Watched: Ned Kelly

I don't know. I don't know what happened here. I think I make bad movie choices late at night/early in the morning. I was looking for something kind of historicalish, like Bright Star, but less Campiony. And this could have been really good. First of all, you've got Heath Ledger doing everything he can to deliver an Irish accent and the whole "honest man backed into a corner" deal, and he's sort of actually selling it in parts. Secondly, you've got pretty Naomi Watts to be... the pretty love interest. She's barely important to the plot except to harbor the Kelly gang when they're on the run, and her story is completely dropped three quarters of the way through the film. And of course, you've got LA RUSH. He of the awesome awesomeness on a fairly reliable basis. But then he's barely even in it! And it all gets fucked up with Gregor Jordan's lackluster use of scenery and style- did they even film in Australia? I mean they could have used the country a bit more. I guess after watching a movie like The Proposition this just seemed... tame. And Orlando Bloom? He should've quit after he finished playing an elf-- beautiful, sedate, and in the background. He's not really good at any other kind of role.

Watched: Bright Star

I'm sure there is plenty in Bright Star to recommend itself to lovers of Romantic poetry, lovers of costume dramas (particularly of the Regency era), and lovers of tragic, well, love. And I don't have anything against any of those areas, in fact, I love Regency dramas and am sort of okay with tragic love when it's interesting. Which this is at times, although mostly it's just kind of that unspoken/unseen sort of story. Lots of letter writing and reading, you know?

What was most notable to me, besides Jane Campion's glacial pacing and alternately stark/lush composition was the wide variety of dresses Abbie Cornish is dressed in. This chick is supposed to be poor enough that she can't marry sadsack, destitue Keats and yes, she is a seamstress, but still, she has enough outfits to clothe every Jane Austen character in the repetoire and probably still have leftovers. I tried to catch some of them, although I kind of lost interest towards the end since (SPOILER ALERT! THAT IS, IF YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT POETRY OR HISTORY) things turn out to be kind of a bummer and Fanny Brawne gets decreasingly frilly. Apparently Janet Patterson (who seems to like this kind of thing, having done Oscar and Lucinda, The Piano, and Peter Pan) did both costume and production design, to which I say... kudos for giving us something to look at, since this story is tonally very similar to The Piano, which is to say... it's romantic, yes, and beautiful, but also sort of boring.

Re: frills:



Sort of frilly, but believably practical...

...Getting frillier...

WHOA.

WHAT.

Aggressively frilly.

Watched: Les enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise)

So this movie was in a book I read about essential movie viewing and I've been sort of intending to watch it for months since it was made available for streaming on Netflix but the thing is... it's in French, with subtitles. And black and white. And is about a love triangle, or square, or something... there are a bunch of vaguely different looking fops fighting for the love of this Garance character, played by Arletty, who is nowhere near as beautiful as the film wants us to think she is. Despite my proclivity for romantic melodrama, this was not exactly on the top of my list. And while some of the cinematography is really, really beautiful and the score is lovely- it still took me three fucking nights to finish this movie.

It's a lot of existential discussion, meta-commentary about theater and pantomime, and romantic fuckery, but somehow I was not compelled. Meh.

Hey kid, rock and roll, rock on, ooh my soul...

Watched: 30 Days of Night

Gory. Atmospheric. Awesome. I like Thirst and Let the Right One In for the same reason I liked 30 Days of Night; I think vampires are most enjoyable when they are demonic and films about them are most interesting when exploring the territory between humanity and monstrosity, especially where the two overlap. Also, Danny Huston is so creepy and Russian and insane in this that it should be seen for his performance alone. Makers of Gabriel, take note. This is how you do creepy contacts.

Watched: Mortal Kombat

I honestly have no idea why I watched this movie, other than after a night of drinking and excessive amounts of Japanese food I found myself unable to sleep at 4:30 in the morning and thought that Mortal Kombat seemed like a fair penance to pay for my sins. In the interest of full disclosure, I've never played the video game. I played Tekken once with my roommate, it had a bear. That was cool. But this was full of fug creatures and painfully 90's action tropes. I'm sure I would have caught plenty more fun things had I not, while watching this, been working on developing the awesome hangover I am still enjoying and also, had I cared about anyone in this or anything that was happening. As I did not care about any of it and was bored by the pitiful dialogue-- which I know is stupid to even say because, who would watch Mortal Kombat for its eloquence?-- as well as the fight scenes (choregraphed martial arts? yawn), I have only a few stray observations to make. Basically I watched this to pass the time before passsing out, while drunk, and still found it pretty lame. Maybe it was cool at the time it was released, I don't know, I was seven and not allowed to play console games (Mom's rules). Whatever. I need a sandwich and some seltzer. SO MUCH FEATHERING.

