musings

I saw Assault on Precinct 13 tonight. I’d not heard great things about it, but I figured between Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne and Gabriel Byrne I might at least see some decent performances. Nope. Just a very boring and predictable movie. Give this one a miss. Don’t even rent it.

Still, Elektra was horrible. I mean, how damning is it when I can say that Daredevil was a better vehicle for Elektra than Elektra was? The fights were, as is all too common these days, filmed in magnificent shaky-cam, mere inches from the action, the plot stupid and filled with holes, and the enemies useless. Worse yet, not one baddy took more than one hit to kill – the fights were all composed of a whole lot of not-hitting, followed by the lethal blow. One of them even managed to kill himself. The best of them had the ultra-scary super power of “out of body experience”. The stupidity even pervaded the credits – I know Elektra is a Greek myth, but did the credits have to be edgy with a capital sigma? Gah. What a waste of time and money. So, while it wasn’t House of the Dead bad, I’m betting it’s neck-and-neck with the forthcoming Alone in the Dark.

I saw The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and I walked away happy. I’ve not seen any of Wes Anderson’s other films, so I can’t compare Life Aquatic with Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, or The Royal Tannenbaums, but that’s kind of irrelevant. The pacing was uneven, but never boring. The humour was pretty understated, or at least sly – often the funniest things in the movie happened just off to the side of the camera. Or in the soundtrack. A collection of David Bowie songs sung folk-style in Portuguese had us giggling with every song. I’m totally rambling, so I’m going to stop now.

I’ve just finished watching Macross Zero and I’m floored.

Flabbergasted.

Speechless.

Four years in the making (unheard of for an OVA), it’s one of the most visually stunning animes ever. Add to that a compelling story and you’ve got a winner.

I watched a French film called Les Rivières Pourpres (The Crimson Rivers) tonight, starring one of my favourite actors, Jean Reno. It was a murder mystery, in the same vein as Seven – every bit as creepy and atmospheric, but with only a fraction of the lucidity. That’s unfair – it wasn’t hard to follow, but it was dumb. The big twist was (spoiler alert) this ridiculous plot by a eugenics breeding ground posing as a university to bring new blood into the rapidly thinning gene pool. The direction and acting were both excellent, but the plot was pretty awful. Oh, and the one big fight sequence was laughably bad.

MovieKarma++;

Yeah, I’m home this year. I didn’t really feel like going out and doing anything. Ten years ago, New Year’s was the most important night for me – I really felt like a chump if I didn’t have big plans, parties to attend, people to see, etc. Now that I’m old, I don’t really care so much. So, rather than go out, I had a few friends over (Steve, Lorraine, Carla and Kevin) and we just chilled. Carla and Kevin took off early, because they wanted to ring the new year in with Carla’s parents (and they’ve got a painfully early flight back to San Diego tomorrow), and Steve, Lorraine and I sat down to watch the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate. It was an excellent movie. Tremendously well acted and intensely suspenseful. I predicted all the major plot “twists”, and yet I was pretty much enthralled for the whole movie. I don’t know how it compares to the original, but now I’d like to find out.

In other news, pertaining to my last post, I read in this post on William Gibson’s blog that the Canadian government is matching donations to several relief operations that are working from Canada. So I encourage you to chase the link to Mr. Gibson’s blog and donate to one of the listed charities. I donated before I knew this to Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders and was pleased to see that they’re one of the charities for whom the Canadian government is matching donations. The government is only matching donations ’til January the 11th, so please, if you are able, donate soon.

I just got back from seeing Blade Trinity and I have to admit to enjoying it tremendously. It’s not a great movie at all but it’s almost unbearably fun. The movie’s pretty much non-stop action coupled with decent special effects and oh so much eye candy. Parker Posey has the seriously creepy-but-hot thing going on, and Jessica Biel in ass-kicking mode comes close to the Cole Factor of Kate Beckinsale in Underworld. I spent all my “Punisher” karma tonight.

So I watched Casshern tonight. Casshern is a Japanese movie based on a 1973 anime of the same name, and is one of the first “digital backlot” movies. Like the relatively dreadful Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the movie was filmed almost entirely in front of a bluescreen, with the final film being composited during post production. Unlike Sky Captain, however, Casshern has a real story. The trailer makes Casshern look like an action movie, but that’s far from the case. Casshern is a serious drama – much of the movie is spent in dialogue. Not that this was a bad thing – I love “talky” movies, only that I wasn’t expecting the movie I got. On the upside, Casshern is a visually stunning movie. Though not seamless, the digital backlot was far more convincing than that of Sky Captain, and the art style and design aesthetic was far more appealing. On the downside, parts of the movie were painfully slow, and the story often leaped about spastically making the movie somewhat hard to follow. Doubtless some confusion stemmed from the translation. Still despite all, Casshern is a great movie. It’s a desperately depressing anti-war movie that reserves a tiny spark of hope at the end. Magnificent visuals, a good (if sometimes jumpy) story, and a thoroughly engaging cast (Toshiaki Karasawa, in particular, was entrancing) made for one of the best films I’ve seen all year.

So I went and saw The Incredibles. All the reviews for it have been positive, and mine’s not going to break that trend. Technologically, it doesn’t push forward from previous Pixar films the way something like Monsters Inc. did, but it has a really nice look. The story is a fun, if predictable, ride, and there’s jokes about every fifteen seconds that’ll appeal to all the different age groups in the audience. Go see it.

Last night I went to see The Motorcycle Diaries. Payback for Punisher and Sky Captain was apparently in the cards, because this was one fine movie. For those not in the know, the movie is about a motorcycle journey through South America that Ernesto “Che” Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado undertook in 1952. There’s no overt politics in the movie (other than the journey was the initial seed for Guevara’s political idealism) – it’s really a road trip movie, in the most magnificent setting. Everyone should see this movie.