4 July - "A toast to the end of the world"

Independence Day (1996)

dir. Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow, 1996)

CAST
Will Smith (I Am Legend, 2007)
Jeff Goldblum (The Big Chill, 1983)
Bill Pullman (Sleepless in Seattle, 1993)
Randy Quaid (Brokeback Mountain, 2005)
Robert Loggia (Big, 1988)
Mary McDonnell (Donnie Darko, 2001)
Vivica A. Fox (Batman & Robin, 1997)
Margaret Colin (The Devil's Own, 1997)
James Rebhorn (Cold Mountain, 2003)
Harvey Fierstein (Mrs. Doubtfire, 1993)
Adam Baldwin (Serenity, 2005)
James Duval (The Doom Generation, 1995)
Lisa Jakub (The Beautician and the Beast, 1997)
Giuseppe Andrews (American History X, 1998)
Bill Smitrovich (Iron Man, 2008)
Mae Whitman (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, 2010)
Harry Connick Jr.  (New in Town, 2009)

Independence Day is not my favorite fourth of July movie (that would be this one) but it is still a pretty good one. I think we can all agree that the best scene is when the dog leaps out of the way of the explosion, and that it is very inspiring when Bill Pullman tells us that the fourth of the July will no longer be an American holiday, but a day when the whole world will celebrate it's Independence Day (that's the eponymous moment).

23 Mar- "Whatever you do don't let them starve"

The Hunger Games (2012)

dir. Gary Ross - Pleasantville (1998)

CAST
Stanley Tucci - Easy A (2010)
Wes Bentley - American Beauty (1999)
Jennifer Lawrence - The Burning Plain (2008)
Elizabeth Banks - Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)
Sandra Ellis Lafferty - Walk the Line (2005)
Paula Malcomson - The Green Mile (1999)
Rhoda Griffis - Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)
Josh Hutcherson - Howl's Moving Castle, voice (2004)
Anthony Reynolds - Down in the Valley (2005)
Woody Harrelson - Zombieland (2009)
Toby Jones - Les Miserables (1998)
Lenny Kravitz - Precious (2009)
Donald Sutherland - Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

Of course, everyone who's anyone who gives a shit has already seen The Hunger Games, but I was there on opening night, in the fifth row, craning my neck upwards to watch the story unfold. I liked it, I enjoyed it. I thought it was visually appealing, but I also think it could have been better. Here's why:

1) Adaption of a book based on a first person perspective
The book is told from Katniss's perspective, and the readers are limited in our understanding of her world by her physical limitations. For this reason, we can't really understand what goes on in the minds of the other tributes, for example, and we can't see the reactions of the audience in Panem. The medium of film is almost always in third person perspective (with the exception of found-footage based movies). That means we lose Katniss's inner dialogue, which is tough because she isn't a very verbal character, but it also means we are able to see a lot of the world than Katniss is. I don't think the filmmakers took advantage of that strength. The other tributes were irritatingly flat characters. In the book five out of the twelve were portrayed largely as mindless killers, but that doesn't mean the filmmakers couldn't show them as being more rounded out. Which brings me to the next point.

2) Uncreative storyboarding
The point of the Hunger Games is that they are televised for the people of Panem. Since the book was from Katniss's perspective, we didn't get to see how she was portrayed on film. But this time it's in a movie and we are the audience. I would have liked to see some more creative changes in perspective that could drawn the audience into the story-world and potentially make the movie a lot more meaningful. After all, it's supposed to be a critique of the brutality of watching other people suffer. Let's make the audience feel a little less safe and a little more culpable.

3) Josh Hutcherson
How about we just get one of those big Easter Island heads to play Peeta?

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.

22 Dec - "Are you so naive as to think that they won't battle their own extinction?"

X-Men: First Class (2011)

dir. Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass, 2010)

