OK, today is a new day. Still quite annoyed with my state, but I am leaving that alone for now. I left a mass of vitriol and venom in my wake last night in the post below this if you are at all curious.
A brand new week means brand new movies! As always, there are some damn good ones in the bunch.
Peeping Tom (1960): I praised the movie enough in this post, so I will just offer a quick anecdote: I first heard of this movie about four years ago when Bravo first ran its 100 Scariest Movie Moments special. The idea behind the movie entranced me, and I knew I had to see it. Problem is, the DVD is super expensive (a Criterion Collection DVD, of course), and it is almost never on TV. Peeping Tom had four years to stew in my mind, four years of me desperately searching for it. I hate doing this, but it was inevitable -- I hyped the movie up to ridiculous lengths in my head, such that when I finally sat down to watch it last week, I expected one of the greatest horror movies ever. Well, this movie still shattered all my expectations, and quite handily. It is now one of my all-time favorites. That, my friends, is a great movie.
Clueless (1995): Very funny movie, and a hell of a lot more intelligent than some people will probably give it credit for (much like the Bill and Ted movies), but it is also hilariously dated. Not so much that it takes you out of the movie, mind, but it is quite noticeable -- gigantic cell phones, teenagers using Thomas Guides to get around (!!!) and jokes about how Mark Wahlberg is desperate for work. Also, it might take a few minutes to get adjusted to the acting style. The actors are definitely going more for satire and style than naturalism, but it fits with the way these characters live, so it's not a bad thing at all. Lastly: Is that seriously Brittany Murphy????? I still cannot believe this.
Shadow Magic (2000): Apparently there is no Wikipedia entry for this lovely movie recommended to me by Miss Anonymous. WTF? Basically it is about an Englishman (Jared Harris) who arrives in China at the turn of the century to get rich off movies, which have yet to be seen in the country. He enters into a partnership with a young Chinese man, Liu Jinglun (Yu Xia, who is quite awesome in this), who is infinitely curious about new technology and who happily spreads a love for the cinema around his town, while also violating, like, every Chinese custom known to man. Watching this makes me want to relive the feeling I had when I first saw a movie in the theater; the utter delight on the faces of the Chinese citizens -- young and old -- when they see magic happen onscreen is just a joy to watch. Speaking of joys to watch, the woman who plays Liu's love interest, Yufei Xing, is super cute. Yowza.
5 Centimeters Per Second (2007): I could say many things about this wonderful movie, but I will keep it simple: It is movies like this that remind me why I love animation so much. It is directors like Makoto Shinkai who push the boundaries of animation and redefine what is possible within the medium. If you like animation even one iota -- animation as a whole, and not just anime -- then you absolutely need to see this.
Children of Men (2006): Very good movie, with some of the most intense, visceral and well-filmed action sequences of recent memory. There is one in particular about a half-hour into the movie that is basically one long take, and my jaw was on the floor when it finished. The refreshing part is, the action sequences are not the typical "ZOMG ACTION HERO~" stuff you see in every action movie ever -- Clive Owen's character is not an action hero. He is just a guy trying to get something done the best way he can, and who is having a pretty damn hard go of it. The themes are familiar -- police state, governmental oppression, repression of life -- but the intensity of the action really makes these themes real and scary.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984): I like this a lot. It's pro-environment without being super obnoxious, because its story and characters allow it to rise far above being a simple message movie (which is my problem with a lot of movies that have an obvious slant). Nausicaa herself is the definite high point for me. She's a strong, courageous hero who is pretty damn inspiring in the way she solves problems non-violently.
Volver (2006): I loved this. The story went in so many directions that I did not expect, and I enjoy the way the women in this movie improvise to make the best of their lives in tough situations. There is a lot of ridiculous stuff in this (a murder, a character runs a restaurant on the side, people come back from the dead, etc.), but it is handled so smoothly that you accept the surrealness of it all while you're watching it. Also, now I want to see Penelope Cruz in more Spanish movies -- she is so much better and more natural in this than in any English-language movie I have seen her in.
On the queue this week: Iron Man (2008)
Movie Count: 109 (Live Free and Die Hard, Time Bandits, The Hustler, Black Dragon (Miracles), Hollywoodland, Blood Diamond, Animal Crackers, Marie Antoinette, Inside Man, The Fountain, Tombstone, Jurassic Park (Rifftrax), No Country for Old Men, Juno, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Rifftrax), There Will Be Blood, Rize, Born Into Brothels, Eastern Promises, Gone Baby Gone, Hard Candy, The Matrix Reloaded (Rifftrax), Hot Fuzz, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs, Phone Booth, The Dark Knight, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Predator, Ratatouille, Renaissance, Pretty in Pink, Scanners, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, Stop Making Sense, The Killing, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rifftrax), Voices of a Distant Star, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Amadeus, Touch of Evil, Paths of Glory, Gangs of New York, Five Easy Pieces, Perfect Blue, Novocaine, A Fish Called Wanda, A Hard Day's Night, Arsenic and Old Lace, Out of the Past, The Lady from Shanghai, The Wild Bunch, The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Bringing Up Baby, Pleasantville, Citizen Kane, They Live, The Terminator, The Adolescence of Utena, The Castle of Cagliostro, The Professional, High Plains Drifter, In the Heat of the Night, Michael Clayton, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Munich, Traffic, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Bug, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, The Maltese Falcon, Rashomon, Big Trouble in Little China, Sleeper, Badlands, Johnny Guitar, Mildred Pierce, Shadow of a Doubt, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, Hard Boiled, Targets, Away from Her, Hud, The Hidden Fortress, Seven Samurai, He Was a Quiet Man, Gilda, Borat, Ikiru, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The Boxer, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, The 39 Steps, The Philadelphia Story, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Adam's Rib, Throne of Blood, Ran, Peeping Tom, Clueless, Shadow Magic, 5 Centimeters Per Second, Children of Men, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Volver)
