Night of the Living Dead

The game Left 4 Dead was actually the reason I watched this movie; I bought the game a few months ago, and it sparked my interest in zombie-stuff. I figured watching one of the classic zombie films would be a Good Thing.

I was rather let down by it, really. There were a few scenes that were shockers (such as when the zombies are shown eating body parts), but overall, I was mostly bored by it. There just wasn’t much suspense. The zombies looked bored, not bloodthirsty, and their super-slow movements made it seem as if the heroes could easily take out all of them with baseball bats and crowbars.

It didn’t help that I was actually wanting half of the survivors to not make it. The blonde woman particularly got on my nerves; I realize they were trying to portray her fear and panic, but after a while, I felt like the other folks should have been throwing her out the door. The guy who was holed up in the basement and was trying to boss everyone around also deserved to be tossed to the horde.

Favorite line from the movie, coming from the sheriff on a news broadcast: “They’re dead, they’re all messed up.”

28 Weeks Later

Again, I watched this one mostly because I’ve been playing Left 4 Dead. I did however see the original movie, 28 Days Later, and liked it a lot.

While I enjoyed the sequel, I didn’t think it was as good as the first one. Perhaps I’ve simply forgotten, but I don’t remember the infected from 28 Days Later regularly throwing up blood in the faces of their victims. They did this constantly in this movie, and after once or twice, it basically came across for what it really is: hey, look, a way to get more blood and gore into the scene, wow!

It’s also not clear what function it has. I felt that it was implied that some of the infected were eating victims, but it’s also pretty clear that the infected don’t attack / eat one another (for whatever reason). To go out of one’s way to infect victims by spewing blood at them seems rather counterproductive.

Then again, it’s a zombie flick, and I’m overthinking things. For a zombie flick, it was decent.

The Hunt for Red October

Not a whole lot to say about this one. I quite enjoyed it, and smiled a lot at the fact that a Lithuanian, Russian-speaking skipper (Sean Connery) had a thick Scottish accent. I wonder, has any director ever asked him to lose the accent for a role?

Star Trek

I’ve never been much of a trekkie, but I figured I would give this a go. It was a fun two hours, but… wow, it had problems.

Black holes do not equal time travel. You don’t sky dive onto a planet from space. What is red matter, exactly, and why does it make black holes? If it just takes one drop, why do you need 50 gallons of the stuff? If a black hole has just formed in the middle of a ship, why in the world would you feel the need to zap it with photons? Wait, did Nimoy just say that a supernova threatened to destroy the galaxy? Also, did I mention that black holes do not equal time travel?

Okay, so perhaps I was bothered by a lot more in Star Trek than I initially thought. I can think of more things that irked me, but I’ll leave it at that. Hey, at least William Shatner wasn’t in it…

Bourne Supremacy

After really liking Bourne Identity, I was quite looking forward to this. I ended up not liking Supremacy nearly as much, though, partly because I felt as if I’d been misled. The blurb for Supremacy said that Franka Potente returned more or less as Bourne’s sidekick. However, considering that she was dead within 20 minutes from the start of the movie, her “return” felt more like a way to just slap her name on the movie.

Her being killed so early in the movie also irked me because I’d really liked the interplay being Marie and Bourne. In Identity, she’d kept him in line to some extent, and Marie was someone Bourne could talk to. Marie being killed so early in Supremacy led to Bourne going solo the rest of the movie, which I didn’t find nearly as interesting. There were lots (and lots) of shots of him walking quickly and looking serious, but little dialogue between him and anyone else, besides him consistently asking “Why are you trying to kill me?” and saying “This ends now!” (Didn’t you say that in the first one, Bourne?)

What the movie lacked in dialogue, they tried to make up for with perhaps one of the longest car chase scenes I’ve ever watched. So long, in fact that, despite cars being smashed, guns being fired, and other such things, I became bored. Yes, yes, Bourne has just pulled off some amazing stunts with an old busted up taxi; movie along, please. 5 minutes later: oh, we’re still doing the car chase? Wake me up when it’s over.

My biggest problem with Supremacy is that it just felt like more of the same. I obviously expected Supremacy to be a continuation of Identity – it’s a sequel, after all – but not to such an extent. It felt like they’d taken Identity, swapped out a few characters, and left the plot more or less the same. Bourne’s a badass, someone’s trying to kill him, and he’s pissed. More, please.

Kudos to the makers, however, for continuing the coolness of including multiple languages in the movie; Russian makes the list this time. My Russian was woefully inadequate to understand what they were saying, but the actors’ pronunciation seemed pretty good, at least far better than I’ve heard elsewhere (Stargate SG-1 comes to mind). I didn’t even recognize Karl Urban, who played the Russian killer Kirill, as the same fellow who played Eomer in The Two Towers and The Return of the King.