CAST
David Agranov (Just Married, 2003)
Kevin Bacon (Planes, Trains & Automobiles, 1987)
Randall Batinkoff (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1992)
Jason Beghe (Thelma & Louise, 1991)
Rose Byrne (Bridesmaids, 2011)
Matt Craven (Devil, 2010)
Don Creech (The Professional, 1994)
Tony Curran (The 13th Warrior, 1999)
Michael Fassbender (Jane Eyre, 2011)
Brendan Fehr (A Christmas Kiss, TV 2011)
Jason Flemyng (Spice World, 1997)
Edi Gathegi (Twilight, 2008)
Demetri Goritsas (National Treasure: Book of Secrets, 2007)
Michael Ironside (Desert Blue, 1998)
Corey Johnson (Kick-Ass, 2010)
January Jones (Love Actually, 2003)
Zoe Kravitz (Twelve, 2010)
Olek Krupa (Burn After Reading, 2008)
Jennifer Lawrence
Morgan Lily (2012, 2009)
James McAvoy (Gnomeo & Juliet (voice), 2011)
Glenn Morshower (The Crazies, 2010)
Oliver Platt (Love and Other Drugs, 2010)
Sasha Pieterse (Good Luck Chuck, 2007)
Ludger Pistor (The Informant!, 2009)
James Remar (Pineapple Express, 2008)
Rade Serbedzija (Middle Men, 2009)
Lucas Till (Hannah Montana: The Movie, 2009)

I love the X-Men. I think they're a hoot and a half, but the problem with a movie like this is you're sacrificing character development for the insertion of a panoply of characters which are already beloved in the canon. So they say, "Oh, more people will see the movie if it has Emma Frost, Havok, Sebastian Shaw, etc., plus the characters we liked best in the other movies, like Mystique" and then you've got all these characters bumping around and it just muddles up the story. My favorite movies have small casts. Another problem was that the development of the conflict wasn't very well thought out. The main story should have been about Sebastian Shaw and his cronies attempting to incite war between the U.S. and Russia (Although even now I'm sure exactly why this was the case except a vague Magneto-esk desire to assert Mutant superiority). This challenge should have been faced and overcome by Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr, and framed in the development and then demise of their friendship. Instead we get all sorts of identity issues from Mystique and Beast and a bunch of other young mutants thrown in for zazzle without actual depth and relationships. The episodic unraveling of the plot made me feel like the story lacked clarity and cohesion, so while there were good elements and good scenes, I couldn't say with confidence that this is a good movie.

11 Dec - "All the way to the top is the safest place"

Skyline (2010)

dir. Cloin Strause, Greg Strause

CAST
Eric Balfour (America's Sweethearts, 2001)
Scottie Thompson (Star Trek, 2009)
Brittany Daniel (Joe Dirt, 2001)
David Zayas (The Interpreter, 2005)
Donald Faison (Uptown Girls, 2003)
Tanya Newbould (Cyrus, 2010)

Unfortunately, this alien invasion movie brought alarmingly little to the genre. In fact, so much money was invested in the special effects in the last 30 minutes, all that could be managed in the previous hour were our five vapid and charmless protagonists hanging out in their penthouse acting scared and fighting about whether they should go outside. Given that so little time was given to the rising action, you'd think we might at least get some character development, but that was unforthcoming as well. The only intriguing part of this movie was the absolutely last scene, in which the male lead becomes some sort of alien-human cyborg monster but, unlike all the other alien-human cyborg monsters, he retains his own mental agency, and so he crouches protectively over his woman and then it's over.

30 Oct - "You can't use the front door now"

Kick-Ass (2010)

dir. Matthew Vaughn (Stardust, 2007)

CAST
Randall Batinkoff (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1992)
Xander Berkeley (Terminator 2: Judgement Day, 1991)
Nicolas Cage (Leaving Las Vegas, 1995)
Clark Duke (Superbad, 2007)
Craig Ferguson (Saving Grace, 2000)
Jason Flemyng (From Hell, 2001)
Dexter Fletcher (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, 1998)
Tamer Hassan (Eastern Promises, 2007)
Aaron Johnson (Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, 2008)
Corey Johnson (Saving Private Ryan, 1998)
Adrian Martinez (Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, 2007)
Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Role Models, 2008)
Chloë Grace Moretz (Bolt (voice), 2008)
Evan Peters (Sleepover, 2004)
Kenneth Simmons (My Super Ex-Girlfriend, 2006)
Mark Strong (Robin Hood, 2010)

This was a fun and entertaining movie, I'm surprised that it wasn't more popular. At least as popular as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which I haven't seen yet, but I hear about it all the time and I've only heard this movie in passing coversation like once, I think. The best part is that, in the sense that it's an origin story, this movie is only slightly more plausible than something like Batman or Spiderman. They don't have superpowers, but by virtue of getting the shit kicked out of him, the portagonist has metal-reinforced bones and damaged nerve endings that...allow him to take a beating with slightly more fortitude than the average bear. By the end we see the critical balance reestablished, with the creation of a more powerful force of good we also see a concurrent rise in the force of evil. Like all of our other favorite supervillains, we see the polarizing forces of good and evil repelling, even with resistance, each other like magnets.

