I'm now in the part of my Netflix queue that has movies that were added when I first set it up a year and a half ago, where none of the plot synopses sound good and I wonder why I bothered getting them. The synopsis for this one reads, "Set in the 1920s, director Tarsem Singh's visually lush drama stars Lee Pace as paralyzed movie stuntman Roy Walker, who bonds with an imaginative 5-year-old named Alexandria (Cantinca Untaru) as they convalesce together in a Los Angeles infirmary. To coax the girl into procuring the cache of morphine he wants from the hospital pharmacy, the suicidal Roy regales Alexandria with an elaborate fantasy about larger-than-life heroes."
So basically, it sounds like a period piece about a suicidal guy who uses a kid to get him the drugs he needs to kill himself. Not terribly interesting. The little bit at the end about the story he tells her is the most important part, because that's really what the best parts of the movie are.
We're always jumping from Roy's bedside reality to the fantasy reality, and the two worlds are set so far apart from each other stylistically that, even though the jumps can be sudden, there's never any overlap between them. The hospital is pretty bland in a "everything is a different shade of gray" sort of way. Nothing stands out from anything else, and even the shots aren't anything out of the ordinary. The fantasy world though is beautiful. Bright, vivid colors are everywhere, locales are exotic and dramatic, and the characters in the fantasy, their costumes especially, are unreal. Sometimes the characters are little figures on the horizon, and other times their faces take up the whole screen. The music rises and falls, but never goes completely silent, and every action is deliberate and dramatic, like it was being performed on stage.
It makes me wish there were more movies that felt like fairy tales. Pan's Labyrinth, Stardust, and this all have the feel of bedtime stories; innocent good fighting absolute evil. The heroes do nothing that we don't cheer for, and we never feel sympathy for the villains. Movies like this are great not just because they're stories are straight to the point, but because the nature of the story requires them to be shot in such a way that everything is separate from reality, and is visually gorgeous as a result. Definitely one of the prettiest movies I've seen.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
May 2: Beetlejuice/ThanksKilling
Two movies today, sort of. When I got home I caught the last half of Beetlejuice, which I haven't seen in forever. This is proof that Tim Burton was good once. It didn't hold up very well, but I still love it.
To make up for that, I decided to watch ThanksKilling. It's only 66 minutes long, and I went from thinking it would be a campy B-movie, to a weird comedy/horror hybrid, to a student movie that was supposed to be a comedy from the start. I took some notes while it played, and they eventually degraded into angry rants at the characters. So instead of impressions, I have those to show you. Hopefully they're enough to make you watch it, because it's actually a pretty fun movie. It's about a murderous, filthy turkey, how could it not be entertaining.
Notes:
-Woah, that's a boob
-That pilgrim woman is missing a lot of her shirt. Mostly the chest area
-So far, everything a horror movie needs to be. Tits and murder
-Okay, so that was a JonBenet Ramsey joke "Her legs are harder to close than the JonBenet Ramsey case"
-Sort of cool animation sequence
-Turkeys see in purple
-Bestiality leads to grand theft auto
-This feels like a student's final project that somehow got to Netflix
-Same joke about jonbenet ramsey case and slutty girl's legs, apparently unintentional, everyone reacted the exact same way as the first time she told it
-Reaction to parents being murdered surprisingly mild
-More bestiality, "You just got stuffed!"
-More sex scenes with the turkey than with the people
-Yes, we must stop the cock blocking turkey
-OH MY GOD THESE PEOPLE ARE RETARDED IT'S A FUCKING TURKEY WITH GAG GLASSES NOT A MIDGET.
-IT'S NOT YOUR DAD EITHER KRISTEN, WHAT THE SHIT IS WRONG WITH YOU.
-This has to be a comedy. It just has to be.
-I don't know Billy, you were just eating french fries for that whole montage.
-"Gobble gobble, motherfucker."
-Seriously, student movie. Billy's whole death sequence is way too goofy.
-Why is the turkey making a salad.
