Here are a few flicks I've seen int he last month. I don't go to movies that much due to the cost BUT I invested ina bog screen and a surround sound system so its not missed much. The only flick I cared to pay oput the $9.00 to see was 300 in the three months.
The Good Shepard. Spy thriller supposedly based on the "actual" account of the formation of the CIA told from the point of view of a "fictional" character. Right.
Robert Deniro (Director and supporting role in movie) seems to have control (somewhat) of his medium but this movie suffers from "plot muddle" and credibility.
What the movie tries to do is make you feel uncomfortable .. the CIA is made to look like the brainchild of the "ruling elite" of Anglo Saxon protestants who attend Yale and Harvard and are pretty ,much a bunch "bigots"... "the rest of you are just visiting" says Wilson when asked what he thinks of blacks, Jews, Catholics, etc…
Stupido stuff... For example I can hardly believe the CIA dumped a bunch of locusts to destroy some countries crops right in broad daylight with a whole mess of witnesses. Another situation has the young Wilson putting on his dad's (who is an admiral) navy jacket and the jacket is actually that of a Captain.
Mystery...The actress that gets thrown out of a plane is unaccredited even though she is a major plot device. Sayyy maybe this is a snuff movie!!
Miscast... Angelina Jolie is totally ravishing as Wilson's wife. It's hard to believe that this guy preferred much uglier women over her. Totally unbelievable. Also the part where Wilson meets with his chief and most deadly soviet rival during a family event...like you would ever have this kind of guy around your family?
The theme... Country vs Family ... (but we don't see it fully developed until later in the movie).
Overall: Flawed but interesting.
HollywoodLand. The death of George Reeve (Superman inthe 1950's) as told from the point of view of a private dectitive.
The movie uncovers three theories... Suicide, accident with his bitchy/slutty girlfirend, and the most freakish is perhaps a murder instigated by Eddie Mannix, the thuglike "producer" of a major studio because Reeves dumped his wife to marry some slutty
The big mystery isn what happned to George Reeve. Based on what we know Reeve was a fading alcoholic dissatisfied with his own life. There is far more evidence for suicide than there is for anything else in the movie. The big mystery then is Why are we interested in this fictional dectives life? Perhaps had he been a real person the parallelisms made between him and Reeves ,might have had some impact.
Overall: Like The Good Shephard the movie attempts to handle historical events through the eyes of a fictional character, probably a composite made up of a number of real life people. This device is getting old and just breaks down in this movie.
300: The battle of as seen through the eyes of comic book artist Frank Miller, one of the great comic book artist/writers. Good performances by a good cast. Excellent movie making but historical rubbish. Xerxes was no seven foot androgynous bald guy. The Persians themselves look like some of the folks taken out of Mel Gibsons "passion", demonic and utterly evil. Also I do not think the Spartans or Greeks ever made any use of the testudo formation seen at the end of the movie. This was a Roman invention based off the Legion and used on the attack as a siege device. Somewhat annoying though was the glorification of the Spartans at the end of the movie which sees them taking on Xerxes army with a full Spartan force. As we all know the Persians were actually beaten by the Athenian at sea; it was the Athenian fleet that finally stopped and destroyed xerxes army when he made a mistake very similar to the one Mark Anthony would later make. In a force of some 360+ ships Sparta only contributed 16 and the Spartan commander nearly ruined the whole thing with his constant bickering. Themistocles the Athenian is usually credited with the real victory there.
300 can be seen as a continuation of the film nior techniques seen in Sin City. While not strikingly original from that stance it still expands on the visual range for technique. I couldn't help imagining how good a Robert E Howard adaptation might be uisng this kind of cinematography. I'm hoping as I would rather see it used in a fantasy setting rather than a historical one, the film still worked as entertainment for me.
The Departed. All Star Cast about an under cover cop who infiltrates a local mobsters gang and crosses swords with a cop who the gang has corrupted to infiltrate the police. Really good performances and perhaps Jack Nicholson's last "major" serious or acclaimed role. He is scheduled to appear in something called The Bucket List with Morgan Freeman, a "black/white" buddy movie (another theme starting to get old) produced by Meathead (Rob Reiner) fresh off of two bombs at the box office.
I would rate this movie rather high and recommend a look see.
Borat. Well I finally saw it. It had some genuine humor in it but some stuff was so weird and bizarre that you have to wonder why it made any money at all. Borat is a dark comedy about some dude from one of the new ex-Soviet Republics that comes to America to see if our wonderful high class country can rub off on him. The movie was not suitable to kids which I learned the hard way … maybe I need to read those ratings in the future. One scene that looks like suggestive incest and a number of very strong homo-erotic (gross more like it) scenes peppered in the movie. Sacha Cohen uses a scam journalist technique to fool some of his victims into believing they are participating in a serious interview. Some people didn’t like it. Even though they signed some release form stating they could use their images for the movie, hence all (or most) of the legal problems the movie has received.
This movie is probably better seen when your drunk or high… or both.
Children of Men. SciFi …near future “end of the world” flick. With some indirect social commentary on “illegal aliens” thrown in.
Actually not too bad a flick. All women become infertile and mankind only has another 50 or so years before extinction, the youngest person being 18 or 19 years old and of course by then there won’t be anyone to man up the old age homes so the life expectancy of 75 years won’t fly.
In the decade or so since the crisis began chaos has ensued and civilization has broken down except for jolly old England, which has become an oppressive Dystopia fueled by a rigid useless government and lots of “hate” groups directed at “illegal immigrants”. Lo and behold though an apple falls from the tree and we find ONE woman has indeed become pregnant. The movie starts slow and picks up steam where the director films some pretty neat sequences. As you might expect when one rather helpless person has something no else in the world has there is an opportunity to further explore the oft used theme of Man’s Inhumanity To Man.
Perhaps had this movie been done forty years ago it might be more believable and timely. But since then it is hard to believe that with all the advances in genetics, in vitro fertilization, cloning, that this little problem would actually signal the end of man kind it collapses somewhat. In many ways this movie is “anti-science fiction” and anti scientific. There is nothing new here even though I rather feel there could have been a whole lot new here had they just embraced a slightly more creative set of circumstances.
Still worth a look on DVD.
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For example lets just say the scientists can't find a way to make people fertile...so instead they start cloning people. Who gets cloned? Who doesn't? How many generation deep can someopne go and be cloned? What if a number of clones start becoming defective or mutaing into hostile forms? That's just a number of interesting ways this material could have been handled. Instead humkans are pretty much left helpless by the problem with almost NO answer other than some modern day Nativity scene.
Topic: Some Movies I've Watched.... (Read 48118 times)