It wouldn't surprise me if the screenwriter had referenced Joseph Campbell. Nobody really wants to become that which is overtly and inherently despicable, and yet these characters arise from the ethos and by forces out of their hands are ostracized into dark and lonely places. I'm getting too philosophical now. My point is that this movie fits an archetype, but it's a good archetype.

Nicolas Cage is in it, and he's a polarizing actor, but I've defended him before and I'll do it again because I like Nicolas Cage and I think I get what he does. It's a role that's well suited to him.

I perused a few reviews of this movies, and while overall I think it recieved a positive reaction, several negative reviews focused on how appalling it was to watch Hit-Girl, played by an 11-year old actress, behave with so much callous violence, and profanity, and also recieve a vicious beating from a grown man. On the other hand, I'm certain that they would not be so alarmed if the character was an 11 year old boy.

This review by Prairie Miller cites Kick-Ass as a shocking display of child exploitation. Part of this character has to do with shock value, I'm sure, and also the slightly comedic incongrutiy that Hit-Girl is a much tougher cookie than the older and masculine Kick-Ass. But more importantly I this this is the only female superhero character I've ever seen that does NOT represent exploitation. Even though she unleashes a lot of bloodshed, she's happy, she's healthy, she has an odd, but loving parent, she's strong and not sexualized - can we say that of any other heroine? Certainly not Elektra, definitely not Catwoman. Praire Miller says that depicting children being beaten in fictional scenarios is unacceptable and potentially disturbing to children in violent homes. But violence happens in the world, and this character isn't victimized, she is an agent of her own storyline. She accepts violence with dignity and retaliates from a postion of strength. That's awesome, not just for children, but even grown up children like me.

I know it's supposed to be a funny movie, and so it was, but I just wanted to talk about it this way instead.

21 Aug - "I'm not saying Uncle Sam can kick back on a lawn chair, sipping on an iced tea"

Iron Man 2 (2010)

dir. Jon Favreau (Cowboys & Aliens, 2011)

CAST

Robert Downey Jr. (Back to School, 1986)

Gwyneth Paltrow (Hook, 1991)

Don Cheadle (Traffic, 2000)

Scarlett Johansson (Eight Legged Freaks, 2002)

Sam Rockwell (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, 2007)

Mickey Rourke

Samuel L. Jackson (Goodfellas, 1990)

Clark Gregg (Magnolia, 1999)

John Slattery (Traffic, 2000)

Garry Shandling (Doctor Dolittle, 1998)

Paul Bettany (voice) (A Knight's Tale, 2001)

Kate Mara (Brokeback Mountain, 2005)

Leslie Bibb (Private Parts, 1997)

Jon Favreau (PCU, 1994)
Evgeniy Lazarev (The Onion Movie, 2008)

How am I finding time to watch all these movies while simultaneously beginning my second year of grad school, you might be wondering? Well, I'm paralyzed into near inaction on almost everything resembling productivity, therefore I abuse my drug of choice in the pusuit of the sweet release into transcendance: cinema.

I enjoyed Robert Downey Jr.'s performance in Iron Man because I thought he portrayed an asshole billionaire very well. Iron Man 2 was more of the same and a little less exciting for it. As is usual for a superhero sequel, a potentially wonderful supervillain was underdeveloped. Here he is in the opening credits giving vodka to a cockatoo.

That's hilarious! I want more Vanko/Cockatoo relationship development. And more Sam Rockwell! Gwyneth Paltrow spent the whole movie acting like an overwhelmed harridan. I think there was supposed to be something resembling sexual tension between her and Iron Man, but I wasn't feeling it. Scarlett Johannson was an oversexualized agent of SHIELD - I think there needs to be a movie law that a character can't have more KOs than he or she has speaking lines (exceptions for actor/director combinations that are actually talented). I think there was a TV movie called Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D but I don't know anything else about that.

If you haven't figured it out already, I'm not a Jon Favreau fan. All in all, Iron Man 2 was unexceptional; I'll probably forget all about it in a few days.

