Movies, Lots and Lots of Movies
But first, I've been reading Richard K Morgan-and I've liked all his books. The sequel to Altered Carbon was very good, so I have high hopes for Woken Furies, the third Takeshi Kovacs book.
I went to see There Will Be Blood last week and I've been thinking about it ever since. I know there are some people who didn't like it and Daniel Day Lewis is certainly as capable of being great (A Room With A View, My Left Foot) as he is of over-acting (Gangs of New York). I thought his performance as an oilman out to get every drop of oil in the world was terrific. Daniel Plainview is a truly scary man-one who doesn't like other people, who doesn't want to see anyone else succeed, one who will destroy anyone he perceives as ANY sort of rival. If you say anything against him, in business or in his personal life, he is your enemy for life. He is very plain-you are either with him (which means doing everything he says and never having your own thoughts) or you are against him. He meets his match in Eli Sunday-the boy preacher, who for all his angelic face and fire and brimstone preaching, is just as rigid as Plainview. He wants to show Plainview who is in charge in their small town-and it's not Plainview. Once Sunday has been slighted by not being allowed to say a few words of blessing at the first drilling of the oil well in town, the battle lines have been drawn. The greatest scenes in the movie are the two big scenes between Sunday and Plainview-and that's what really sticks with me. In each scene, one of them has the power (though money or influence) to bend the other to his will-and both take full advantage of it. To watch these scenes and the play between these two actors (yes, Paul Dano was very good, even though I found Little Miss Sunshine incredibly annoying)-it was amazing. If you ever want to see someone forced to do something against their will, just so they can get something they really want-it's both fascinating and terrible. I also have to say that I found the soundtrack incredibly annoying and distracting. My companions both liked it but it took me out of the movie and that really bothered me.
The Orphanage is a Spanish movie, produced by Guillermo del Toro and directed by Juan Antonio Bayona. I liked this movie very much-and it was a welcome antidote to There Will Be Blood, with it's lack of women and its one child being badly treated. This movie is all about women-one woman in particular. Laura was in a orphanage as a child, before she was adopted (and I swear that I saw the dresses they wear in the orphanage at the Banana Republic outlet over Christmas-gray, drab and dreary and cut for children). She was adopted and has gone to live a happy life with her husband and her own adopted child, Simon. They have moved into the orphanage she lived in as a child, hoping to start their own school for special-needs children.
And then Simon disappears. What are the noises she hears? What is the odd psychic (a great Geraldine Chaplin) trying to tell her? And where is Simon? All the performances in this movies are great, but Belen Rueda as Laura is wonderful as a woman who is willing to do anything to rescue her child. It's like The Others, it's like Pan's Labyrinth but it still tells it's own story, and very well.
Next up was The Kingdom, a movie I didn't quite make it to in the theater. I did like it-Jamie Foxx was good, Chris Cooper didn't have much of a part (a waste of his talent) and Jason Bateman was quite good as a the reluctant member of the FBI group sent to investigate a bombing in Saudi Arabia. When I first saw the trailer, I wondered how he had gotten cast in this movie, but turns in the best performance in it, as a "reluctant warrior" (I can't remember which critic said this but it's the perfect description). He does it because he doesn't really have a choice-if he doesn't fight back, he'll die-and he comes awfully close as it is.
I haven't mentioned Jennifer Garner and that's because in her first scene she crying! She's an FBI agent, for God's sake! They would NEVER show Jamie Foxx crying or Chris Cooper-noooo. They get to comfort the woman while she cries. It was infuriating. However, after that she was good AND she got to stab a bad guy in the head in the action sequence where she's the star, so I guess that makes up for it.
Which bring us to this past weekend, when I saw Cloverfield in New York. It was funny though, because I thought the previews were going to be crappy but instead they were for:
A) The new Star Trek movie (Yes, I'll see it. Maybe. It depends.)
B) Iron Man-yes, I'll see that too, but I really hope Robert Downey jr is good in it-I love the preview and I usually love comic book movies.
C) Hellboy: The Golden Army. I'll see almost anything Guillermo del Toro directs, so of course I'm seeing this. I LOVED the first one.
My companion, on the other hand, thought they all looked awful. Of course, he hated the movie too. He hates science fiction and he hates action movie so I'm not sure why he wanted to see it (and I said to him three times "you know it's a monster movie set in New York, right? But it didn't help).
Yes, a big scary monster destroys New York, as viewed through a camcorder by some privileged Lower East side twenty-somethings. Was it scary? Yes. Was it insensitive to New Yorkers? Hell, yes. The scenes of buildings toppling and huge piles of rubble crashing through the streets while people hide in buildings? Of course it looks like 9-11. On the other hand, when the hero (kind of) gets cell reception down in the subway, you could hear everyone in the audience scoff at the idea of cell reception in the subway-only someone from California would think that you could get a call down there.
