CAST Suraj Sharma Irrfan KhanSlumdog Millionaire (2000) Gérard Depardieu The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)
I went to see Life of Pi in 3D at the for-real movie theater with a fella. We watch a lot of movies together but at $10 a pop (even with a student discount) going to the cinema still seems like a big deal. We saw another movie together...it was Taken 2. Which I think would have been better named, Taken, Too. But no one asks what I think. He didn't even read the book, Life of Pi, I mean, by Yann Martel. I know I read it when it first came out because I still have the hardback copy at home somewhere. Sometimes I'm really disappointed when I choose a book based on the bright colors (plus a tiger) on it's cover, but in this case I was right to choose as I did. I think I read it twice.
The movie preserved the key elements of the book, but I think lost a little in the streamlining of the plot. While I'm never thrilled about a movie that's more than 2 hours long, I wish some of the parts where Pi's just sitting around were preserved. These are the scenes where we get to feel the thrill of his smallest accomplishments, learning to fish, using the solar still, when he catches a turtle. Without these trials, Pi's survival is punctuated only by fortuitous interventions, the school of flying fish, the carnivorous island, etc.
CAST Richard Widmark (How the West was Won, 1962) Marilyn Monroe (River of No Return, 1954) Elisha Cook, Jr. (The Great Gatsby, 1949) Anne Bancroft (Great Expectations, 1998)
Don't Bother to Knock stars Marilyn Monroe as a young woman losing her grip on reality as she babysits the child of hotel guests while being courted by a licentious lout from across the courtyard who soon discovers he's bitten off more than he can chew. The main character delicately treads the line between fantasy and reality, anger and keen sadness. Ultimately, however, this movie isn't really about Monroe's character, it's about a unresolved romance between Jed, an airline pilot with zero attachments, and Lyn Lesley, a lounge singer who wants to be more than his sometimes fling. As Jed's courtship of Monroe's unstable character turns dark, the subsequent character growth is what allows him to return to Lyn with his whole heart after the alarming climax.
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?
dir. Chris Columbus (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, 2001)
CAST Mark Beltzman (Employee of the Month, 2004)
John Candy (Canadian Bacon, 1995) Kieran Culkin (The Cider House Rules, 1999) Macaulay Culkin (Saved!, 2004) Hope Davis (The Matador, 2005) Matt Doherty (Ghost World, 2001) Bill Erwin (The Land Before Time (voice), 1988) Angela Goethals (Spanglish, 2004) Larry Hankin (Vegas Vacation, 1997) John Heard (Desert Blue, 1998) Sandra Macat (Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, 1992) Michael C. Maronna (Slackers, 2002) Catherine O'Hara (Where the Wild Things Are (voice), 2009) Jim Ortlieb (A Mighty Wind, 2003) Joe Pesci (8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, 1997) Peter Siragusa (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (voice), 2009) Daniel Stern (City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold, 1994) Ray Toler (A League of Their Own, 1992) Alan Wilder (A League of Their Own, 1992)
Believe it or not, this was the first time I saw Home Alone: original flavor. I was surprised that I liked Lost in New York slightly better, but that did not detract from the pleasantness of this Christmas classic. Something about the extraordinary amount of punishment these two crooks can endure without permanent injury is amazing to me, and thoroughly enjoyable. I guess I haven't seen enough slapstick in children's comedies.
I also liked the counter-narrative of Kevin's mother, which isn't as strong in the sequel. The irony is that in her desire to return home as quickly as possible, she has to resort to a variety of planes, trains & automobiles (helped out by good Samaritan John Candy, of course!) but in the end she only arrives moments before the rest of the family, who waited in France a few days before catching the next available flight home. But the important thing is that she worked for it, right? Sometimes when I'm caught in traffic I'll take a much longer alternative route, even though I'm not certain if I'm actually saving time. The illusion of movement gives purpose to the journey.
