Movie Review Update

Guys, I have been super busy lately dealing with things that are way beyond my maturity level, but in between all that I did actually get to see some pretty neat movies so we're just going to do a recap here and cheesily cover them all in a short period of time.

This is shoddy work and there's really no excuse and I apologize.

The Fall

So Tarsem, the guy who famously directed "that REM video" and "that crazy Jennifer Lopez movie that wasn't all that good really but Vincent D'Onofrio plays yet another type of crazy person", took like 5 years to make this film. It looks amazing. Thematically, it steals shamelessly from all sorts of sources; it's kinda like what would happen if you threw The Wizard of Oz, The Princess Bride, Lawrence of Arabia and Fight Club in a blender and poured the results in a tall steaming glass of Kubrick, which really doesn't even begin to describe it. Put it this way: there is a character in this film named Charles Darwin. He is a naturalist who walks around in a bowler hat and one of those furry coats that make people concerned for the mental state of Lindsay Lohan when they see her wearing one in all those paparazzi photos in the supermarket tabloids. And he has a monkey sidekick. And he is chasing after a rare butterfly. And he's just a side character. This film is unimaginably insane and I highly recommend it due to its amazing visuals and the incredible performance from the young actress in the film, Catinca Untaru. It's probably a bit too weird for "some people", but it's totally the kind of film that makes me love going to the movies.



Darkon

I freely admit that I'm a geek. I have no problem with that. In fact, the only thing that really bothers me about it is that it is suddenly becoming okay to be a geek. These days, everybody is letting their freak flags fly.

Nowhere moreso than in Darkon, a documentary about a marauding band of LARPers from the Baltimore area that have their own fantasy world in which they have battles, etc. with foam weapons and they look like they're having more fun than is humanly possible. There are different kingdoms in the realm of Darkon that fight each other for land, money or honor; there's even a band of elves that will side with your army if the price is right. There is politics, there is intrigue. And these people are totally serious about all of it. It's pretty much the coolest thing ever. Actually, check that - if it were an all-cardboard LARP than it would be the coolest thing ever, but until that gets invented I guess Darkon will have to do. If you're a fan of all things geeky, if you thought that The King of Kong wasn't geeky enough for you, check out Darkon. I'll see you on the field.



Wall•E

I was surprisingly unmoved by Wall•E, which is not to say that I didn't think it was awesome. My expectations for this film were incredibly, impossibly high, and they were met. Not exceeded, which would have been nearly impossible, but met. The graphics, of course, were amazing. The story was solid. The characters were memorable. Ben Burtt should get a special Oscar for his sound work on the film, there is no question.

I'm not sure I like the live-action elements of the film. The blending of live-action and CG into the story gives me logic problems in my brain that make me want to hide under my bed. Which is not to say that Fred Willard wasn't awesome, or that the Hello, Dolly stuff wasn't appropriate; they work very well, they just make my logic circuits short out when later on they have those potato people floating in their chairs. I know they have the pictures on the bridge of all the captains showing the de-evolution of mankind, but still. I'm sorry, but my disbelief suspensors are malfunctioning in this instance; this shouldn't be an issue.

It's a minor quibble, and one that I'm probably alone in. Many other people (these people are known as "d-bags") have been carrying on that Wall•E looks like the homo love child of E.T. and Johnny 5, when really the only person who should be putting together an intellectual property suit are the makers of those cheapo binoculars you can get in Chinatown for like a dollar next to the bootleg copies of The Dark Knight with Cantonese subtitles, and you know the last thing those guys want to do is let the legal world know that they exist.

Anyway, as usual the secondary characters steal the show, especially the ragtag bunch of misfit robots that Wall•E unintentionally lets loose, as well as M•O the cleaning robot, and Jeff Garlin was great as the captain.

Ultimately this was a great film, and in any other year it would have been far and away the best film of the year. But this summer is so packed that Wall•E will probably not even be the best film of the summer. Unfortunate scheduling aside, Wall•E is a film that should be seen by everyone because it is amazing.



In Bruges

In Bruges is basically what would happen if Quentin Tarantino had grown up on a steady diet of film noir, Cassavetes films and My Dinner With Andre instead of exploitation films, 70s caper films and Shaw Bros. chop-sockey movies. However, writer-director Martin McDonagh is not, ultimately, Quentin Tarantino, so we miss out on all the self-conscious pop culture references, and the excessive violence is kept to an "only-when-necessary" level. The film is better for it, and reaches a level of maturity that Tarantino doesn't even know (or care) exists.

Basically what the film is about is these two hit men hide out in the sleepy tourist town of Bruges, Belgium, after a job went horribly wrong. They make the most of their downtime by seeing the sights while they wait for orders from their boss.

I am pretty much not a fan of Colin Farrell at all, but I have to say that after watching this film I was impressed. He's actually a really good actor. Also, he is hilarious. Just goes to show what the right material can do for a skilled actor. Brendan Gleeson is equally awesome; I'm waiting for him to win an Oscar for something at some point, because if anyone in films deserves to have his work recognized, it's Brendan Gleeson. Ralph Fiennes shows up and puts his own spin on the Ben-Kingsley-in-Sexy-Beast organized crime-type person, which works fairly well. There is a midget (Jordan Prentice), which makes the film an automatic must-see for many of this blog's regular readers.

I really liked this film because it's about a couple of hit men walking around and talking about random stuff in a beautiful medieval cityscape. It's a bit like Before Sunrise, except without the budding romance but with the odd bit of horrific violence.

The script is amazing. The dwarf's speech about racism alone is worth seeing the film for. But mostly the film is just about a couple of coworkers who get along pretty well and the sort of shenanigans they get up to in a town where there's nothing to do except look at architecture and drink Belgian beer, so you can't go in expecting a film chock full of gunplay, though there is some - they are hit men, after all. Anyway, I liked this film a lot, it was pretty cool.


So there are some films that I saw recently. They were really cool so I say you should check them out if they sound cool to you too.