16 Jan - "What's with all the bullets?"

Priest (2011)

dir. Scott Charles Stewart (Legion, 2009)

CAST
Paul Bettany (Iron Man 2 (voice), 2010)
Karl Urban (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 2002)
Maggie Q (Live Free or Die Hard, 2007)
Lily Collins
Brad Dourif (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003) 
Cam Gigandet (Easy A, 2010)
Alan Dale (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, 2008)
Christopher Plummer (Must Love Dogs, 2005)
Stephen Moyer

I'm so behind on my posts, so I'm going to divide and conquer and try to publish 2 every day, the most recent movie I watched and the least recent, and so hopefully everything will converge upon The Return of the King (as one does) in a few days and then I can move on with my ho-hum life and this foolish attempt to record my emotional development through the mediator of cinema. If this were a movie, I would have just spoiled the symbolism by explaining it with a voiceover. Soorry!

So, yesterday Cora had a bunch of her german friends over for dinner and Cillian and I watched Priest. I was pleased when he suggested we watch a movie because I'm just terrible at navigating large groups of people. Especially when it feels like everyone else likes each other a little bit more than they like me (Some people are able to successfully avoid this kind of scenario their whole lives, or else I'm just overanalyzing everything). I said we should watch something I've already seen before, in case it's hard to pay attention, so I suggested The Fifth Element, but I guess Cillian doesn't like that movie because he put on Priest, which I think would have been hard to follow in a dark movie theater with an acceptable sound system. On Cora's laptop, it was near impossible. Luckily there was a really tidy recap at the climax, where the villian explains the whole sequence of events for the stupid audience members, like me, who haven't been able to put it all together on their own yet. I finally understand why action movies always have that, now.

I found the premise to be delightful. In a post-apocalyptic future organized underneath a totalitarian clergy, one member of the elite warrior-priest caste goes rogue to take on a vampire scourge that has kidnapped his estranged daughter. That's some L33T science-fiction, right there. In this sotry-world, the future is very wastelandy, which is not an unreasonable assumption, especially if someone Fs us all over and drops a nuke somewhere. Yes, the future is a dark and desolate place, but nevertheless our Hero must fight to protect it.

20 Nov - "He was screaming like a little girl"

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)

dir. Grant Heslov

CAST
George Clooney (Burn After Reading, 2008)
Ewan McGregor (Miss Potter, 2006)
Jeff Bridges (The Last Unicorn (voice), 1982)
Kevin Spacey (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, 1997)
Stephen Lang (Avatar, 2009)
Robert Patrick (Terminator 2: Judgement Day, 1991)
Stephen Root (Rango (voice), 2011)
Tim Griffin (The Bourne Supremacy, 2004)
Nick Offerman (Stealing Harvard, 2002)
Glenn Morshower (The River Wild, 1994)
Rebecca Mader (The Devil Wears Prada, 2006)

I dunno what it is, I just didn't really like this movie either. It seems like it's been a while since I saw something that really wowed me. I'll be honest, I'm starting to lose enthusiasm for this whole blog thing. I'm starting to lose enthusiasm for a lot of things. I just didn't think it was that funny, or maybe it was just that I couldn't really get into sitting still while I was watching it.

Here's one thing that I thought could have been better, though. For most of the movie, it was ambiguous whether these guys were fooling themselves or not, but then it started to toe the line of 'no wait, we are serious about these powers' and then it wasn't so funny anymore. The mass delusion is what it makes it interesting and funny, and when Ewan McGregor's character starts buying into it--because who DOESN'T want to believe he or she has super powers?--it's even better. Honestly, the second half of the movie is a total blur.

17 Sept - "Well, anybody can look happy in a photograph"

Desert Blue (1998)

dir. Morgan J. Freeman

CAST
Casey Affleck (American Pie 2, 2001)
Richmond Arquette (Scream 3, 2000)
Daniel von Bargen (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991)
Sara Gilbert (High Fidelity, 2000)
John Heard (Home Alone, 1990)
Kate Hudson (How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, 2003)
Michael Ironside (Top Gun, 1986)
Christina Ricci (Mermaids, 1990)
Rene Rivera (Disturbia, 2007)
Peter Sarsgaard (Garden State, 2004)
Liev Schreiber (voice) (Party Girl, 1995)
Brandon Sexton III (Welcome to the Dollhouse, 1995)
Ethan Suplee (Mallrats, 1995)


So the main reason I watched this movie was that there's this song on the soundtrack that I really like. It's by New Zealand singer/songwriter Bic Runga, and it's called "Lonely Lola Cherry Cola Girl." It's not on any of her albums. I managed to get a digital copy of it back in college, I don't know how. I wanted to imbed it in this this article, but I can't find it on the youtube. I'll imbed a different song, just for fun.

I like this song because it's about unrequited love, which is old hat, obviously, but then in the chorus she goes, "something good will come OUR way" which makes me think that things are going to look up not just for the singer, but for the object of her affection. That makes me think that things aren't going so hot for the other person either, which is sad but also reassuring. This is a good segway into the film analysis.

You mught notice a teenaged Kate Hudson up there on the cover, she plays a young TV actress who, while on a road trip with her father, gets quarantined in the small desert town of Baxter following a truck accident and a mysterious death. The trick is that this movie isn't really about that character, but it's really about Blue Baxter, son of the town's recently deceased founder, as it takes this monumental interruption to everyday life to make him come to terms with the impact of his father's death. The town's other teenagers, Casey Affleck, Christina Ricci, and Ethan Suplee, also grapple with the insidious revelation that not all dreams can come true, of course, some dreams are bigger than others. There's a cute little bit where the kids are sitting around a bonfire and Kate Hudson asks something along the lines of, 'If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do?" and of course they all start making out in pairs.

In other respects, this was a lot like any other lightly comedic, independent film about young people coming of age. I don't think it was anything particularly marvelous, but it was okay, I guess.