list/discuss/rate - your recently watched movies

 

anyway, the film is rather strange and worth watching once...but overall I felt like the movie was a remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre without the gore..... if you can imagine that.  Extremely warped story, warped characters....general warpage all around.  however, I found myself slapped with a mix of curiosity for the next scene and general boredom.  So it hardly kept my interest, as it meanders quite a bit (it is supposed to be through the eyes of the main girl- who was also in Silent Hill)...  I like most other Gilliam movies, but this one falls flat, even if it is worth one viewing... 6/10 (bonus points for being unique)

Role Models - thought it looked stupid, was stupid, but had quite a few hilarious moments.

Don't Be a Menace... - Wayans brothers.  It was awful.  Turned it off after 5 minutes.

Haven't seen,. thanks for the recommendation. 

The Passion of Joan of Arc
1928 silent movie about Joan of Arc's trial and execution, made in France but by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer who sought to make it as historically accurate as possible so its script is based entirely upon official archive records of the trial since historically accurate movies ever and it also depicts Joan as a bifauxnen rather than a Lady of War. I figure this makes it rather edgy for 1928. The performances and camerawork are absolutely great, it's fascinating how much themes and interpretation of the events Dreyer creates here just with the camera angles and so on. It comes across as a real "pro-religion, anti-church" movie, and we also see that one of the monks where she's persecuted becomes sympathetic to her side and tries to help her. I also really liked Maria Falconetti's performance as Joan of Arc... she portrays her as a really intense and fiery person, but not fiery in a hyperactive and lashing-out way, more in a subtle and "constantly burning with righteous indignation" way. The interesting part is that she sometimes slips and shows herself to be a really vulnerable person. Joan comes across as more than a little crazy, but also extremely sympathetic, and even then would be a simplification. It's amazing how it creates so much nuance with so little. 9/10

Watchmen
I'm surprised this movie was as good as it was. It keeps most of the themes and characterization intact from the comic book, even though some of the changes are better than other. I liked one change to the ending but not another. The basic idea of the new ending is an improvement upon the comic, but there was also some stuff happening I don't think made any sense. The fight scene where Triads ambush Nite Owl and Silk Spectre was too bloody because the movie had already established those two as the least violent superheroes. The bone-snapping stuff is what you'd expect from Rorschach (who, hilariously enough, is played as a Dirty Harry parody here) to do, not Nite Owl. At the same time, I think Zack Snyder didn't change enough. One of the reasons is that it makes the movie a bit too predictable and boring for people who have already read the comic book, but there's also how the entire disjointed and jittery story structure works much better on the printed page than on screen. Still, all in all it's a good movie but I'm not sure I'd call it great. I think you can make sense of it if you haven't read the comics, at least if you pay enough attention. I like it when there's so much going on myself. 7/10

Stranger than Paradise
Jim Jarmusch's breakthrough movie. Yeah, the Ghost Dog dude. This one's about a Hungarian woman who moves to the United States though mostly told from the POV of her brother who's apparently been completely assimilated by American culture. (he also comes across as kind of a dick) It's basically a coming of age story for her, and it actually works that she doesn't become the main character until the third act when she develops her own personality independently from both her mom (who moves to the US too over the cours of the movie) and her brother. In general, there's a lot of nice little things about how it subverts a lot of cinematic conventions (and storytelling conventions) but in really subtle ways beyond the plot not going where you expect it to. The POV thing is a good example of this. The movie's also deliberately timeless in style. It's made in 1984, but (going by the fashions and cars) set in the 1970s and filmed like a movie from the sixties. Oh, and the brother's culturally stuck in the 1950s. He dresses like a beatnik jazz musician from that era, watches old science fiction movies on TV and is morally outraged by rock music. I think this is meant to imply that the "American culture" he's been assimilated into is a cartoon version that people who've been born and raised in the US don't actually belong to. I think this because 1) the whole business about finding your own identity is a big theme in the movie 2) Jim Jarmusch has said in interviews that Stranger than Paradise is his attempt at presenting an outsider perspective on America. There's also a lot of humour in it, but again it's very subtle. It's the kind of movie you have to watch several times to really understand, but right now I'll give it 8/10.