Lilja

"Patient Zero". It could have been a great film..really it could of. It has famous actors like Matt Smith (Dr Who), Nataly Dormer (Game of Thrones, The Tudors), John Bradley (Game of Thrones aka John Snow's sidekick). It has an interesting plot (Matt Smith as a type of Zombie whisperer who has been bitten but never turned..he is trying to find patient zero..and he finds that zombies are much more sentient than the unturned humans think).

What it turned out to be was one big, hot mess of a zombie film. It seemed like Matt Smith and the GOT guy were just competing on who can speak with a worse American accent while Natalie Dormer played a completly unbelievable doctor. I agree with one person who wrote that this film had originally been shelved by Sony and should never have been released. Because it could have just been a great tax write off and that was all it was meant to be.

It wasn't even a "So bad it was good" film. It was just bad. And to top it off, a certain character was killed in the beginning who should not have been killed. But I guess he was just as bored by the film as those watching it and wanted an easy out.

BastardofYoung

Just got this on VHS, as a huge Bobcat fan, I liked it. Its no Shakes the Clown though.

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last.fm

‎"I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people." - Jack Handey.

The Batlord

*could have

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MicShazam

Just watched Demolition.


It's a bit strange. The ending is a slight cop out by way of resorting to conventions where the movies was really quite unhinged up to the last few scenes. I don't really mind. What this movie made me think about was something that's been sitting in the back of my mind for a while. I read a Sunsan Sontag essay by the name "Against Interpretation" a couple months ago and it never really left my mind.

Basically, I think that the common way to discuss the merits of a movie is overly contrived, intellectualized bull****. A movie is a series of impressions that can't be boiled down to some "message" that is then judged in it's coherence or lack thereof. I felt very mentally engaged by Demoltion. It was rich in all sorts of small mental reactions, like empathy, finding a character interesting or offputting or likeable, liking the music, striking imagery, etc. The sum of these experiences is what the movie really is. Everything else is an attempt to rationalize the film and boil it down to some neat little intellectually explainable package that isn't actually what the movie was like when I watched it.

I'm basically saying that I don't need to understand why I liked it even if it's somewhat poorly rated on Metacritic and RT. It's like how I can't tell you why I loved Spring Breakers so much. It seems like it should be a dumb movie, but it felt somehow like it touched upon some great truth. Something that you ruin if you try to explain it. I realize that I simply feel a movie - like a piece of music - and that I have no interest what so ever in the traditional way of rationalizing the experience and analyzing what the "message" might be.

The message isn't the movie.

Mondo Bungle

Frontière(s) - This whole movie really needs to calm down. And everyone needs to stop trying to be so hard cuz they be lookin' like fools. So there's that and not much else to say about the movie. Highly unoriginal and stereotypical with some decent but unextraordinary splatters. It rips off a lot from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and any number of modern torture movies that suck like Hostel, although this is leagues better than that at least. Hostel is terrible. This movie has Nazis. I'm not into this brand of action horror. It did have at least one good horror moment though aside from the killings. 2.5/5

Synecdoche, New York - This didn't become my favorite movie ever or even one of them like I thought it might have the potential to, but I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like it's not a great and groundbreaking movie. Unfortunately this'll be a case of me not being able to exactly articulate what it was that didn't hella click with me, being a dumbass and all. The only other Kaufman movie I've seen was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and I liked that better. Synecdoche is funnier though, and a lot whacker if the surrealism. A lot of people'll tell you it's a movie to watch with emotions rather than logic, and that's pretty agreeable to me. The timeline is absurd and hard to make sense of, but feelings still run deep throughout the whole thing. It seems to me like a portrait of an artist obliviously decomposing and self-destructing, with everything and everyone around him only breaking him down more. There's a lot of fantastic shots too. I dunno, maybe I'll have to watch it again to figure out more to say. Still 4/5

天浴 [Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl] - After watching this it dawned on me that it's the only Chinese movie I've seen (pretty sure). I would learn after this that the Orient is rampant with empathetic themes and sorrow. This movie was good but never flooring to me. It's slow (though that's not a problem with me considering the following movies in this post) and bleak and sparse, depicting a young girl sent away to the countryside to assist a nomad farmer. The film centers around homesickness, I'd say, that only grows as the protagonist doesn't return when she was promised she would. Various people that stop by say they can make it so that she can get back, only to take advantage of her is all sorts of ways while her host watches on in despair. Sad ending, though I didn't tear up, the movie didn't do enough to establish the emotional bond. 3/5

二十四の瞳 [Twenty-Four Eyes] - The story here is so simple but so nice. A schoolteacher watching her students grow up in wartime Japan. And boy do these kids love their teacher. Similar to what I said about Mary and Max, numerous sad events occur to really connect with the viewer before the ending comes around to make you realize that life is beautiful. I cried here, majorly. I imagine if you've ever had a strong connection with a teacher it would hit even harder, I never did and it still got me wrecked. It's slow and long but so humble and heartwarming. Seriously, these kids' admiration stays strong until they're adults, never forgetting their teacher the whole way. The end made me so happy I couldn't breathe. Only giving it4.5/5 because there's a lot of singing filler.

東京物語 [Tokyo Story] - There's hardly anything to do with a plot here, and that makes it all the more genuine. Even slower in pace than Twenty-Four Eyes, it's a simple view into the lives of a Japanese Family. There's so much to connect with here though it didn't make me cry as much as before. Its simplicity makes it hard to say a lot, but this is a highly emotional piece of film. 4/5

山椒大夫 [Sansho the Bailiff] - It's hard to find much fault with this movie, except maybe the title. Yeah Sansho was a major character but I wouldn't say he's worthy of the namesake. Either way, this is completely transcendent. Utterly beautiful cinematography, bold music, and emotions turned to 11. It's all about endurance, the strength to be no matter the circumstance. Yes, it made me cry again. 5/5

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Key

There's a 2 dollar theater where I live that always plays older movies. Sometimes they show recent ones but it's rare.

Justthefacts

Whats's your zip code?

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The Best Collection You'll See Today

[MERIT]

Watching the HBO documentary about Andre The Giant. At his max, he was ~ 7'4" & 550 pounds [2.24 meters & 250 Kg].

Mondo Bungle

Paris, Texas was so good I can't even handle it. One of the best looking and feeling movies ever. 5/5

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innerspaceboy

Still working through my list. Watched the rest of the Indiana Jones trilogy, then The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and Mars Attacks, purely to see Joe Don Baker in something that wasn't Mitchell.

I think Buckaroo Banzai is next.

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