CAST James Woods (Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (voice), 2001) Josh Hartnett (The Faculty, 1998) Kathleen Turner (Peggy Sue Got Married, 1986) Scott Glenn (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991) Danny Devito (Romancing the Stone, 1984) Hanna Hall (Forrest Gump, 1994) A.J. Cook (Final Destination 2, 2003) Robert Schwartzman (The Princess Diaries, 2001) Kirsten Dunst (Elizabethtown, 2005) Hayden Christensen (Star Wars: Episode II- Attack of the Clones, 2002) Giovanni Ribisi (voice) (That Thing You Do!, 1996)
This movie is one of those surprising examples of how Kirsten Dunst can act pretty damn well when she's cast in the right role. In fact, this movie was surprising in a lot of ways, and it was better than I anticipated. It was sort of like a mystery movie, as you know when the movie starts that these girls aren't going to make it, and you keep watching as you're guided through the film by a third-party narrator, studying their words and their faces to try and figure out what was so wrong with life that these five pretty sisters decided it wasn't even worth trying anymore.
I think there are two ways you can look at it. One the one hand, you might think that the girls are a bit narcissistic, and that the drama of strict parents and boys who don't call back (am I right?) was the only impetus for them to make some grand gesture indicating that they were simply fed up with all the bullshit. After all, they were too young to know actually misery. They had nice parents and a nice home and everyone liked them. Right?
But I think that theory doesn't really add up under a closer scrutiny. At least, not in a poetic, cinematic world. I think maybe the girls were suffering from a severe case of ennui, and having briefly tasted love, adventure, etc. were frustrated to discover that this was all life had to offer, and decided to opt out for lack of anticipation. Peter Pan style: "death will be an awfully big adventure."
But the movie was intentionally unclear. Our narrators adore and admire the sisters from afar, intimately collecting the details of their lives, but never actually try to befriend the girls discover what they really are. And so there's also an tone of loneliness to the movie. I suppose that's the nature of loss. Never knowing what lies at the core of someone else's heart, then suddenly that person isn't there anymore, and you're never certain why she left or how life could have been different.
CAST Patrick Fabian (Must Love Dogs, 2005) Becky Fly Victoria Patenaude
I've read a lot of articles about The Last Exorcism already, so I'm going to try and not repeat any of those critiques. However, I don't think that will be too hard because nothing I read about The Last Exorcism prepared me for the actually movie, which pleasantly defied expectation.
So what I heard was that this movie was about an exorcist who really doesn't believe in demonic possession and just provides a cathartic performance to superstitious rubes. Of course, in this last case all is not as it seems, and it starts to become difficult to figure out who is playing who, and what are the motivations. I guess you could say it was a twist ending, but it was the clever kind that I like. Looking back, I think the biggest tell was the suffering girl's brother, when he told the preacher that he saw the trick that made it look like the water was miraculously boiling, and that meant the preacher was "alright in my book."
See, he was in on it the whole time. And I know the father was genuinely trying to save his daughter, but I can't decide whether the girl was a willing sacrificial lamb or not. At times it seemed like she genuinely wanted to be saved, but at other times she appeared to be putting on her own "show" of possession, acting like a parody of Regan MacNeil (oblique reference!) and lying intentionally about where she had gone and what she had done. But on the other hand, she had moments of precognition which at first seemed to reveal sinister intent, like a picture of the preacher and his film crew being slaughtered, but may have also served as a warning. Maybe she wanted to protect the exorcisors? This may warrant a second viewing.
CAST Jack Nicholson (The Witches of Eastwick, 1987) Shelley Duvall (Home Fries, 1998) Joe Turkel (Blade Runner, 1982)
My friend Cora says that The Shining was a terrible movie to choose for a date. I thought it was OK, though. I've never see The Shining and neither had my gentleman companion and it's on my list of famous movies I really ought to get around to.
You see how casually I introduce context?
Anyway, I knew enough about this movie to not be too surprised by any of the twists and turns. Although I WAS surprised by the scary naked lady scene. I didn't really get that part, was she supposed to be the murdered wife of the first caretaker? Like the little girls? But then why did her age change, and why was she covered in tattoos? Were those tattoos? I wasn't sure.
I was also hoping there would be more hedge maze featured in the movie. I'm a big fan of hedge mazes, so maybe I should be grateful that this movie didn't make them horror-filled death traps for me.
My mom says that Stephen King only writes about immature boys, and even though that isn't what The Shining is about at all, you can tell that his strength is certainly not writing about married couples. The dynamic between Shelley Duvall and Jack Nicholson was horrendous. They didn't even seem like a happy couple at the beginning. Duvall acts like an obsequious, irritating wife with no inner life, and Nicholson is an asshole husband even before he goes crazy.
In conclusion, the scenes with running and chopping were good, the dialogue not so much.
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.
