Posts tagged “film review”
A musical retelling of *A Midsummer Night's Dream* about a gay boy with a potion that turns people gay. Singing, dancing, hot boys in glitter pants. It's my perfect film and I can't find it playing anywhere, not even in San Francisco.
Saw Eragon, pretty visuals, terrible plot. Also, heading to Tobago and Trinidad for two weeks, back for New Year's Eve. Catch you then!
Saw The Host, a Korean monster movie with a refreshingly unsentimental take on the genre. Great creature, oddly political plot, and a realistic portrayal of how people would actually respond to a giant monster. More black humor than schmaltz. Worth seeing.
V for Vendetta earns its title: the word "vindicated" captures everything this film attempts. It's an American movie disguised as English, a live-action comic book unashamed of its stylisation, and ultimately a moral argument about freedom, justice, and whether a terrorist's revenge can ever truly be justified.
Saw Syriana, good but no Munich. Also: 959 days until 2008, and the Democratic field is already depressingly weak. Gore and Kerry again? While Republicans have Giuliani and McCain? At least a Clinton-Rice race means a female president, even if she'll be stupid and corrupt or smart and evil.
Saw Munich. Brilliantly acted and directed, but deeply dishonest. It dresses up as thoughtful commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while glorifying Israeli vengeance. The Palestinian deaths get one throwaway line; the Israeli deaths get graphic detail. The real message: don't mess with the Jews. Horrible film, brilliantly executed.
Brokeback Mountain was well-acted and believable but ultimately boring. I think I just don't care about ordinary people in fiction. Give me science fiction. Real or fake, mundane people and their mundane problems don't interest me, and I make no apologies for that.
Narnia on screen is the book made gloriously real. Tilda Swinton steals everything as the Winter Queen, the visuals are spectacular, and the child actors hold their own. Disney sanitizes the battle, but fans and newcomers alike will love it. Go see it.
I got to attend a special pre-premiere screening of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and it's brilliant. Radcliffe finally delivers, the CGI is seamless, and unlike its predecessors, this one has genuinely grown up. Go see it. Then see it again.
Saw Crash tonight. Great film with a lot to say about race in America, or really just one thing said many ways. Also: hoping my iPod gets fixed before my New York flight, annoyed by sudden heat, and convincing myself peanut M&Ms count as dinner.
Loved the Burton visuals, hated the saccharine family subplot they grafted onto Dahl's perfectly subversive story. The oompa-loompas were brilliant, even the songs weren't cringe-inducing, and thank god they ditched the orange skin and green hair. And Gene Wilder. Did I mention Gene Wilder?
Deep, dark, angry -- everything a Batman movie should be. Less pretty than Burton's vision but far more believable and a hell of a lot of fun. Schumacher's disasters are already a fading memory. Four stars out of five.
Saw *Downfall* and found it powerful, disturbing, and occasionally unbelievable -- though history itself is unbelievable. The director sacrifices some reality by softening its Nazi protagonists, but that emotional connection is what makes the story work. The dead silence in the cinema afterward said everything.
Saw *Beautiful Boxer* at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Stunning during transition, less so before or after. I'm still not sure if I wanted him or wanted to be him. Great film, but I won't be taking up kickboxing or changing sex anytime soon.
I saw Closer and found it predictable and emotionally inert, despite great acting from Natalie Portman. It got me wondering: am I a film philistine who misses subtext the way others miss meaning in music? And worse, am I doing the same thing in real life?
Stunning visuals and Angelina Jolie in an eye patch, but it never surprised me the way I hoped it would. I'd over-hyped it to myself. Too ill with London's communal cold to say more.
Visually stunning but hard to take seriously. Everyone's so full of honour they just kind of... stand there and die. Also, no purple scene, which feels like a missed opportunity.
I expected I, Robot to butcher Asimov, but I was wrong. The film stays surprisingly faithful to his core concepts, especially the incompleteness of the Three Laws and the zeroth law. A few Hollywood liberties, sure, but the spirit is intact. I take back my skepticism.
Caught *200 American* at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival on standbys -- best seats in the house. Between that, a perfect steak, *Starsky and Hutch*, and clubbing at Popstarz, another unplanned but brilliant London week. The audience was 497 gay men and 3 women. That poster was doing its job.
Had a vivid dream about accidentally throwing a free bar for all of Oxford Street. Saturday was great: coffee with friends, a genuinely stunning Tate exhibition where strangers spontaneously made art in a giant ceiling mirror, Mystic River (well-acted but pointless), and a random night ending with a warm wait for buses.
Exams in a week and I've done everything except revise. Also: Amtrak selling passenger data to the DEA is terrifying, Dogma was great, and Spice World is brilliant precisely because it never pretends to be anything other than a shiny, silly good time.
