"the tree of life". It reminded me a lot of "The thin red line" - and later I found out that is because the director of both is a Mr Malick.
The cinematography is truly stunning. It is almost too beautiful. As a movie it won't be everyone's cup of tea - it is quite slow, and the story is told mostly through images with maybe the odd whispered voice-over. But good lord, the images are pretty, the music is fantastic, and you do really feel the story in a way that is rare in movies.
Peter Greenaway once said "If you want to tell a story, write a book! Don't make a movie". I think Malick did both by telling a story almost purely through images and music.
You want to live in a yurt, you say? Well, here is what it's like, for a moderately well-to-do mongol family, who farm sheep and camels. It's presented in Netflix as a documentary, but it comes across as a story of what one family does to get a mother camel to finally bond with her rejected new-born offspring. These are bactrian camels, the two-hump kind, and they don't come across as nasty as the dromedary one-hump kind.
I don't think the people were actors, per se, but they were loosely following a script of ideas, if not words.
The time this takes place in is roughly modern days, with satellite tvs, government education, high-tension power lines, and the like. Interspersed with ceremonies, communal living, traditional clothing, and gorgeously decorated yurt interiors.
A slow movie, but fascinating for a glimpse into how others live their lives.
We just rented and watched Melancholia. I was surprised that no one has posted about it here. A beautiful and amazing film. Contra and I have been talking about it for days now.
The characters of Justine and Claire were amazing. This film passes Bechdel with flying colors. Also intriguing to see an apocalyptic film with a notable character missing. God wasn't introduced at any point. I think that is central to the theme itself. The art direction and cinematography was fantastic. The twin shadows gave everything a very surreal atmosphere. It isn't a science fiction film in the traditional sense. Laws of physics are suspended, but that makes it more fable like IMO.
This was my first Lars von Trier movie, but it won't be my last. I highly recommend it. Though, watch it early in the evening if you are anything like me. Otherwise you will be up till three AM pondering it.
ETA: OH and I forgot my favorite part. The introduction to the film is amazing. Seriously, Kubrick level brilliance. It reminded me of 2001 to a degree. However, all of the imagery which is set to Tristan and Isolde returns later in the film. I compare the narrative style to one of those origami flowers you place in a bowl of water. It begins with these small facets, but once it hits the water it unfolds and reveals the context of all those tiny pieces. It was absolutely magnificent.
You want to live in a yurt, you say? Well, here is what it's like, for a moderately well-to-do mongol family, who farm sheep and camels. It's presented in Netflix as a documentary, but it comes across as a story of what one family does to get a mother camel to finally bond with her rejected new-born offspring. These are bactrian camels, the two-hump kind, and they don't come across as nasty as the dromedary one-hump kind.
I don't think the people were actors, per se, but they were loosely following a script of ideas, if not words.
The time this takes place in is roughly modern days, with satellite tvs, government education, high-tension power lines, and the like. Interspersed with ceremonies, communal living, traditional clothing, and gorgeously decorated yurt interiors.
A slow movie, but fascinating for a glimpse into how others live their lives.
I'm going to suggest that if you like that, you might also like Urga AKA Close to Eden.
Another Japanese Horror movie in the Ringu or Grudge tradition. It's a mixed bag really, because while the first half of the movie is fantastic, the second half is just weird and might as well have come from a different movie.
Still, no one brings better and more scary ghosts to the screen than the Japanese. Seriously.
It's a mixed bag really, because while the first half of the movie is fantastic, the second half is just weird and might as well have come from a different movie.
Isn't that kind of par for the course for Japanese horror/fantasy?
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Much of MADNESS, and more of SIN, and HORROR the soul of the plot.
Finally saw Sexy Beast. Not quite what I was expecting, but it was a decent film. It suffers from over-direction; there needs to be a term equivalent to ham acting for directors. Ham directors? I can't quite put it into words, but I know it when I see it. Like the director wants to show off how clever he is, and adds stylistic little tweaks to the camera work, editing, musical accents, etc. to the point where I just want to tell him to knock it off and get on with it. Anyway, Ben Kingsley's performance was every bit as great as was hyped by the critics, but again, with more minimal direction it could have shone even more. As it was, the character was built up to biblical proportions before he even appeared; his impact would've been greater if he'd just been allowed to show up without fanfare, and blow the audience away.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
It's a mixed bag really, because while the first half of the movie is fantastic, the second half is just weird and might as well have come from a different movie.
Isn't that kind of par for the course for Japanese horror/fantasy?
Yeah, but in this case it didn't quite ... fit. It felt rushed somehow.
ETA: Still, one scene particularly creeped me the hell out. I don't think I've ever seen a scarier scene in a movie, ever. Good lord.
I found myself thinking about the engineering and economical investment in the Arena, which feels implausible to me based upon the economics of the world-as-shown. If the Capitol had the resources to not only make the Arena, but totally rework it each year, then the Capitol wouldn't need it in the first place.
The whole Reaping thing doesn't seem that menacing to me as a tactic to keep a nation intimidated and pacified. It also breaks a taboo that is fundamental to most cultures: don't fuck with children. Kidnappers and pedophiles have it rough in prison, at the hands of their fellow inmates.
I thought it was a little cheap to have Katniss not have to kill an innocent person in the course of the tournament because of it being forced upon her by circumstances. Everyone she kills is an arrogant, psychotic late-teenager.
I thought it was pretty good. But I thought the world building wasn't too great. It wasn't up to the level of Harry Potter, for example. And HP's not even the gold standard of world building.