CAST Marco Hofschneider Julie Delpy (Broken Flowers, 2005)
Last week my neighbor/bff asked me to go with her to the German club's movie night and this was the selection. The funny thing was that I thought this movie was hilarious, it thought it was like a comedy, but my poor neighborette did not share my mirth. She's German, so I guess it's like a too-close-to-home thing for her.
So it's a German war movie, and the kid here is Jewish, and he gets separated from the rest of his family, and he has to pass as a non-Jew in order to not be murdered. It doesn't seem like a comedic premise, but bear with me. Sometimes I'm worried that I might be sort of racist sometimes. I try not to be that way, but I think in this case I have a valid argument. I wasn't the only one in the room who was laughing.
The first point of humor is that Solly (Solomon or Solek) keeps getting left behind by whatever group he's tagging along with by a very narrow margin, this inevitably leads to him narrowly escaping demise, also by a very narrow margin. For example, Solly gets separated from his older brother due to a mix-up with some boats, but then his boat lands on the wrong shore and Solly gets taken up by some Bolsheviks and put into a communist orphanage. but then when the school is destroyed Solly gets left behind by the other orphans. At another point Solly (alias Peter) is told that he's going to have to provide some documentation about being German, and all is almost lost, but then the building is blown up and the administrator dies, problem solved!
It is also important that this is a very sexual movie, and the sex is treated very comically. On his train ride to the Hitler Youth School, an older woman seduces Solly (in the dark, of course!) fawning over his dark hair and the fact that he shares the same birthday as Hitler. "Mein Furor!" she exclaims in the throes of passion. To further emphasis the irony of stereotypes, Solly has a dream sequence in which he and Hitler are hiding in a closet together. "He's Jewish too," Solly's dead sister explains, "that's why he hides it with his hands." "Don't tell them I'm here!" the cowering Hitler moans.
I will also say that a lot of this movie revolved around the protagonist's penis. Of course, when you're a fellow trying to pass as gentile, your dick is a big liability. Solly worried about his a lot, and by a lot I mean maybe a little bit more than any other pubescent boy. He is upset because this means he won't be able to sex it up with his girlfriend, but it turns out that she's a super-Nazi and dumps him because he isn't Aryan enough.
On the other hand, this movie does have a somber theme. Especially near the end when Solly has to face other Jews again, and explain why he is strong and rosy-cheeked while they are emaciated with loved ones dead on the ground. Solly survived, but is he a traitor? When he meets his brother again they both pee on the ground side by side, unashamed to display their true selves to the world. It was a fitting ending.
This movie definitely tends towards the sweet and sentimental. I might pop it on the shelf next to A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, but of course this can't really approach the special place I've got in my heart for those two treasured classics. I never read read the book, but I think I might like too. The plot is endearingly simple. The main character, Winnie, runs away from her strict parents and discovers the fountain of youth in the forest and a family of immortals. Winnie has dual conflicts, first to protect the Tuck's secret, and second to decide whether or not she should drink from the fountain and join them.
There is also a very sinister villain known only as the Man in a Yellow Suit. I think I would have liked to know more about him. There's one scene where he's sitting in a graveyard, perhaps contemplating his own mortality, and the priest comes by to say hi or something and the man in the yellow suit starts talking like what would you pay to live forever and the priest says, "You speak blasphemy," and the man in the yellow says, "fluently." I would like to know what makes that guy's heart so dark, and it was clever to make him wear such a lively colored outfit.
The immortality trope begins to wear thin, though. I mean in other movies like those ones about vampires or whatever and the people are always complaining about what a drag it is. But there's that awesome element to it as well, like, all the benefits. So what it there was a magical fountain that would allow you to live for, say, 500 years? or 1000? Would the negative aspects of immortality be tolerable if you knew there was an expiration date? Because the benefits seem pretty sweet. Not that I'm trying to provoke a Faustian deal or anything. Maybe I had better stop talking about it.
But the Bible talks about lifespans that were many times greater than we have here in reality. Methusalah, Noah, those types lives like 300 or 400 years or something. I guess they had to live that long to get about the business of populating the earth. Which reminds me of something else that been bothering me and has nothing to do whatsoever with Tuck Everlasting (which is an entirely compelling movie but I think I've grown bored with the topic and so I'm going to talk about the Young Earth Creationism instead). I met a gentleman a few months ago who told me that he did not believe the Earth to be much older than 6000 years. I don't have a problem with that standpoint but I do have a problem with the underlying logic. Archbishop Ussher was the first guy (I say that, but he was probably preceded by some lesser known Hebrew scholars) to calculate the age of the Earth to be about 6000 years old (he proposed the exact date of creation to be Sunday, the 23rd of October, 4004 BC). He did this by very carefully reading through the Old Testament and calculating the passage of time by the number of generations, because the Bible is really specific about who begat who and suchlike.