Gargoyles much, Shang Tsung? Redecorate, your house sucks.

Lazy eye. Just look closely, it's there.

Ugh speaking of lazy eyes: faceplate. You know, as you do. More importantly, look at the impeccable grooming of that beard. Like does he have a special razor to get in there and make it do that? I'm not even going to talk about the pseudo-flock of seagulls thing happening upstairs, because I have nothing nice to say about it.

MOM JEANS. On everyone.

Oh look, it's Greysto- I mean, it's Connor MacLe- ah, just kidding- it's Thunder God Raiden! That loveable old coot. Whatever happened to Christopher Lambert anyway? His wiki page says that he's done basically every Highlander film ever made and some French stuff. So I guess that's what happened to him. Weird. Also, is he supposed to be Asian here? He's doing this weird accent in this movie that I can probably best describe as what you might imagine a cat would sound like if it could speak, but an Australian cat who for some reason tried to do a faux-Chinese accent. Really, this was weird.

I'm not really sure why the opening scene was green. But it was. And that was sort of cool. So yeah. Maybe someday I'll give this film another chance... but probably not.

Watched: The Messenger

Y'know, after my rant earlier about my dislike/distrust for films about WWII generally and specifically about the Holocaust and the Third Reich, it seems fitting that I would love this film as much as I did. The Messenger works with a palette of greys that never even got looked at in those films, where so often the Nazis are evil and the Jews/civilians are not. Occasionally you'll get a rogue Nazi whose humanity betrays the cause or a bad apple who turns in their neighbor but mostly, those movies go for the easy heroes and villians. Which... blergh. I think I've ranted enough about that kind of filmmaking for a while. But The Messenger makes no attempt to make anyone hero or villian, and allows all its characters the dignity of being flawed three dimensionally. Maybe I also liked it because it's a hell of a lot easier for me to relate to. What do I know about genocide, or warfare? I do know something about the way people talk and think about the Iraq War HERE, NOW, and the messy world the men and women serving there come home to. Besides my identification with my fucked up generation and its fucked up war (as opposed to The Greatest Generation, gag), Foster and Woody are incredible in this. Samantha Morton too. I just wanted to hug all of these people.

Watched: Smokin' Aces

Derivative, hyperviolent hijinks, which is to say: my kind of movie. Not exactly the kind of filmmaking that rocks your socks, but undoubtedly this is some entertaining shit. If for nothing else, the cast is pretty fun. Also, Clint Mansell did a few songs for the soundtrack and they are, as should probably be expected from the dude, great. Anyway. Richard Alpert!

Jack Shepherd!

Keamy! (Lost-centric much, movie?)

Jason Bateman, playing an alcoholic, post nervous breakdown Michael!

I like that Ben Affleck looks vaguely like a member of the Village People. Good job there, movie.

Also: Chris Pine, Wayne Newton, and Common. Yeah, this movie's not really as smart as it thinks it is and it ends up being sort of anticlimactic despite having a fairly epic shoot-out, but it sure does have lots to look at.

Watched: The Doom Generation

Ugh. Ew. Blah. This movie, despite being overloaded with violence, sex, quirky dialogue, and a very distinct style, was not that great for me. The trope of 'doom', so to speak, in the repeated use of "hell", "apocalypse", "666", and allusions to the devil was tired after about the first 20 minutes. At one point in the film Rose McGowan's character Amy Blue riffs on Hobbe's famous philospohy on life from Leviathan, in which he calls life, among other things, "nasty, brutish, and short". Blue, in turn, calls life "lonely, boring, and stupid". That pretty much sums up the feelings this movie evokes.

P.S. Brady guy as newscaster! Parker Posey also shows up for about 30 seconds as a crazy, surprise.

Watched: WALL-E

Some sort of adorable fusion of E.T. and R2D2, resulting in perhaps one of the most successfully calculatedly endearing Disney characters ever. Don't worry, I am not impervious. This movie is damned cute and has a good message about appreciating the Earth and not taking for granted all of the technology around us. I liked how EVE clearly looks like a Mac and WALL-E a PC, but they need each other to get the plant to the Captain and defeat the HAL-like Otto (Auto?). Take that, Gates/Jobs! Plus the little art history lesson during the art credits was incredibly gratifying for me. Hell yeah, impressionism!