4 Aug - "I don't know much about boats, but I would say that one's upside down."

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
dir. Jon Favreau (Elf, 2003)

CAST

Daniel Craig (Elizabeth, 1998)

Harrison Ford (Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, 1977)

Olivia Wilde

Sam Rockwell (The Assassination of James James by the Coward Robert Ford, 2007)

Clancy Brown (The Burrowers, 1986)

Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine, 2006)

Chris Browning (3:10 to Yuma, 2007)

Adam Beach (Smoke Signals, 1998)

Ana de la Reguera (Nacho Libre, 2006)

Noah Ringer (The Last Airbender, 2010)

Toby Huss (Vegas Vacation, 1997)

Walton Goggins (Shanghai Noon, 2000)

David O'Hara (Braveheart, 1995)

Raoul Trujillo (Black Robe, 1991)

David Midthunder (The Burrowers, 1986)
Charlene Adams

One thing that I decided during this movie is that Sam Rockwell has got to be my #1 actor crush, which seems silly when there's a whole bevy of Adonises to choose from but, Lord help me, I've got a thing for character actors and Sam Rockwell always plays that clueless and sort of sleazy guy and it just kills me. I'm silly.

On the point, I thoroughly enjoyed watching Cowboys & Aliens, but it also failed to meet many of my expectations, and to be sure I had a lot of expectations going into this movie.

My first thought was that the core concept was very clever, because western films encapsulate the idealized values of the perfect American citizen. Independent, hardworking, honorable, etc. I firmly believe that in our (white American) hearts, we all desperately want to be cowboys because it represents a human of higher quality than we see ourselves to be (City Slickers in particular made a profit off this theme). Alien movies, on the other hand, are about xenophobia, protecting the interior from frightening and strange external forces and entities. Who better to protect America from scary aliens than the ideal American everyman/hero?

To this effect, I expected Cowboys & Aliens to use more of the motifs and thematic elements typical of the traditional western narrative. There was some of that: the decaying mining town, the impotence of official law enforcement, but this was also a very modern movie, especially in the development of relationships.

I was reading some internet articles about the movie and I have to say that they made some good points. The first thing is that the pairing of Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig should have overwhelmed us with the glorious union of their manliness, but the dynamic between the two actors fizzled. They didn't actually share very much screentime. They didn't work well together, and what should have been a friendship didn't really feel very fraternal at all. Big fail on that.

Also, I don't think Olivia Wilde's character should have been in the movie. Her presence as a love interest was unnecessary, and detracted from the emotional weight of Jake's wife's death via abduction, which was actually a very disturbing scene. Wilde's brief backstory was outlandish (in a science-ficiton movie, no less) and I don't really need to know where the aliens came from or why they are on Earth or why they are kidnapping and killing humans (to learn our weaknesses? Really? We are soft meaty bodies. Is it necessary to know more than one way to skin a cat?)

Part of the advantage of the old west setting should be that the audience can engage in the bafflement of the characters. Bright lights? Flying machines?? Are they demons?

On the other hand, old time people had to confront insane levels of novelty all of the time. What if you just saw a giant anteater walking around one day, and nothing you had ever experienced you before had prepared you for the experience. They are crazy looking and you would just have to deal with that. You want to know why old timey people believed in monsters? It's because they saw monsters all of the time.

So I think that Jake Lonergan and Corporal Dolarhyde would be a lot less interested in learning about who the aliens are and what they want, than figuring out where they live and how to kill them. I think we would have been better served with a little mystery than a naked Olivia Wilde explaining how she took human on this planet to make certain the invaders would not destroy the earth as well.

27 July - "I am already grown up. I just get older."

The Professional (1994)

dir. Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, 1997)

CAST

Jean Reno (La Femme Nikita, 1990)

Gary Oldman (Air Force One, 1997)

Natalie Portman (Heat, 1995)

Danny Aiello (2 Days in the Valley, 1996)

Michael Badalucco (Desperately Seeking Susan, 1985)

Robert LaSardo (Waterworld, 1995)

Adam Busch (Sugar & Spice, 2001)

Jernard Burks (The Hangover, 2009)

Peter Linari (Men in Black, 1997)
Maïwenn Le Besco (The Fifth Element, 1997)
Don Creech (The Island, 2005)

What a wonderful movie - this one is tops. I added the "Favority Favorites" tag - because that's for movies that I think are high caliber. First: Gary Oldman as the villain = genius. And he does this thing where he takes drugs or something before he did anything really evil and it was just so totally Oldman. He's tops, my favorite actor, I think.