But if the Bible says that Noah died when he was 950, then obviously we can't be throwing around assumptions about the length of generational time. Ussher was throwing a crap shoot. And I read that the reason that all those ages are so big is because the Sumerian number system wasn't translated correctly into Greek, so Ussher wasn't even working with accurate sums!
So I say that it's cool if you're into literal Biblical interpretation and want to believe that fossils are red herrings buried underground by Satan to test your faith and that the uniform growth rates of coral reefs are something that you just ignore. But I don't think that the Young Earth Hypothesis, as based upon 17th century mathematical data, has any grounding in accurate Biblical interpretation whatsoever, and so the support of such data should in no way be considered the duty of any good Christian.
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.
I would sort this movie into the same group as Welcome to the Dollhouse, which I said was not quite as enjoyable as Napoleon Dynamite. Pizza is sort of like that, too (sorry, this is the best picture I could find without trying very hard). What happens is that this chubby girl on the cover, Cara-Ethyl, has a birthday party with no guests, so instead she runs off with the Pizza guy, who is a would-be intellectual who justifies being a layabout by saying that he's undermining the system, but he's really just using that as an excuse to continue hooking up with high school girls.
Cara-Ethyl is a lot like Napoleon Dynamite in that she isn't so much ashamed of her own weirdness as she decried the stupidity of others. At the same time, though, she really wants to fit in. The trick is that while Cara-Ethyl is the "dork" and Ethan Embry's character is "cool," the real winner and loser of the movie are inverted. Cara-Ethyl is going to Notre Dame where she will find a group of people just like her to be friends with, she'll get good grades and move on from that po-dunk town, while Ethan's going to be a pizza-delivery guy his whole life even until the high school girls are totally over him and his receding hairline.
This movie, was okay, it was kind of cute. I liked the parts with Cara-Ethyl's mom, who burnt herself while making donuts and thus had to wear bandages over her eyes. I wouldn't recommend it except in a very specific circumstance which has yet to manifest. Watch Napoleon Dynamite again instead.
Deep Roy (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 2005)
Noah Hathaway
Last night I watched The NeverEnding Story with the li'l bro. He's already seen it twice but this was my first time. Before we started, he says to me, "It's about a boy who's reading a story, and then he realizes that the story is about him."
Isn't that just lovely? Isn't that always how it works? In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell wrote something along the lines of how the mythic journey always comes full circle, but in the end we find that that we have only arrived at the center of ourselves. Remember at the end of Return of the Jedi (Star Wars = the ultimate hero myth) when Luke Skywalker has to defeat Darth Vader not with violence, but by looking within and overcoming his own dark feelings of hate and vengeance? That's what I'm talking about.
There's a line in the movie where the Empress tells the hero, Atrayu, who believes that he has failed his quest to save Fantasia, that Bastian, the dorky kid reading the story, doesn't realize that he is part of a never ending story (title drop!), that others (presumably we, the audience) have shared his experiences just as he shares the experiences of Atrayu. Fantasia is supposed to be the actualization of the collectives hopes and dreams of all humans, and so it is limitless in that there is no end to the depth of just a single person.
As a professor once told me, it's just turtles all the way down.
Fantasia is threatened on two fronts, first by the onslaught of the all-consuming Nothing, and secondly by the illness of the Empress, who is the only one able to stop it. Atrayu is sent on a quest to save the world, but comes up empty-handed, except for the knowledge that he's supposed to find a human boy who can heal the Empress by giving her a new name. In the end, he's flying through empty space on the back of the creepy dragon, and he goes to the Ivory Tower floating on a little bit of asteroid and tells the Empress that he failed to find the human child and she says, no, he's always been here, and Atrayu's all pissed off because his horse died and he traveled ten thousand miles and got attacked by the G'mork and whatever, but the Empress says that all that was necessary in order to make the child realize his role in Fantasia.
He needed CATHARSIS, and isn't that what we're supposed to be getting from the movie itself??? Is your mind blown? Mine is!