The Kite Runner

I have very little to say about this one other than that it was an excellent movie. I don’t want to say much about it because its greatness lies solely in the story, and if I go blathering about it, I’ll spoil all sorts of things. Suffice to say, even if you’re not crazy about moies which are largely subtitled, you should watch this movie. I’m usually not one to get all emotional over movies, but there were a few bits in this one that made me really sad and really happy. The ending is awesome. If you’ve not seen it, I strongly recommend you do so.

Next to be watched via Netflix: Hotel Rwanda and Changeling.

Last week was a good week to sign up, as I had plenty of time to watch movies while laying around on hydrocodone. Things we’ve watched so far:

Lawrence of Arabia

I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this at first, but I ended up loving it. Lawrence is a really interesting character, and watching the film actually prompted me to throw a biography of his on my “to read” list. I also got a kick seeing Obi Wan, er, Alec Guinness, in the role of Prince Faisal.

I also thought the scenery was amazing. I can’t imagine how difficult it was filming all of that in the desert (I didn’t get around to watching the Making Of stuff on the DVD). It was doubly impressive because I knew none of it was CGI.

Citizen Kane

I again wondered whether I’d like this or not, but I ended up enjoying it. I talked to my friend Joshua about it beforehand, and he commented that it didn’t really feel that old considering it was made in ’41. I agree; other than the black and white factor and a few give-aways (like the fuzzy lighting on closeups of female characters), it felt very modern. The plot was great, and I thought Welles was excellent. I can certainly see why it’s hailed as one of the greatest movies ever. I’ll probably go back and watch this again to see if I can pick up anymore from it.

The one negative for me: before watching it, I accidentally stumbled onto what “Rosebud” was, so I knew how the movie ended before even getting settled into my chair.

Bourne Identity

Looking this movie up on IMDB really showed me how out of it I am in regards to movies. I thought hat it had come out “a few years ago”, when in reality it came out seven years ago. Okay, so I’m a little behind…

I liked this one as well, even though there were a few silly things. For example – since when do you go to a high security bank and gain access to an account by just giving the account number, with no I.D.? I need to book a flight to Switzerland…

Bonus points to the makers for having people in foreign countries actually speaking foreign languages (French, German, etc.). As I’m into languages, I thought it was a really nice touch.

If you’ve got any favorite movies, drop ‘em in the comments, and I’ll add them to my list of movies to check out. It just might take me a year or two to get to it.

I am, however, a big Indiana Jones fan. I grew up on the movies, and for a time in my younger years (say, 9 to 11), I yearned to be him; I had a brown aviator’s jacket that looked vaguely like Indiana’s jacket, and I consistently asked for an Indiana Jones hat. Thankfully my parents never got me one; I’m sure I would have been pummeled the first time I wore it to school, and my fighting skills would surely have not been up to Indy’s standards. But I digress…

So, being an Indiana Jones fan, when I learned that it had came out on DVD, it was high time for me to watch it. We rented it a few nights ago, and… well, I was rather disappointed. If you’ve not seen the film yet, it is now time for you to bail out, as spoilers will be running rampant in roughly four sentences. Anyone left? Excellent. Moving along:

The beginning of the film had me captivated. They touched on all of the right things from the old movies, tying it all together. The warehouse was wonderful, and they had the right music to go with it, too. Ford, while obviously bit (okay, a lot) older, fell into the Jones role admirably, I thought. He crashed into the Soviet truck so well, I could have easily been tricked into thinking I was watching one of the original movies. However… as the movie went on, it lost me completely. Come on – Indiana Jones and aliens?

I suppose it’s fair to argue that all of the other movies were way over the top, too. Let’s see – we had the Ark of the Covenant that melted Nazis; a religious cult that ritually ripped out folks’ hearts, only for them to continue living so they could be burnt up in a massive lava pit; and the Holy Grail, which could heal a grievous gunshot wound, and which was, incidentally, guarded by a knight who had been alive since the Crusades. Way over the top, I know.

But there weren’t aliens. I can’t really put my finger on it, but at least for me, Indiana Jones and aliens don’t mix well. I think part of the reason is that they pull the Jones films away from the era I know them to be in – the World War 2 years. Moving forward in time to deal with Ford’s age is fine; replace the Nazis with Soviets, and move along. But throwing aliens into the bargain was too much for me. That’s not to imply you couldn’t have aliens show up in the World War 2 era; I suppose they could. But as the original films were, being set in the era they were in, they had a certain feel to them. The aliens messed that feel up for me. I had fun watching the movie, as it was nice to get in touch with some childhood memories, but I think it could have been a lot better.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s a good movie. I enjoyed seeing it. But for a time, it was #1 on IMDb’s Top 250 list. That’s just cooky. The Dark Knight better than Schindler’s List? Than Star Wars? I don’t think so. The Dark Knight has since slipped to the #3 spot, which I still think is way too good of a spot for it. It was a good movie, but I wouldn’t put it in the top 10 at all. I felt that it dragged on a bit too long, or perhaps a lot too long. If it had been 45 minutes shorter, I would’ve liked it more, I think; as it was, I kept thinking, “okay, here’s the big action sequence that’ll wrap it up.” And then that sequence would end, and the movie just kept going.

