watching

2003-07-14T15:12:00.000-07:00

Old School. It's as raucously funny as you've been told. I totally enjoyed it.

2003-07-14T14:31:00.000-07:00

Boondock Saints. The premise - two young Irish men pursuing a campaign of vigilante violence against Russian & Italian mafia in Boston, hunted by a brilliant, gay FBI special task force agent - is pretty "B-movie". It's actually really pretty tight. Not especially deep or thought-provoking. But good anyway. :-)

2003-07-14T14:19:00.000-07:00

Winged Migration. What an amazing movie. I went with my sister, when she was in town; she'd heard a whole NPR piece on the making of the film, and was excited about seeing it. I was kind of like "how cool can it be?". So cool. If you've ever had flying dreams . . .

2003-05-24T09:47:00.000-07:00

So, thus far this list has only included movies I've given my full attention to, watching from beginning to end. I thought I'd expand on that in one "summary" post. Other flicks I've taken in most of, recently: Hackers, The Negotiator, and Throw Momma from the Train. Others I've seen bits and pieces of: Pretty Woman and Eyes Wide Shut. One I was recently reminded I really want to see again: Scent of a Woman (maybe I should see the original - Profumo di Donna).

2003-05-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

The Matrix Reloaded. Another "X" movie. I really enjoyed it, but went in with expectations that weren't that high. I didn't, for instance, expect the plot to be coherent, which it wasn't, particularly. The action, the music, all that was great, but I actually did like more than that; I liked the focus on the nature of causality and free will. Not that I particularly liked what they had to say about it, just the focus.

I'm not actually totally convinced that, say, I couldn't just decide to have superman powers like Neo gets, if I really set my mind to it. Never have been. Different from a belief that the universe is subjective, right; just the belief that it's plausible. I'm interested to see what they do with the ending, when it's continued (come November).

2003-05-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

Cannonball Run. What an awesome movie! I usually think, browsing through "comedy" sections, that I must have seen everything that's at all funny. I love 80's comedies . . . and this is a great one.

2003-05-08T09:06:00.000-07:00

X2: X-Men United Hmm, I seem to have an X thing going. Fun flick, fun mutants, fun $85m opening weekend. Magneto rocks my world.

2003-04-22T15:25:00.000-07:00

XXX. Quality fair. Except not. But, like Greg said, Jess did pick it. :-P

2003-04-22T15:23:00.000-07:00

Richard Pryor: Live In Concert (1979). This is some fallin' over, clenched up in hysterics, funny shit.

2003-04-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

Dancer In The Dark I was devastated by this film the first time I saw it, a couple years ago when it was in Theaters. I'm not sure why I decided to sit down and watch it again, when Jim rented it (Friday night). It fucked me up, completely, again. It's just unbearably emotionally intense. I'm split between recommending it as a movie that everyone needs to see, and telling people they should avoid it. If you want a more manageable, but still very affecting death row movie, watch Dead Man Walking.

Dancer in the dark sneaks up on you. You don't realize the damage that's coming. You feel everything slipping away at the same time as Selma does, and it both makes sense and doesn't - as it is for her. And in the end, you are unable to escape, gripped by fear, inevitability, and incredible sadness, as she is.

2003-04-14T15:39:00.000-07:00

Pulp Fiction. God, I do love this movie.

2003-04-14T15:37:00.000-07:00

The Matrix. The first time I watched this, I was too bothered by what seemed like gaping plausibility/sensibility holes in the plot to really enjoy it. This time, I (a) "got" more of the rational, and (b) was a little more able to just let go and both enjoy the movie and think about what it had to say, leaving the holes aside. It's a good flick.

Gaping plausibility hole one: that AI would ever use human beings for power production. There's a basic thermodynamic problem here: yes, you can get energy OUT of humans, but not without putting energy IN, and just like every closed system you get increased entropy, which is to say a dissipation of usable energy, which is to say you don't get as much out as you put in. Now, it's true that Morpheus says "Along with a form of fusion" in his description of how the AIs use humans to generate power, but this doesn't get you anywhere unless the energy produced in the fusion reaction were in a form that needed to be transformed by human "batteries" before it could be used, and this wouldn't be the case unless your fusion reactor somehow was only capable of spitting out Wheaties. Essentially.

Gaping sensibility hole one: that phone-lines, in the matrix-world, would provide jack-in/jack-out access points. This just doesn't make any sense, to me. So, they're hacking into the Matrix; they need to send info in (from the real-world brain of a human) and get info out (matrix-world sensory info); they have a constantly open connection that lets this happen. For whatever reason, the person dies if this connection isn't closed nicely. How the heck does the phone-booth thing fit in?

But. Here's what Jess pointed out to me: it makes total sense that you're required to suspend your disbelief to grok the movie; the whole point of the film is that maybe you have to suspend your belief to gain enlightenment. If it's essentially all about post-modernism, shouldn't it have po-mo twists like this in its structure, not just in its content?

In conclusion, I still think Philip K. Dick did it all, and did it best, in his novels, back when the Wachowski brothers were only babies.

2003-04-08T07:51:00.000-07:00

Phone Booth, by Joel Schumacher. Jess loved it; I thought it was good, as it went - i.e., for a B-movie throwback. Meaning, I enjoyed it, it was tight, but it was a little predictable. But whatever, go see it, it was fun. Yo, and Colin Farrell is sooo hot. :-p

Oh, and "that guy" was Richard T. Jones.

2003-03-30T11:43:00.000-08:00

Donnie Darko. Wow. I loved this movie. Freakily good. I think, though, that I liked it better as I was totally lost, watching it, than I did with explanation, watching the director's commentary on the DVD. My GOD, though, that fucking rabbit.

2003-03-26T15:14:00.000-08:00

8 Mile. I expected more - I'm a fan, and I was all about going to see this the weekend it came out - it just didn't happen. The battles were a lot of fun to watch . . . but overall, the film was just unfocused. So, Detroit is gritty. So, growing up in a trailer park stinks. So, some women sleep around, trying to escape poverty. If there was a theme to the movie, it was independence - that sometimes you've gotta do your own thing, and not count on anyone else. So.

2003-03-25T12:08:00.000-08:00

Bowfinger, by frickin Yoda. "K-I-T, Keep It Together. Keep It Togetha, Keep It Togetha, Keep It Togetha." Yeah, anyway. Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, AND Heather Graham. What more can I say.

2003-03-25T12:04:00.000-08:00

Moulin Rouge, by Baz Luhrmann. What a name - Baz Luhrmann. Madcap, nonlinear spectacular; deep, depressing drama; hyper and self referential to the max.

2003-03-03T10:54:00.000-08:00

City Of Women, by Fellini. Bizarre, as usual. Saturday night at Jordan's place in N.Y.C.

2003-03-03T09:38:00.000-08:00

Blue Crush - I thought it was pretty rad - though I have to admit to bias, since I'm dating a surfer girl, and we watched it together, and she got psyched. She's gonna' teach me to surf, just like in the movie, and it's gonna' be the coolest thing ever.