty crazy. Samuel L. Jackson is great in this (as he is in everything), but I'm quite partial to my Kevin.
It's late and I'm super tired, so I'll keep this one short.
Quite a compelling story here. I'll admit that I haven't read the book, but I feel that this very accurately captures the trials and tribulations of settlers moving west after the Dust Bowl. Yet, despite the many mitigations of the Joad family's success, they manage to make it through. As such, the story does a wonderful job of highlighting the importance of human perseverance.
That's all for now, night folks.
Encountered technical difficulties again last night, so I wasn't able to post this then. But I'll be back on track today. Promise.
First off, thank god for Korean cinema.
This one is awesome. Completely nuts, but awesome. Gets back to that whole Korean thing I guess...
Oldboy is the twisted tale of Oh Dae-Su (Choi Min-sik), a devil-may-care womanizer with alcoholic tendencies who winds up in prison after ticking off one too many powerful people. The following 90 or so minutes of the film proceed to spiral out of the realm of sanity, and into one of bloody, gruesome revenge.
Oh, and the scene where he eats a live octopus ain't too shabby either.
Oldboy is a wonderful movie with an artfully presented, multi-layered plot. There are intense combat sequences -- one takes place in a narrow hallway and is spectacularly filmed from the side, presenting a horizontal view of carnage -- and elaborate plot twists alike.
The film is a true jack-of-all-trades, comedic at times and horrifying at others. While I unfortunately wasn't able to watch Oldboy in the original Korean with subtitles (Netflix only has a dubbed version), it was still an incredible experience.
So I watched this last night, but was unable to post due to my computer dying a horrible death. Don't worry though, I didn't break the streak.
This one is quite like The Island, but without the ending and more emphasis on life before the realization of cloning. It's slightly more sci-fi (ten bucks if you guess where it takes place) and Kevin Spacey voices a robot, which of course makes it exponentially better.
While Moon is quite plot-driven, it is far more artistic than is The Island. The use of an extremely small cast emphasizes Sam Bell's (Sam Rockwell) character and his relationship with his environment, his fate, and himself.
The film does a masterful job of illustrating that, even in the worst of circumstances, amidst deceit, or far from home, hope for the future is never unreasonable.
I'm really glad I chose this one.
Hard Eight is Paul Thomas Anderson's first full-length film directing, only a year before Boogie Nights. PTA was a ripe, young 26 at the time. While very good in my opinion, especially for PTA's first feature-length film, it is not perfect. However, easily observable are some of his "watermarks" (if you will).
One such watermark is his use of long, uncut, "shaky-camera" shots following the character (see the explosion scene in There Will Be Blood, it will blow your mind).
Another is less specific: use of sharp dialogue over punchy, plot-quickening dialogue. PTA personalizes his characters to a degree that, even through idle conversation, they tell their own stories. A great example of this can be found in Hard Eight's first scene, in which Sydney (Philip Baker Hall) and John (John C. Reilly) talk about Vegas over cigarettes and coffee. I think that this sacrifice of rapid plot development for advanced characterization is admirable, especially in an age laden with Riddley-Scott-style editing and pacing.
Thankfully, not everyone chooses to butcher 600-year-old tales of men garbed in lincoln green despoiling the cruel and aiding the oppressed. Yes, I'm still mad.
This is the fourth (of five) of PTA's films I've seen -- Magnolia is last, and I'll be watching it soon -- but having seen his most recent films, There Will Be Blood and Punch-Drunk Love, I can say that Hard Eight is a crucial milestone in Anderson's career.
This really is an incredible story.
The Elephant Man is an extremely humanizing film (and a mostly true one to boot) about Joseph Merrick, a British man of the 19th century with possibly the most disfiguring deformity the world had ever seen.
An unsuspecting viewer would never suspect that the film was directed by David Lynch (director of Eraserhead and other strange flicks), as it lacks his trademark quirkiness.
The movie portrays society's cruelty towards Merrick through how he is treated by the people he encounters, such as freak show attendees, children, and members of the high society. As is to be expected, society is for the most part colored as cruel. Yet, the film does not focus on this, but rather the minority of genuinely kind people. In doing so, it conveys very strongly the idea that humanity may often be found in unexpected places, and it is for this reason that The Elephant Man is such a powerful movie.
