watching eXistenZ for the umpteenth time. Cronenberg's most underrated film. So damn creepy and good

I love eXistenZ a lot.

I watched a weird 80's B movie last night on TCM. It must have been the basis for Dodgeball. Two rival gyms, one of which is richer and trying to buy the other out, have a competition to decide it. They dance it off! As a person who lived through the 80's, I found the goofy earnestness and fashions in this movie to be quite endearing.

edit: Looked it up, Heavenly Bodies 1985

Raising Arizona is my least fav Coen movie. Just annoys me. I think Intolerable Cruelty is hilarious from start to finish. Need to see Burn After Reading again sometime. The Ladykillers isn't that bad have only seen it one time though, Tom Hanks was terrific I thought.

Comedies
The Big Lebowski
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Barton Fink
Intolerable Cruelty
The Hudsucker Proxy
The Ladykillers
A Serious Man
Burn After Reading
Raising Arizona

Dramas
No Country for Old Men
The Man Who Wasn't There
Fargo
True Grit
Miller's Crossing
Blood Simple



Not sure why I broke them into categories. All of these movies have a lot of comedic elements except maybe No Country.

The new Mission Impossible was ok. The last one was much better, with a great villain and some sense of real peril. This one....meh.

Any decent best of year lists out yet? I see Eberts is out already, just trying to see if I missed anything worth watching this year.

I recently saw Animal Kingdom. I was expecting better. I thought a few scenes were great and the rest was just OK.

Watched Senna finally. Have been wanting to see that for ages.

Documents the life of the late Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna. He was my hero growing up, and was taken far too early from us in 1994 in an accident during a race.

Even if you don't like Formula 1, it's a fantastic watch. I watched it with my housemate who has never seen a formula 1 race in his life, and he enjoyed it thoroughly.

9.5/10

eXistenZ is great

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - what a great movie. Great pace, great cinematography, great voice-over narration, great acting, great story. Everything about it is well above average. 9.5/10

Strange Days - I hate when a sci-fi movie sets up an interesting world and then does nothing interesting with it. This movie starts off so energetically and hooks you right away. Then it just becomes a by-the-numbers thriller with a mildly lame twist (come to find out it was written by James Cameron...of course). It was a fun ride, though. I just hate it when a creative "world" is wasted on a shallow, simple-minded plot. Oh then there's some ham-fisted racial subtext (again, standard James Cameron). 7/10 (though I don't feel good about rating it that high)

I'll bet you say that to all the filmies.

The Dreamers - Bertolucci knows how to film movies, and this one is wonderfully shot and directed. Lots of vibrant colors, lots of impressive tracking shots, and lots of cuts to classic movies. Michael Pitt plays Bertolucci here, a non-Frenchy studying in Paris during the 1968 riots. He meets a brother and sister and gets sucked into their world of movies and sex. I often think that Bertolucci makes sexually graphic movies because he wishes that he had a more interesting life as a youngster (1900 and Last Tango in Paris come to mind). I guess with this movie he gets to experience it again, before finally rejecting it as childish and moving on. I gather that's the main idea behind the movie. Isabelle and Theo are children (dreamers) and have barricaded themselves in their home where they are safe from the outside world (the politics and violence of the riots, both specifically and as microcosm). Bertolucci concludes that this is not an acceptable way to go through life, and he (via Pitt) literally walks away from it in the end. 8/10

13 Assassins - fantastic samurai action movie. Miike is a great director and usually makes movies that are provocative, gory, and explicit. This one is more of a throwback to The Seven Samurai (complete with a Mifune-like character) and other Japanese samurai movies. Miike shows off his technical skills as a director and crafts an immensely entertaining movie. It starts off slow, but once the action picks up...it doesn't end until the credits roll. 8.5/10

The Wild One - had some pretty interesting lines in it.

"What are you rebelling against?"
"Whaddya got?"

There were a few others that I don't remember off the top of my head. Lee Marvin stole every scene he was in, Brando was great too. At only 80 minutes, it still managed to test my patience at times. I can definitely see that this movie had a huge impact on pop culture, though. 7.5/10

lol. I'm very easy to please.

Kingdom of Heaven - I can't help but feel that this is one of those great, massively underrated movies. It's a sprawling 3 hour epic about the crusades. Christians vs. Muslims. They fight and fight, and their leaders just shake their heads at how terrible it all is and how pointless the fighting is. It seems particularly poignant given the current state of affairs in the world. The action scenes are all very well done. Edward Norton in his short time on screen gives the greatest performance in the movie. It's really quite brilliant. Apparently there's an edited 2 hour version of this movie out there. Avoid it. Go for the 3 hour director's cut. 9.5/10

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry - who doesn't love a good, simple car chase movie? Not me. Nice cars, great driving and chase scenes. Some of the dialogue was cringe inducing and Susan George is pretty much just terrible, but it's still a fun movie. 7/10

oh yeah, one more thing about Strange Days. Juliette Lewis is absolutely terrible. I hate looking at her stupid face, I hate every scene she's in. I hate the way she delivers every line. She sucks and almost ruined the movie for me. And I don't mean just this movie, I mean everything she's ever been in.

I've been wanting to see the Director's Cut of Kingdom of Heaven since I first saw the shorter one in the theaters.

do it. you must

MI4:ghost protocol

okay movie. nice settings and stylish, some good and very good scenes but overall pretty braindead and not so action-packed as i expected. according to imdb i am apparently the only one who likes "knight and day" more.

eXistenZ is underrated?
bwahaha...

I was a little let down by this movie... it was good, but not great. there was much more to the story than was being told, but I understand they do need to condense it down, but truthfully the story/ayrtons life was more complex.

Considering that there have been, I think, 2 docos made about Senna's life before that, which documented his personal life a lot, I think it's good they went a slightly different direction and focused more on his driving and relationships within Formula 1.

The not seen before footage was great. I think it was masterfully handled and produced. Overall, I thought it was brilliant.

it was made for people that weren't possibly old enough and not as well versed or didn't have a person historical perspective in and about formula 1 from that era...

it was lacking a bit of meat for me personally.

6.9-7/10

V for Vendetta

A Fascist dictatorship has come to power in England but one man has a plan to bring it down.

For 99% of its running time I was really enjoying this. I got swept up In what seemed like an unusually, thoughtful, well plotted, well acted, action movie. I overlooked plot holes and coincidences and felt as if I was watching a movie that might become a personal favourite. Then It ended with that monologue by Evey, Heavy handed, preachy and simplistic it evaporated all the good will I had built up towards the film and made me stop suspending disbelief and realise that I had just watched another one-man take down of an evil empire. Having said that its still smarter and better plotted then 90% of action movies.
On a positive note Natalie Portman's accent was I thought just fine although I read that others had problems with it.

My weekend, 10 films, 8 venues

Thursday:

War Horse

Friday:

MI: GP in real Imax 70mm 5/5
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy*
Die Hard 2 in 35mm
Sherlock Holmes 2 - 2.5/5

Saturday:

Adventures of Tintin 4.5/5
Shame 4.5/5
The Artist 4.5/5
Young Adult 4/5
Hugo 4.5/5

*Fell asleep due to long day of traveling with very little sleep.

I'll write brief reviews later. Slight chance i'll see Take Shelter tonight. I also caught Jay-Z and Kanye live in Vancouver last night. What a damn fun weekend of entertainment!

Apparently you don't think so??

I was and still am extremely well versed and a huge fan of that era and still enjoyed it. I grew up with that era. I stick by my 9.5/10.