Despite my complaints, I still liked it. Some good points:

• One thing I heard from folks was that Heath Ledger’s Joker was excellent; and on that point, I’ll agree. I liked his psychotic killer version of the Joker a lot more than the classic look. I’d have to rewatch the original Batman movie to refresh my memory of Nicholson’s portrayal, but I think I’d end up liking Ledger’s more.
• A few too many of them, but the action sequences were excellent. I particularly liked the car / truck / armored car chase scene.
• The special effects in general. Two-Face was quite impressive, among many other things.

Do see the movie, whether it’s in theaters or on DVD. Just don’t pay as much attention as the hype as I did.

1. I turned 24 on the 11th. One more year and I’ll be a quarter of a century old!

(Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! If you’ve not seen this movie yet, you may want to skip this one; spoilers ahead.)

Alright, is everyone who doesn’t want to read spoilers gone? Good. For those who are braving ahead even having not seen it, the plot is this: a young recently-graduated college student basically abandons his family – parents and one sister, the latter with whom he is extremely close – to go tramping across the country. While he goes many places, his ultimate goal is to go to Alaska; he wants to find the ever-elusive Truth, and he thinks that going into solitude and living a simple life will help him do that. He ultimately ends up dying in Alaska, trapped by a flooded river. In the movie at least, he dies from ingesting a poisonous plant that he had confused with another, edible plant. It’s not clear whether he truly died from eating a poisonous plant, or simply starvation.

The movie lived up to the hype of my friends; it was quite good. I was really swept up into the story, and found myself thinking a lot about the message the guy was giving throughout his travels: modern life is too complicated, and we need to simplify. Near the beginning there’s a scene where him and his family are at his graduation dinner. His parents offer to buy him a new car, and… he gets angry with them. What’s wrong with his old car, he asks? He likes his old car – it works; he accuses them of obsessing over things, “things, things, always more things.” His attitude about much of life is like this – less is more, essentially. Get back to nature, get back to experiencing the moment.

The day after I watched it though, the more and more his actions bugged me. I felt that in the movie, he (Christopher McCandless) was portrayed as noble, in a way, for abandoning his family and going off into Alaska. There’s nothing wrong per se with leaving your family and doing your own thing – I’m certainly not saying that. But he was of age; if he wanted to do such a thing, his parents couldn’t have stopped him. Why didn’t he send a postcard or letter to them, or at least to his sister? Did making them suffer through the worry help him in doing what he was trying to do? It almost seemed like he got off on leaving all of them hanging.

Furthermore, there’s a line between being adventurous and being stupid, and I think he crossed it when he went into Alaska with, more-or-less, nothing. On the Wikipedia page about it, it’s stated that he decided in July, after a few months there, that he was ready to leave; however, the river he had crossed on his way in was larger and swifter, and he couldn’t cross it. In August, there’s a journal entry which is assumed to be his last words. His body was found in early September. Even if one assumes that he died immediately after writing his last journal entry, that was still a month’s worth of time for him to attempt to get out. The real kicker? There was a hand-operated tram 1/4 of a mile from where he tried to cross the river. If he’d gone “into the wild” with a few maps of the area, he would have known that, and he could have been able to walk right out.

While I did enjoy the movie a lot, the more I think on it, I’m afraid I share the sentiments of a park ranger, who is quoted on the above-linked Wikipedia page:

When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn’t even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic, and inconsiderate. […] Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide.

I get what the guy was trying to do, and part of me thinks, yeah, we should all simplify more; we don’t need all the crap that we have now to be happy. But the other part of me thinks that he could have let his family know what was up, at least his sister, and that he could still be alive right now if he’d executed his plan with a little less idealism and a little more common sense.

The movie takes place in the early 80s in East Germany, beginning, indeed, in 1984. Whether that was a coincidence in plotting or a nod to Orwell, I don’t know. The plot focuses on the Stasi, and specifically on one agent, Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, spying on a playwright and his girlfriend. Why is the Captain spying on them? Because one of the top dogs in the Stasi hierarchy wants his girlfriend, and so wants the playwright out of the way. As Georg, the playwright remarks at one point, “To think that people [like that] ruled a country.”