I don't mean to get preachy, but this one has forced me to entirely reevaluate the way I consider people.
Dear Lord.
And I thought Blue Velvet was weird.
Not quite sure what to say about this one...
All strangeness aside, this is a very well composed movie, which is interesting considering it was David Lynch's first feature-length film directing.
But yeah, pretty strange, but in an intriguing, transfixing way.
This film is more one of those movies that you can't really understand through an explanation, only through watching. So I can't really say much more.
In heaven, everything is fine.
Hot damn this one's intense.
The Killing is one of Stanley Kubrick's earliest works (1956) and it is perhaps the most interesting heist movie I've ever seen.
Then again, I have yet to see Reservoir Dogs.
Don't worry, it's on the list.
But back to The Killing.
The nonlinearity of the plot adds greatly to the intensity and keeps the excitement of the movie up throughout. Yet, this is done modestly, unlike many modern movies that attempt to do so.
Essentially, this film examines a scenario in which every element of a heist goes flawlessly (too flawlessly...) until a miniscule threat ruins everything in a drastic chain reaction.
All in all, this is one of my favorites I've seen thus far on the streak.
Oh, and I should add that this is incredibly paranoia-inducing. Yeah.
It's late and I'm tired, so I'll keep this one short and sweet.
Hotel Rwanda is effectually a modern-day (assuming 15 years old is modern) Schindler's List. Two ethnic groups, one trying to exterminate the other for no good reason at all. Sounds familiar.
However, I am sensitive to the fact that this is a true story and it is very well performed. Don Cheadle's portrayal of a simple, good-hearted hotel manager is impeccable, and the movie is very artfully presented as a whole. And who doesn't love Nick Nolte?
While some might consider the subject dismal, Hotel Rwanda is a vivid portrayal of an oh-too-recent terror.
Just because I hadn't started this blog at the time, I figure it won't hurt to post the wee list of movies from days 1-5. Here 'tis:
Day 1 - Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Day 2 - Mother
Day 3 - The Dancer Upstairs
Day 4 - Moby Dick
Day 5 - Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Word.
Boy do I love me my classics.
This is a great one about the fight against the Borg, one man against the (dare I say it?) anonymity of the masses.
In this mob/people's hero hybrid, Brando plays a spectacular character, conflicted between the life he knows and the life he knows is right. Yet, even the meek can only take so much injustice.
On The Waterfront was made in 1954 and, despite my tendency to think of color as having been popularized in the late '30s and early '40s (The Wizard of Oz was released in 1939 in beautiful technicolor), it really didn't catch on until the 1960s. Even so, the black and white film of Waterfront really highlights the grittiness of the film, and it would be very relevant even if the film were released today. Some things are just meant to be gray.
Nonetheless, this is truly a wonderful story. It must have been great making movies back in the day, when all of the good ideas hadn’t already been done…
Well, damn.
It only takes a good Hitchcock movie to make you feel like a complete moron.
I don't like giving away parts of the plot, so I'll just say that this one's a REAL corkscrew. Definitely a thinker as well.
I haven't really seen too many movies of... whatever genre this falls into (I wouldn't really call it a murder mystery) so I don't really have much to compare it to. Yet, it seems that my long-held stereotype that they're all a lot of suspense and buildup with one big twist at the end is pretty wrong.
This is definitely a far cry from The Birds and other movies of his that I've seen, and I look forward to seeing more of them. That he directed 67 movies is pretty intimidating though.
In honor of watching Episode VI on Day 6, I'll begin writing more.
It makes sense.
I promise.
So, I hadn't seen this one in over a decade. I've seen IV and V (Day 1) much more recently. I had forgotten how this one—and thus the series itself—ends. The core of the movie brings to mind many of the inconsistencies between the original trilogy and the new one; however, what takes place in the last 10 seconds or so shatters this image. Standing next to the ghosts of Obi Wan and... Luke's master (I don't want to spoil anything for the weirdos who haven't seen these by giving away names) is the true father himself, the spitting image of him as he appears in Episode III of 2005. Lets just say any previous continuity errors are forgiven.
Oh, and Ewoks are the greatest things ever.