Natalie Portman is also awesome, she's like ten or so in this movie and you can really tell that even at that point she was a skilled actress. Jean Reno, the star, is also fabulous, but unfortunately his entire career is pretty much the one role. In fact, I usually just refer to him as "that French actor" and people usually understand who I mean.

The Professional is the movie which, for me, at least, defines the older man-younger girl relationship theme. Natalie Portman's character isn't just looking for a father figure - she's clinging the best family she's ever known with the least likely candidate, the hitman who lives down the hall.

For me, the most moving scene in the movie is when Leon goes to see his boss, played by the quintessentially Italian Danny Aiello. At this point we see that Leon isn't exactly the brusque tough guy that we imagined him to be, and certainly not the untouchable tough that other hitmen movies present with their characters. Aiello dominates Leon, he can barely get a word in edgewise. We learn that he is illiterate, let's the Italian manage all of his money. Leon is afraid to ask for what is his. He's meek. The girl gives him something to stand up for. She gives him something to live for. It's phenomenal acting, there's a vulnerability in both the protagonists that is all too rare in this sort of movie. Because it's an action movie and ostensibly there's no room for emotion, but that's wrong. The subtlety of the emotion is what makes it work.

20 July - "Ride till we find them, and kill them all"

The 13th Warrior (1999)

dir. John McTiernan (Die Hard, 1988)

CAST

Antonio Banderas (Desperado, 1995)

Tony Curran (Ondine, 2009)

Omar Sharif (10,000 B.C. (voice), 2008)

Erick Avari (Mr. Deeds, 2002)

Diane Venora (Heat, 1995)

I don't think I can emphasize enough how much I enjoyed watching this masterpiece. If you haven't seen this, and you have a healthy appreciation for the ludicrous - I recommend you hop to the task immediately.

Apparently the script is based upon a Michael Crichton book called Eaters of the Dead, which I never even heard of, and I love Michael Crichton! So obviously there's a trashy novel I need to read.

The premise is a treasure. First of all, Antonio is playing an Arab. Really? Did anyone really think this could be pulled off effectively? He doesn't even TRY to change his accent. No one is buying this:

On the other hand, I think we can all get behind this:

Yeah, brother, get medieval on those cannibals!

OK- so Antonio Banderas is an Arabian diplomat who, for unclear reasons, is sent to Europe to live with the brutish Northmen, who are like Vikings, I guess. You might say there's a little twist where the Europeans appear to be barbaric and gross while the Arab guy is clean and dignified, can read and write, and practices a monotheistic religion (I will say it again, but watching Antonio Banderas pretending to be Muslim is totally rich). The plot thickens when our beturbaned hero is sent with twelve Viking warriors to assist a neighboring kingdom with a dark enemy threatening their well being. It turns out these evil dudes live a lot like those cultists in Temple of Doom:

I've been sick with some god-awful derivation of a summer flu. So I haven't felt up to much besides watching movies and past seasons of Hell's Kitchen. So I'm like five movies behind on my blog entries, and I'm also trying to make a post on my 10 favorite actresses I just haven't quite figured out who they all are yet (there are some surprises in there). So stay tuned, few and far-between readers.

27 June - "The little statue speaks"

Kiss of the Dragon (2001)

dir. Chris Nahon

starring

Jet Li (The Warlords, 2007)

Bridget Fonda (Rough Magic, 1995)

Tchéky Karyo (The Patriot, 2000)

I have to add Jet Li to my list of actor crushes, because that guy is so cute. Kiss of the Dragon is about a Chinese cop who is framed for a murder by a French cop. This movie has it all, Jet Li acting like he has no personality, Bridget Fonda as an American prostitute with a 12% plausible excuse for being in France, French ninjas...and so much more!

It's a Jet Li movie, so what you really want to see is a bunch of awesome martial arts, and wow, do they provide. I liked Kiss of the Dragon almost as much as District B13. Early on they find an excuse in the plot for why Jet Li doesn't have any guns, and so he just wails on everybody for like 45 minutes with whatever's at hand. He's like a tiny tornado of fury!

This still reminds me of a fella I used to date, sorry about the awful quality. Jet Li is short, that's what I'm trying to emphasize here. Although the contrast wasn't quite so stark between me and my former beau, because he didn't let me wear high heels :P

So the characters and plot lacked a bit of depth, but there were plenty of great setups for fight scenes. Like after Jet Li beats up Lupo the pimp and his cronies, this big black shows up out of no where and takes off his shirt! And all this is before Jet Li figures out that Bridget Fonda is the hooker who witnessed the murder he's being framed for!