Did I like it? Yes, but the camcorder thing gave me a headache. Even five minutes of the jiggling camera was annoying. It was short but it packed a whole lot of scary into its 85 minutes.
I went to see There Will Be Blood last week and I've been thinking about it ever since. I know there are some people who didn't like it and Daniel Day Lewis is certainly as capable of being great (A Room With A View, My Left Foot) as he is of over-acting (Gangs of New York). I thought his performance as an oilman out to get every drop of oil in the world was terrific. Daniel Plainview is a truly scary man-one who doesn't like other people, who doesn't want to see anyone else succeed, one who will destroy anyone he perceives as ANY sort of rival. If you say anything against him, in business or in his personal life, he is your enemy for life. He is very plain-you are either with him (which means doing everything he says and never having your own thoughts) or you are against him. He meets his match in Eli Sunday-the boy preacher, who for all his angelic face and fire and brimstone preaching, is just as rigid as Plainview. He wants to show Plainview who is in charge in their small town-and it's not Plainview. Once Sunday has been slighted by not being allowed to say a few words of blessing at the first drilling of the oil well in town, the battle lines have been drawn. The greatest scenes in the movie are the two big scenes between Sunday and Plainview-and that's what really sticks with me. In each scene, one of them has the power (though money or influence) to bend the other to his will-and both take full advantage of it. To watch these scenes and the play between these two actors (yes, Paul Dano was very good, even though I found Little Miss Sunshine incredibly annoying)-it was amazing. If you ever want to see someone forced to do something against their will, just so they can get something they really want-it's both fascinating and terrible. I also have to say that I found the soundtrack incredibly annoying and distracting. My companions both liked it but it took me out of the movie and that really bothered me.
The Orphanage is a Spanish movie, produced by Guillermo del Toro and directed by Juan Antonio Bayona. I liked this movie very much-and it was a welcome antidote to There Will Be Blood, with it's lack of women and its one child being badly treated. This movie is all about women-one woman in particular. Laura was in a orphanage as a child, before she was adopted (and I swear that I saw the dresses they wear in the orphanage at the Banana Republic outlet over Christmas-gray, drab and dreary and cut for children). She was adopted and has gone to live a happy life with her husband and her own adopted child, Simon. They have moved into the orphanage she lived in as a child, hoping to start their own school for special-needs children.
And then Simon disappears. What are the noises she hears? What is the odd psychic (a great Geraldine Chaplin) trying to tell her? And where is Simon? All the performances in this movies are great, but Belen Rueda as Laura is wonderful as a woman who is willing to do anything to rescue her child. It's like The Others, it's like Pan's Labyrinth but it still tells it's own story, and very well.
Next up was The Kingdom, a movie I didn't quite make it to in the theater. I did like it-Jamie Foxx was good, Chris Cooper didn't have much of a part (a waste of his talent) and Jason Bateman was quite good as a the reluctant member of the FBI group sent to investigate a bombing in Saudi Arabia. When I first saw the trailer, I wondered how he had gotten cast in this movie, but turns in the best performance in it, as a "reluctant warrior" (I can't remember which critic said this but it's the perfect description). He does it because he doesn't really have a choice-if he doesn't fight back, he'll die-and he comes awfully close as it is.
I haven't mentioned Jennifer Garner and that's because in her first scene she crying! She's an FBI agent, for God's sake! They would NEVER show Jamie Foxx crying or Chris Cooper-noooo. They get to comfort the woman while she cries. It was infuriating. However, after that she was good AND she got to stab a bad guy in the head in the action sequence where she's the star, so I guess that makes up for it.
Which bring us to this past weekend, when I saw Cloverfield in New York. It was funny though, because I thought the previews were going to be crappy but instead they were for:
A) The new Star Trek movie (Yes, I'll see it. Maybe. It depends.)
B) Iron Man-yes, I'll see that too, but I really hope Robert Downey jr is good in it-I love the preview and I usually love comic book movies.
C) Hellboy: The Golden Army. I'll see almost anything Guillermo del Toro directs, so of course I'm seeing this. I LOVED the first one.
My companion, on the other hand, thought they all looked awful. Of course, he hated the movie too. He hates science fiction and he hates action movie so I'm not sure why he wanted to see it (and I said to him three times "you know it's a monster movie set in New York, right? But it didn't help).
Yes, a big scary monster destroys New York, as viewed through a camcorder by some privileged Lower East side twenty-somethings. Was it scary? Yes. Was it insensitive to New Yorkers? Hell, yes. The scenes of buildings toppling and huge piles of rubble crashing through the streets while people hide in buildings? Of course it looks like 9-11. On the other hand, when the hero (kind of) gets cell reception down in the subway, you could hear everyone in the audience scoff at the idea of cell reception in the subway-only someone from California would think that you could get a call down there.
Did I like it? Yes, but the camcorder thing gave me a headache. Even five minutes of the jiggling camera was annoying. It was short but it packed a whole lot of scary into its 85 minutes.
posted by SHbookworm at 12:01 PM
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