-Hermit shoots him into a dumpster full of radioactive waste, another fifteen minutes of runtime confirmed
-"I may have lost my parents, but I gained a girlfriend."
-OH I GET IT YOU JOKED ABOUT THINGS ONLY HAPPENING IN MOVIES
-Oh, the hermit also did the title music. How about that.
I'd say it's worth the hour it takes to watch. Really, really stupid, but very fun. Back tomorrow with legitimate movies!
To make up for that, I decided to watch ThanksKilling. It's only 66 minutes long, and I went from thinking it would be a campy B-movie, to a weird comedy/horror hybrid, to a student movie that was supposed to be a comedy from the start. I took some notes while it played, and they eventually degraded into angry rants at the characters. So instead of impressions, I have those to show you. Hopefully they're enough to make you watch it, because it's actually a pretty fun movie. It's about a murderous, filthy turkey, how could it not be entertaining.
Notes:
-Woah, that's a boob
-That pilgrim woman is missing a lot of her shirt. Mostly the chest area
-So far, everything a horror movie needs to be. Tits and murder
-Okay, so that was a JonBenet Ramsey joke "Her legs are harder to close than the JonBenet Ramsey case"
-Sort of cool animation sequence
-Turkeys see in purple
-Bestiality leads to grand theft auto
-This feels like a student's final project that somehow got to Netflix
-Same joke about jonbenet ramsey case and slutty girl's legs, apparently unintentional, everyone reacted the exact same way as the first time she told it
-Reaction to parents being murdered surprisingly mild
-More bestiality, "You just got stuffed!"
-More sex scenes with the turkey than with the people
-Yes, we must stop the cock blocking turkey
-OH MY GOD THESE PEOPLE ARE RETARDED IT'S A FUCKING TURKEY WITH GAG GLASSES NOT A MIDGET.
-IT'S NOT YOUR DAD EITHER KRISTEN, WHAT THE SHIT IS WRONG WITH YOU.
-This has to be a comedy. It just has to be.
-I don't know Billy, you were just eating french fries for that whole montage.
-"Gobble gobble, motherfucker."
-Seriously, student movie. Billy's whole death sequence is way too goofy.
-Why is the turkey making a salad.
-Hermit shoots him into a dumpster full of radioactive waste, another fifteen minutes of runtime confirmed
-"I may have lost my parents, but I gained a girlfriend."
-OH I GET IT YOU JOKED ABOUT THINGS ONLY HAPPENING IN MOVIES
-Oh, the hermit also did the title music. How about that.
I'd say it's worth the hour it takes to watch. Really, really stupid, but very fun. Back tomorrow with legitimate movies!
Sunday, May 2, 2010
May 1: Boogie Nights
What a feel good movie to start things off. Cocaine, suicide, losing children in divorce settlements, prison for pedophilia, and armed robbery gone terribly wrong. The only part of this movie I had seen before was the opening tracking shot, and since it's very oh-yeah-seventies-and-disco I just assumed the rest of the movie would be like that, only with more sex scenes.
And the first half is very much like that. Mark Wahlberg gets a blowjob from Heather Graham, has sex with her on the couch while Burt Reynolds watches, and things are rolling along. Even William H. Macy's character, whose wife has a thing for sleeping nonchalantly with other men, doesn't seem like he's in all that bad a spot. It's comical the way she deals with him, and how he is so non-confrontational.
Then that familiar story arc comes in, where the cast is so successful that there's nowhere to go but down. This was actually obnoxious to watch because it takes so long to happen. We know things are going south the moment Wahlberg snorts coke at the New Year's party, but for the next 45 minutes, we see each group of characters' luck change for the worse. It was nice that they were all edited together such that we only saw a few minutes of each story before jumping to another, but it seemed so Goodfellas or Casino (Scorsese in general, really) that I wish it would have happened faster.
I will say that I loved the tracking shots. There are shots like these in other movies where it feels like the director is just showing off (Children of Men, that's you), but they're so simple here. Burt Reynolds walking through a house is not a complicated sequence; an unedited shot following him isn't distracting - if anything, it brings us in more - but a ten minute action sequence of Clive Owen running through a rioting city, into a crowded apartment building that's under siege by soldiers and tanks, and making his way back out, is so much more to take in.