I couldn't really get a feel for how the Capital district and the other districts were arranged and how large they were, but it certainly seemed like District 12 couldn't have been more than a handful of towns (and might've been only one town) based on the selection ceremony. But the scale of the Capital and implied scale of the country and war between them, etc. suggests that it should be at least the size of Western North Carolina or something.
The single occupation nature of the districts also doesn't make much sense, although I suppose the Soviets did do some things like that (whole cities being based around manufacturing one thing).
Co-Written by Joss Whedon and has Chris Hemsworth in it, how bad could it be?
Well, not that bad actually. It had high production values and the acting was quite good. There was one major twist on the horror genre that is given away quite early in the film and a minor plot twist or two that were semi-surprising. But basically it's a gore fest, like major, major gore. If you like gore, you'll probably like this film. If you hate gore, avoid it. If you're somewhere in between (like me), then you'll probably enjoy the film still. See it somewhere cheap if you can, I wouldn't have been too pleased to pay full price for it.
It begins as you might expect a horror movie to begin. It begins just like hundreds of horror movies that came before it begins. You're introduced to all of your protagonists right there in the beginning, with all of their cheesy, exuberant and preposterously stereotypical youth. A group of friends head off to an isolated place off in the country somewhere ostensibly just to party and or have recreational sex, maybe some drinking. (That's why you'll never find bort going camping or anything. Because that's where all the bad shit happens to people.) And, of course, that's when everything goes all to Hell. The beginning is so terribly cliche you might even be tempted to up and walk out. Don't be tempted. Though it is trite and maybe even a lot boring starting up, once you see behind the curtain (and that happens early), you still haven't seen anything.
I unashamedly and unreservedly love Scream. It was great when it came out and I can still sit down and enjoy it. What Scream did for horror narratives, Cabin in the Woods takes it a level further down the rabbit hole. Scream twisted the perception on what a horror movie could do and Cabin gives it another skew into what horror movies, as a genre, are.
If you've caught a trailer or a commercial spot for Cabin, you already have a glimpse into what the movie is about. I don't feel it's spoilering if it's already been widely revealed. But if I may, I'll speculate on something. The production company for this was Mutant Enemy (grr! argh!) which is Joss Whedon's babby. He penned the script if I'm reading things correctly and it definitely shows. It's sharp and witty and clever - all the things you expect from Joss (including bit parts for three Whedon alumnii, Amy Acker, Topher and Andrew). What I haven't seen written or heard in reviews is that I think this is his answer for torture porn. Not the stuff you clear your browser cache for, I mean the movies like Saw and the one I know he was angry about, The Tourist or something. Where he differentiates between a Saw like captor who chains his victims and makes them choose their death or gives them a false hope of ever seeing the sun again, Cabin is slightly more forthcoming. There is dialog in the early stages of the film that sort of jibe with what I'm trying to get at here, but I can't enumerate on account of actual spoilers.
Final verdict? Cabin in the Woods is an almost traditional (modern) horror movie that is at once both meta in nature but not quite as tongue in cheek as Scream. Scream to me was still the better movie, but Cabin is no slouch and worth a look see.
A group of friends head off to an isolated place off in the country somewhere ostensibly just to party and or have recreational sex, maybe some drinking. (That's why you'll never find bort going camping or anything. Because that's where all the bad shit happens to people.)
I've spent lots of time camping in isolated areas. Not even once has there been any recreational sex involved. (Not on my part, anyway.) And hardly any of those camping trips have involved any gruesome murders.
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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
Finally got 'round to seeing X-Men: First Class. Not bad at all, really. I'd put it as the second best X film, after X2, and slightly above the first one. I like when my comic book movies make an effort to humanize the source material, and this one did that. I also like how they didn't try to make the preposterous elements more realistic, but did make the characters' reactions to them believable (for the most part). And the This Is My Superhero Name trope was handled better than usual, I thought. I pretty much hated the way they made Professor X drop superhero names like clangy cymbals onto oildrums in the first film.
The boyservice scenes were excessive, however. I like seeing hot women in lingerie as much as the next hetero pig, but no less than three scenes were shoehorned in as an excuse to show them, and that's not even counting the sorta-nekkid Mystique stuff. Really, gais? That's pretty fucking insulting, frankly -- both to the female actresses and to the target demographic that's being so hamhandedly pandered to. I'm pretty sure this would be obvious and annoying even if you FFuckers hadn't ruined me vis-a-vis gender issue awareness. (There's another element in this film, wherein even the major theme that allows it to pass the Bechdel test gets male-gaze crap thrust awkwardly into it, that it IS all your fault that I found it so obvious and distracting. )
So yeah. Stuff gets blowed up and shit real good, and the story is fairly solid. Some of the acting was dodgy, but only a little. Oh, and while Kevin Bacon makes for a good villain, I couldn't buy for a minute that he ever spoke German as a first language.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
Not really a "good" movie, but I finally got around to watching "Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil." I think I discovered this movie from an interview with Alan Tudyk.
It's a comedy that plays on the "crazed redneck killer" trope. Tucker and Dale are two otherwise well-adjusted rednecks going out to fix up Tucker's new vacation home. The trouble starts when they share the lake with some partying college kids. One of the ladies hits her head and falls in. Tucker and Dale rescue her and call out to the others, "Hey, I got yer friend!"
Of course, the college kids are thinking more "Deliverance" than rescue. Basic amusement follows as the college kids spectacularly fail to defend themselves against the illusory redneck menace.
The set up is well done and some parts are funny, but winds up being funnier in concept than execution.