[glossolalia]

movies i watched recently

a zed and two noughts - one of the nicest-looking movies i've ever seen, but the story was just a bunch of pet motifs randomly colliding with each other like i'm supposed to scratch my chin and admire the duality of it all. definitely want to see more sacha vierny-shot movies now though

ghost in the shell - more dumb anime shit than i remember, there's a difference between subtle and anticlimactic, kaiba's better for playing the ideas out instead of endlessly pontificating on them

blade runner - glad i waited to watch this on a nice tv. dialogue's a little hamfisted at times (and yeah i saw the final cut) but everything else about it is perfect

shaun of the dead - don't think i've ever seen a movie this funny with direction this great. i'm glad that someone with this good of an eye is making mainstream comedies. probably gonna buy scott pilgrim on blu-ray

dead ringers - awesome, i was so sure jeremy irons was two actors that it bugged me that they seemed to have clearly different facial structure. i'm retarded. the twins' relationship was surprisingly easy to sympathize with, they were actual characters instead of A Set of Ideas About Twins which makes greenaway trying to grab credit for it through zed it all the more obnoxious

[glossolalia]

i know. i've failed you.

[glossolalia]

[glossolalia]

speaking of film criticism i've always admired how david bordwell can talk about stuff like the average number of frames per cut and not sound like a horrible aspie.

[glossolalia]

well i've watched hot fuzz three times all the way through and various parts over and over in the last week. the first time through i was underwhelmed at an hour in and couldn't see it going on another hour, but the way everything gets set up and then blown apart is so good.

[glossolalia]

[glossolalia]

[glossolalia]

i went into the black swan really wanting to like it (haven't seen an arofonsky movie before btw.) portman's performance was great and the way her mother's relationship was handled and the early signs of something going wrong were very well done, but its treatment of mental breakdown was embarrassingly trite for serious psychological horror (overly literal, Lost-caliber music stings) and it didn't work for me as camp either.

[glossolalia]

[glossolalia]

point break - cinema's most tragic bromance and probably the most artful execution of this concept/script possible, which makes it kind of the perfect early 90s cultural artifact.

akira - hadn't watched it since i was about 17 and surprisingly enjoyed it a lot more this time around. tulpa i haven't read the comic and didn't remember about 90% of what happened but thought it was totally coherent except for how akira and everybody else gets from the satellite area to the olympic dome. i'm sure there's more explanation of the espers and such in the comic but i didn't really want that.

probably one of the most hateful movies i've ever seen; strange how it seems to side with the idea that the corrupt city deserves a purging, and loves showing the blood of innocents, yet we're also asked to sympathize with amoral teenage thrill-seekers. does the comic ever explain how a bunch of orphans with no jobs got such nice motorcycles? calling the soundtrack perfect almost seems like doing it a disservice because instead of merely complimenting the scenes it often pushes them somewhere completely different and better (especially the opening bike race.)

[glossolalia]

i dunno, the doctor's explicitly pro-transhumanist, and his heedless scientific curiosity sets the main conflict in motion and ultimately gets him killed while the ultraconservative colonel is saved. i'm usually against such square readings, but the almost parable-like quality of subplots like that or the mayor(?) and the revolutionary make it hard to avoid. so

[glossolalia]

[glossolalia]

i did a first pass of the screenplay when i was 12 but they totally gutted my creative vision

[glossolalia]

is there an edit of Crash with just the Ludacris parts. it might be a cute little short film.

[glossolalia]

guys making fun of Randians is too easy let's make fun of Crash. i guess that's pretty easy too.

[glossolalia]

i just woke up from a dream where i watched an extended trailer for a movie about a married woman coping with total amnesia and the petty squabbles of a pair of airheaded androgynous teenage twins who were in some way loosely connected to her. it looked like a gauzier wes anderson film. long shot but i might as well ask, does this actually exist or did i just dream it.

[glossolalia]

really thought i was gonna come in here and see dracko jerking it to this cam rip of the new The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trailer.



:twisted:

[glossolalia]

thou dost protesteth too much

[glossolalia]

i watched face/off. i liked how what would have been the big threat in a more generic action movie is neutralized about an hour in by the villain. near the end there's a six-way mexican standoff to which john travolta-as-nicholas cage cackles "ha ha! wee! what a predicament!" there are a lot of (sometimes intentionally) funny indulgences playing off the main concept. margaret cho makes a joke at one point but it's pretty easy to ignore. most of the action is pretty dull but it's still one of the better high-concept overlong summer action movies i've seen.