Everything wrapped up nicely at the end. Where I was expecting a Requiem for a Dream end, I got one that was actually pleasant to watch. Lots of redemption, less prostitution for heroin. The only issue I take with the movie is the middle, which is surrounded by lightheartedness. I guess I just didn't like seeing the characters that I had really come to like get into such terrible situations.
And the first half is very much like that. Mark Wahlberg gets a blowjob from Heather Graham, has sex with her on the couch while Burt Reynolds watches, and things are rolling along. Even William H. Macy's character, whose wife has a thing for sleeping nonchalantly with other men, doesn't seem like he's in all that bad a spot. It's comical the way she deals with him, and how he is so non-confrontational.
Then that familiar story arc comes in, where the cast is so successful that there's nowhere to go but down. This was actually obnoxious to watch because it takes so long to happen. We know things are going south the moment Wahlberg snorts coke at the New Year's party, but for the next 45 minutes, we see each group of characters' luck change for the worse. It was nice that they were all edited together such that we only saw a few minutes of each story before jumping to another, but it seemed so Goodfellas or Casino (Scorsese in general, really) that I wish it would have happened faster.
I will say that I loved the tracking shots. There are shots like these in other movies where it feels like the director is just showing off (Children of Men, that's you), but they're so simple here. Burt Reynolds walking through a house is not a complicated sequence; an unedited shot following him isn't distracting - if anything, it brings us in more - but a ten minute action sequence of Clive Owen running through a rioting city, into a crowded apartment building that's under siege by soldiers and tanks, and making his way back out, is so much more to take in.
Everything wrapped up nicely at the end. Where I was expecting a Requiem for a Dream end, I got one that was actually pleasant to watch. Lots of redemption, less prostitution for heroin. The only issue I take with the movie is the middle, which is surrounded by lightheartedness. I guess I just didn't like seeing the characters that I had really come to like get into such terrible situations.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Foist
Hello, internet (but probably just Facebook friends and followers on Twitter).
I am going to start a project. The goal: to watch one movie every day. It's really not all that ambitious, I'm sure lots of people accidentally do it, or maybe they do it on purpose, but I'm going to try it. Again.
This is probably the third or fourth time I've tried this, and the second I've had writing to go alongside it. It turns out the farthest I've gone was a little over a month, and all I had was a list of what I had seen. Maybe that's a sign telling me blogs about it ruin everything. But I will press on!
Tomorrow is the day I start. A year is a nice even amount of time, so I'm going to try to watch 365 movies in 365 days. I'm cheating a little with the numbers, because I could take a day off and then just watch two the next day, but oh well. One movie every day is the idea.
Much too long. To summarize: New movie, every day, with impressions afterward. Netflix queue, I'm coming for you.
Also, feel free to suggest some movies to me. I'll probably watch whatever you want me to. I saw the Bratz movie opening weekend, so my standards are pretty low. Not as unintentionally funny as you'd think a movie about dolls would be.
I am going to start a project. The goal: to watch one movie every day. It's really not all that ambitious, I'm sure lots of people accidentally do it, or maybe they do it on purpose, but I'm going to try it. Again.
This is probably the third or fourth time I've tried this, and the second I've had writing to go alongside it. It turns out the farthest I've gone was a little over a month, and all I had was a list of what I had seen. Maybe that's a sign telling me blogs about it ruin everything. But I will press on!
Tomorrow is the day I start. A year is a nice even amount of time, so I'm going to try to watch 365 movies in 365 days. I'm cheating a little with the numbers, because I could take a day off and then just watch two the next day, but oh well. One movie every day is the idea.
Much too long. To summarize: New movie, every day, with impressions afterward. Netflix queue, I'm coming for you.
Also, feel free to suggest some movies to me. I'll probably watch whatever you want me to. I saw the Bratz movie opening weekend, so my standards are pretty low. Not as unintentionally funny as you'd think a movie about dolls would be.
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