Later, Jet Li finds a whole room full of ninjas, somehow, for some reason, they were all practicing together or something in a room adjacent to the villain's headquarters. This scene really made no sense whatsoever.

Of course Jet Li kicks all their butts!

16 June - "Without Green Destiny, you are nothing!"

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

dir. Ang Lee (Lust, Caution, 2007)

starring

Chow Yun Fat (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, 2007)

Michelle Yeoh (Sunshine, 2007)

Ziyi Zhang (Memoirs of a Geisha, 2005)

The first time I saw this movie, I was about ten years younger and I though to myself - Aww dang, a subtitled movie :(

But by the end I was totally engrossed, I forgot that I was reading and just got lost in the story. But I still must have been hopping around my bedroom because somehow I missed that whole romance between Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat, which was lovely and tragic.

It reminded of someone saying, and I probably heard this in another movie, that you have to be even braver to make the decision to be happy, because it's always easier to make no decision and keep being frustrated*. These folks are making the easy choices, choosing to empower the status quo rather than admitting that they would be happier doing something else.

The primary conflict is created by a rogue warrior, the Jade Fox, a woman who turned bad because the teacher of wutan (their flying-around fighting style) kept her around as a consort but would not teach her the secrets of fighting, and so she stole the book and took a wealthy bureaucrats daughter as her apprentice. The student soon outmatches her teacher, but is uncertain whether she want's the pursue the path of her wayward teacher, flee with her true love - a bandit king from the desert - or stay at home and get married. She leans toward the latter option until she get in over her head stealing the sword of Green Destiny.

I'm trying to think of lesson, or to relate this to my own life somehow. Maybe it's something like the way you don't get the chance to make everything right until it's too late. Maybe the important thing was the way the warriors were able to float up walls and fight on the tops of bamboo branches. It might be a metaphor for being untethered to the world, the freedom of being unbound by custom, and yet the inability to create a bond with anyone else. Which might be why the young girl wasn't able to be with her love, because it was too late to undo the things that had been done.

The end was very sad.

* I remembered! It was Kamikaze Girls - A really great movie

6 June - "Everyone knows the movies are full of shit"

Blade: Trinity (2004)
dir. David S. Goyer

CAST
Wesley Snipes (Demolition Man, 1993)

Jessica Biel (Elizabethtown, 2005)

Ryan Reynolds (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, 2004)

Patton Oswalt (The Informant!, 2009)

Kris Kristofferson (He's Just Not That Into You, 2009)

Dominic Purcell

Parker Posey (Party Girl, 1995)

Natasha Lyonne (Slums of Beverley Hills, 1992)

John Michael Higgins (Best in Show, 2000)
Callum Keith Rennie (The Butterfly Effect, 2004)

This is quite possibly the worst movie to ever come out of Marvel, although I never saw Ghost Rider. That being said, it easily crossed that line where horrendous turns awesome. Reynolds and Biel (plus a bow and arrow) are two vampire-fighting vigilantes that team up with blade to take down the insidious vampire conspiracy to resurrect Dracula (who is actually a Sumerian, as in, cradle of civilization), led by chief vampire Parker Posey who is so fabulously whacked out that I want her to have her own spin off movie starring her crazy vampire chick and an army of vampirized Pomeranians (that's right!)

Ryan Reynolds is spot on in his portrayal of Ryan Reynolds, seamlessly developing the skills he later uses to act like Ryan Reynolds in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and presumably The Green Lantern. Jessica Biel is less convincing as a badass with a dark past. The writers were merciful and limited her speaking parts.

I think the biggest failing was the apparent absence of a threat. Dracula, or "Drake," as he was called. Was not a very threatening villain. His character was uncompelling, he only killed two goth kids, and it was unclear whether he was planning to lead a vampire revolution or whatever. As in Blade 2, the vampires were concerned with the possibility to transforming into Daywalkers, which is what Blade is (Quick origin story: Blade's mom was bitten by a vampire as she was in labor, so Blade is half-vampire, as strong as a vampire, but able to walk in the daylight. Side effects include a pesky bloodlust that is controlled by some sort of "serum"). However, Drake seemed to imply that this was impossible, neutralizing any sense of urgency. So the plot was totally vague, but there was a lot of vampire fighting, so it would be impossible to say that this movie failed to meet expectations.