Sun, 20 Jan 2008
DVD Roundup 1/21
Wow, it's been a while since I posted a DVD Roundup. I think that's mostly due to a combination of my backlog of things to watch, holiday travel, and getting cable.
Most of the things I've seen though haven't been worth mentioning. I keep looking at my rental history in Netflix and remember that I haven't really liked anything recently. Or enough to warrant mentioning. edit: oddly enough, I started my last DVD Roundup the same way and I just now noticed that. Maybe I should get rid of cable. But enough of the whining, here are some notes-Brick - *** Brick really surprised me with how good it was. Maybe it was because I had been watching and reading some noir recently, but Brick fit right in there. In a nutshell, it's a teen-drama set in a film noir (John Hughes meets The Big Sleep?) that didn't sound too interesting to me at first, but it's really worth it.
The only negative about the movie is with the post-production. There are some really great bits of dialogue but at times it's incredibly hard to hear what the kids are saying. Maybe it's because I'm an old man . . .Oh, and the female lead looks like a cross between Amelie and Rachel Bilson (yum!). And one other thing- Lukas Haas's character's outfit cracks me up- but in a good way. It works with his character. I think Derek should wear that same "costume" at his next party, he could totally pull it off. Idiocracy - *
I wanted Idiocracy to be really good, but it wasn't. Sure it helped pass the time on the plane, but it was only 4 or 5 good ideas, and maybe the same amount of good quotes, but it wasn't a complete movie. Some clever funny bits in there, but not worth it unless you're stuck somewhere with not much else to watch. If you do watch it though, you'll laugh at your fellow man when you're stuck in a crowd somewhere (or on the 38 Geary bus). The Proposition - **
While I liked the acting in The Proposition, I thought it was a bit overrated and the story was very predictable. I also thought the way they depicted the "bad guys's" violent depravity wasn't as skillfully handled as it should have been. But who am I to judge?
I guess I finished the movie with a sense of disappointment. "On paper" though, how could you go wrong?-- Guy Pierce, Ray Winstone(!), Emily Watson, John Hurt, a cast-against-type (but great) Danny Huston (who I always think of as the character "Sandy" in The Constant Gardner, or Nigel from Children of Men). I dunno, let me know what you thought of this movie in the comments. Memoirs of a Geisha - *
Why are all the women in this movie Chinese? Granted, I have mad crushes on Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh, and Zhang Ziyi but I thought the casting was a bit odd for the material. (As a side note, Gong Li was supposed to be Japanese in the craptastic Hannibal Rising as well). Were there no Japanese actresses available, or was the casting done to help the movie in other markets?
This movie kinda bugged me in some way that I can't describe. I haven't read the book, so maybe it's faithful to that story, maybe not. But the movie just didn't seem that interesting and the whole time I thought it was like a very well-produced and filmed empty shell of a story. edit-I had a line here that I removed that may have been a bit too harsh, but in summary it seemed like this movie was directed by a honky that had an unrequited crush on an Asian girl at some point in college. . . . (not that there's anything wrong with that). Inside Man - *
Inside Man is a pretty stupid movie. It only has one decent plot twist, and again "on paper" you'd think it'd be pretty effing great-- a decent heist idea and these actors!: Denzel, Clive, Jodie, Chjwetel, and Christopher Plummer! But no, this movie is a kiddie pool of heist movies.
Kevin will think I'm being harsh, but you know the scene where Clive reprimands the kid who's playing the Grand-Theft-Auto-knockoff on his Sony PSP? You know the scene where the cops hurt the Sikh and then he won't help them for a minute until he gets his 10 lines of dialogue out? You know the non-police ways the detectives act when questioning the "suspects"? Yeah, annoying.
It only gets one star because this movie marks the end of an era (I should write this up in a separate post). But yes, this movie marks the end of "Nazi bad guy(s) in a modern era (non-period-piece)". And that's sad because of the non-movie social implications. But more on that some other day. District B13 - 0
Shit sandwich. I should've just watched youtube.com videos of parkour for 80 minutes while screaming "defuse teh bomB!!" over and over again. Serenity - **
Two stars- one for the potential this show had and lost, and the other star for Summer Glau and Morena Baccarin. DiG! - *
This documentary was more intesting than I thought it would be, but at times it still makes one want to go find and beat a hipster. Pretty interesting tale though of the ascendence of The Dandy Warhols (yeah yeah, I know it's more about the other guy . . .) who always seem to be one of those bands that have hovered around and have done well despite "the industry" (themesong and guest spots on Veronica Mars for example).
20 Jan 18:01 | /movies | 0 comment(s)