Maggie Smith (Hook, 1991) John Lynch (The Secret of Roan Inish, 1994)
This movie is based on the beloved book by Francis Hodgson Burnett, who also wrote A Little Princess. I think both books are critical for young girls to read. I know I didn't watch A Little Princess (I prefer the 1995 version over the 1939 one with Shirley Temple) but the point is that courage and kindness are what make that little girl a princess, and that's a goddamn beautiful moral.
The Secret Garden is a movie I like to watch when I'm bummed out because the metaphor here is that, like a garden, hearts need to be tended and cared for in order to flourish (awww). Little Mary Lennox starts out as a nasty and annoying little brat, but you see, it's only because nobody ever loved her. When her parents die, she's shipped off to her uncle's lonely manor on the moor, where her situation hardly improves. Lord Craven has hardly spoken to anyone and spends little time at home ever since his wife, Mary's mother's twin sister, died in an accident. He's so heartbroken that he's hardly met his own son, Colin, who has never left his bedroom since everyone seems to be convinced that he'll drop dead any second.
There's a happy ending though! Colin is fine, and he learns to walk, Mary gets a knack for pulling weeds, and Lord Craven comes home to discover that the garden he tried to lock up forever is in full bloom, and everyone can be happy forever.
CAST Ellen Burstyn (The Wicker Man, 2006) Linda Blair Max Von Sydow (Minority Report, 2002)
I managed it on the second go this afternoon. And like most things, it wasn't as scary as the anticipation, and it's good that I can cross this off the classic movies I haven't seen yet list (Maybe Taxi Driver will be next).
I was surprised though, by the degree of sexual violence implied by possession. There's one part where the mother runs into Reagan's bedroom and she's bleeding as she stabs the crucifix into her crotch repeatedly, shouting, "Let Jesus fuck you!" after that, Reagan grabs her mother and pushes her head down, saying, "Lick it!" I guess the perversity was startling to me. It's not something I've seen in the more modern movies about demonic possession.
On that note, why is it that only girls are possessed? There's Exorcist (1979) and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), The Last Exorcism (2010). Or how about The Reaping (2007), End of Days (1999), Ghostbusters (1984), Stigmata (1999), or that chick who needs to be rescued in Constantine (2005).
Can we think of men who are possessed? Sort of, maybe Constantine can be used again, since Keanu is sort of walking the line between life and afterlife in that one. For the same reason we could use Hellboy (2004), and Ghost Rider (2007), there's also Fallen (1998).
What's the difference? Besides the fact that the first bunch are, on the whole, better movies, the men who get possessed continue to act from a position of power. They use their new evil powers to fight MORE evil, or maybe they just go on a killing spree. They certainly don't get tied to a bed and wait for the evil to be beaten out of them - because they're men they get to do some beating of their own. Men gain control, women lose control.
I also have a rant about superheroines in movies as compared to superheroes. If I ever subject myself to sitting through Catowoman (2004), you'll get to hear it; unless someone wants to propose a superheroine movie they think it actually good.
The Chronicles of Narnia: the Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010) dir. Michael Apted (Gorillas in the Mist, 1988)
CAST Ben Barnes (Stardust, 2007) Georgie Henley (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, 2005) Skandar Keynes Liam Neeson (voice) (Batman Begins, 2005) Simon Pegg (voice) (Star Trek, 2009) Anna Popplewell (The Little Vampire, 2000) Will Poulter Shane Rangi (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, 2008) Tilda Swinton (Broken Flowers, 2005)
My favorite part about Voyage of the Dawn Treader was the kid who played Eustace. He was so funny! A perfect little snotty kid. Except I didn't like him so much after Aslan got to him and he turned nice. That doesn't bode well for the upcoming Silver Chair, which features Eustace and his school chum Jill Pole on a quest to rescue Caspian's son, Rillian.
Tilda Swinton was in the movie, as an illusion haunting Edmund from time to time. I'll tell you, they will do anything to keep Tilda Swinton in these movies. Luckily for Disney, The Silver Chair has the perfect role for her. I will be totally surprised if they don't cast her as the Green Witch keeping Rillian prisoner (spoiler alert!)
If you're a smartypants like me, or if you read the Chronicles of Narnia anytime after age ten, you probably know that C.S. Lewis was a big deal Christian and really the Narnia books are all about how awesome God is. Voyage of the Dawn Treader is, I think, where the evangelical message gets laid on the thickest. There's a bit near the end where Aslan tells Lucy that she won't be coming back to Narnia (Actually, the whole team comes back in The Last Battle) and he tells her that he exists in the normal world, and that he brought Lucy to Narnia so that she could know him better in the other world. This is where I leaned over to the fella sitting next to me and whispered, "He's talking about Jesus!"
I'd say this comparable to Napoleon Dynamite (2004). In that I remembered what my professor in Anthropology of Colonialism said about that movie. She said something along the lines of how horrible it was that everyone in this town was trying to assert this identity of a dork onto Napoleon. Because Napoleon did him feel himself to a dork, rather, everyone else was freaks and idiots. The main character in Dollhouse was a junior high school student named Dawn Weiner, who is mercilessly teased by everybody. There's one scene where she is made to read an essay titled "Dignity" in front of the class, and she is repeatedly interrupted by the teacher yelling at her to read louder. This is mirrored by a scene near the end where Dawn is reading to the entire school, and the whole audience starts shouting, "Wienerdog! Wienerdog!" but she keeps going anyway.
That's where the similarity ends. If you like this sort of movie, I suggest you just watch Napoleon Dynamite and give this one a pass.
And then there's this wierd bit with the bully, Brandon, who keeps telling Dawn that he's going to rape her after school, but I guess he actually liked her because he never did. It's a very odd relationship that develops out of fear and mutual awkwardness
The ending was terrible, or I didn't get it. I just don't think there was any character development. The nasty people stay nasty, and the relationships that develop all fade away. Dawn asks her older brother if school ever gets any better. He says no, it doesn't. The status quo never changes, and you're left with the feelings that all of these conflicts are unresolved, and all of the battles will have to fought over again. That's lame.
I saw Pan's Labyrinth in Ithaca's Cinemopolis a long time ago. I guess that's when it first came out, but now i can't remember if I saw it twice in theaters or not. I don't usually do that.
*Movies I saw twice in theaters*
1) Superman Returns (2006)
Tragic, and not worthwhile, I know. I saw it the first for shits and giggles, was horribly disappointed, but then I went to see it again because a boy I liked asked me to (pretending it was the first time!)
2) The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe
You guys, I flipped out when I saw this movie. I was so excited and happy. I had to find more buddies to watch it again and again (I might have seen it 3 times). Now I'm kind of over it. Will I go see Voyage of the Dawn Treader? Yes, because that's the best one - except for maybe The Horse and His Boy, which I don't believe they are planning to make a movie of because it's sort of the outlier in the Narnia series (Much like Farmer Boy for the Little House on the Prairie novels).
3) You know, that's all I can think of right now. Seeing movies 2ce in theaters is sort of lame. Generally, it stresses me out to sit still for that long. When I watch movies at home I have to mend pillowcases or paint my nails or something.
What was I talking about? OK - tonight my little brother picked out Pan's Labyrinth for him and my mom and I to watch together. Sucks for him because we forgot that this movie is subtitled (isn't it awesome when you don't even notice that you have no idea what the actors are saying?) and once it had started we didn't really feel like taking it out again. So I guess he was playing with his toys or something during this thing. Although occasionally he interrupted with a question so maybe he was attending more than I thought. When my older brother saw this movie, he called me and said, "So it was just a desperate fantasy and she dies at the end? That sucks!" But I say that it wasn't a fantasy, it was magic, and she goes to the magic underground kingdom at the end after she sheds her earthly body. She's not dead! She gets ETERNAL LIFE (omigosh Christ metaphor!) Here is what i submit as evidence:
1) Captain Vidal sees Ofelia talking to the Faun in the Labyrinth. He doesn't see the Faun, but he hears her shouting. There's a difference between pretending and whackadoodle crazy. Ofelia was having a REAL conversation (with a Faun that only she could see)
2) The Chalk: The Faun gives Ofelia a magic piece of chalk which Captain Vidal SEES and TOUCHES. She uses it to escape her room with a LOCKED DOOR and GUARD.
3)Ofelia disobeys the Faun. If it was a fantasy, then Ofelia wouldn't have imagined that the Faun ordered her to do something which she would refuse. OBVIOUSLY!
Daniel Radcliffe Alan Rickman (Love Actually, 2003)
Fiona Shaw (Super Mario Bros., 1993)
Maggie Smith (The First Wives Club, 1996)
Timothy Spall (Enchanted, 2007)
Richard Strange (Batman, 1989)
David Thewlis (The New World, 2005)
Julie Walters (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, 2001)
Emma Watson (The Tale of Desperaux (voice), 2008)
Mark Williams (Stardust, 2007)
OK - a friend got me to go with her. And so she's already heard my Harry Potter rant but I'll hash it out again for you all, my dozens of readers.
The problem with a magical story world is that you've created a premise which supercedes any and all plot challenges. THEY HAVE MAGIC POWERS!! Something impossible needs to be accomplished? There is a magic spell for that! Not only that, but magic spells are incredibly easy to perform. Hermione erases her own existence with a single word! She re-attaches Ron's arm with a few drops of essence-of-dittany, but she can't heal Dobby's knife wound? She can't even think of something to try??? She can build a tent that's bigger on the inside than the outside, but she can't slow down the bleeding? She can't even put pressure on the wound!!!??? What's the deal??
I like Dobby.
Here's the other problem. I get that it's a treasured piece of literature and such, but do you all rememeber my rant about too many damn characters? I haven't read Harry Potter in a super long time and it confuses me and I couldn't keep all those whacky names straight back then and I'm not going to get myself all invested in them now. Am I supposed to be sad that Mad-Eye Moody died? We didn't even meet the REAL Mad Eye Moody until the end of the last movie (I think). And you're killing him off right away and expect me to give a shit? UNlikely. It's like in LOTR when Haldir died (who I thought was the same guy as Jason Isaacs, who plays Lucius Malfoy, but he's actually Craig Parker.)
Ok - different guys. but my point is, and I hope you felt the same, that there's this awesome death scene and I'm trying to be moved but I'm all distracted because who is this guy??? I had to look up his name right now! I vaguely recalled the character from reading the book at summer camp when I was 11, but for serious, this is why it's important to be conservative with your characters: because I didn't give a shit about Haldir's death because you didn't spend enough time developing his character, Peter Jackson!
HP has a different take on elves, am I right?
Aww. He's a cutie.
Why do I bring this up? There are too many stupid characters in Harry Potter and I can't keep them straight and they are trying to address all these side plots but it's unnecessary. Just tell the stupid story without them. And what's the deal with Harry following stuff all the time? Why would you follow a ghostly deer into the forest when magical villains are after you? Didn't you learn your lesson when the silent old woman you followed home turned into a snake? You wanna stop being stupid, HARRY POTTER?
Dobby got some good reflection time on his death. But that's cool. Dobby was a decent dude. One thing I noticed while doing my customary background research on the stars is that this franchise has kept those kids pretty busy - because they have NOTHING going on in the their resumes. That must suck a bit. It's been like ten years and they can't get an outside acting gig? That's worse than Disney channel, but hopefully those little English kids won't end up all coked out and in jail. I could go on but I have to do some homework. Next I'm going to do something with the trailer for Cowboys and Aliens, so watch out.
The Secret of Kells (2009) dir. Tomm Moore, Nora Twomey
VOICES Brendan Gleeson (Mad-Eye Moody, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2007)
So I started watching Paranormal Activity last night around 10pm - but then it got to that part (Night #3 I think) when the camera slowed down at 2:09am and then there was a scary noise and I thought "Oh no! Something terrifying will happen and it's NIGHTTIME and I'm HOME ALONE" so I quickly turned it off and watched The Secret of Kells from my bathtub instead.
I'll try again some sunnier time.
Secret of Kells reminded me of some of the movies Hayao Miyazake makes. Actually, it was a lot like Princess Mononoke in that there's this dichotomy between where the people are (Kells Abbey) and the Forest (Which is where that Pixie-girl on the poster lives). The Abbey is under the threat of an imminent invasion by Vikings, to protect the Abbey, the Abbot builds an enormous wall and he forbids anyone to go outside of it. The other monks complain that the Abbot has forgotten the true purpose of the order, which is to make books, and he makes the monks spend all their time building instead. So, stuff happens and he learns the error of his ways.
The artwork is awesome. They really play around with perspective and depth and incorporate a lot of Celtic symbols into the trees. There's one scene where Our Hero has to defeat a monster which resembles nothing so much as the "snake" game you probably have on your cell phone, but stunning. That was my favorite part. My only critique is that the snake monster didn't have a long enough scene.