I won’t give away how the plot progresses or how the movie ends, because I’m hoping that you’ll rent it and watch it. I know that many people dislike watching a movie with subtitles, which is what you’ll have to do if you don’t speak German, but it really is worth the trouble. Ulrich Mühe did a truly amazing job in portraying the almost soulless agent, the “little gray man” as Ebert called him. While the other actors and actresses were all good, Mühe made the film; without him, it probably wouldn’t have worked.

Not only was the movie excellent entertainment-wise, with some of the most tense moments I’ve experienced while watching a film, it also opened my eyes to German history beyond the Nuremberg Trials. In my interest obsession with World War 2, my advancing through German history stalled and eventually stopped. I knew that Berlin had been split between the Western Allies and the Russians, and that East Germany was communist, but that was about where my post-WW2 German history knowledge stopped. The movie has led me to start looking into later events, particularly in regards to East Germany, and I must say: it’s not pretty. I’ve not read a huge amount on the Stasi, by any reckoning, but what I have read is pretty awful. Simon Wiesenthal, the famed Nazi hunter, once remarked that, “The Stasi was much, much worse than the Gestapo, if you consider only the oppression of its own people.”

Poking into the history of the Stasi, however, will be saved for a later post; for now, take my advice. Go out, rent Das Leben der Anderen, and watch it. If you’re disappointed with it, you can come back here and yell (or type in all caps) at me. I won’t mind. (Not that it’ll happen, mind you – you’ll enjoy the movie.)

• The Dementors looked eerily similar (eery pun intended) to the Ringwraiths from the Lord of the Rings films. They were a bit more wispy, whereas the Ringwraiths were definitely solid beings, but still – the similarities are quite strong. Not to say that Rowling copied the Ringwraiths, however; tall, thin, black hooded creatures seem to be a pretty common thing in the fantasy world. Ringwraiths, Dementors – hell, look at most depictions of the Grim Reaper.
• I thought the werewolf form of Lupin was somehow off. Its hair wasn’t shabby enough or something. It looked too humanoid and not wolfish enough. Then again, I’ve always been one who prefers his werewolves to be men that turn into just an overly large wolf, not some humanoid looking thing.
• I wasn’t very fond of Gary Oldman’s portrayal of Sirius. He seemed too frantic, too nervous. When reading the book, I pictured him as quite smooth and relaxed, sure of himself. Oldman’s version acted a bit like he was going to explode at any moment. Perhaps I perceived this incorrectly though; I was, after all, trying to maintain some bit of cleaning momentum while watching.
• As noted, I only caught the last hour, so perhaps I would have seen the reasoning for the change if I’d seen all of it, but… why did Harry only get the Firebolt broom at the end of the movie? In the book, he got it much, much earlier.
• The Richard Harris Dumbledore from movies 1 and 2 were so much better. I loved the Harris version, and thought Michael Gambon’s version in Azkaban was, for lack of a better word, awful. His speech was off, and he didn’t have the “twinkle” of character that the Harris version had. Harris’ version, while obviously nutty, was funny and enjoyable. Gambon’s version was just weird.

And, worry not, those of you who aren’t fellow Potter fans. I’m halfway through book 4 already. I’d say once I’m done with the series, my Potter mania will pass.

I don’t know if the movie was meant to be a blend of sci-fi / horror, but I actually found Children of Men to be pretty terrifying, moreso than most “real” horror movies. (Actually, I find a lot of “real” horror movies to just be stupid, but I digress.) Why? Because what it depicted really could happen. I’m not talking about the infertility issue (even though I suppose that, too, could happen), but instead, I’m talking about the general condition of the world. The totalitarian Britain that was depicted just creeped me out. It reminded me way too much of what I know about Nazi Germany.

A few pointless but fun asides about the movie:

• I recognized the fellow that played Syd, Peter Mullan, as the guy who gave one of the speeches to the Scottish soldiers in Braveheart. The speech he gave was the one with “We don’t have to die for these bastards, let’s go home!” in it. And yes, I was totally addicted to Braveheart. I’ve seen it many, many times.
• There were a few nods toward Buddhism in the movie. One of the things that Kee and her female protector (I don’t recall her name) kept chanting in the car was Om Mani Padme Hung, probably the most well-known Tibetan Buddhist mantra. Jasper, the old male friend of Theo, said “Shanti, shanti, shanti” a few times, which is also a Buddhist mantra. I couldn’t quite understand what Kee’s female friend was saying on the bus, when the guard was harassing her, but it sounded more like a Christian prayer than a Buddhist mantra. Whatever the religion was supposed to be, I liked the nods to Buddhism.

Last night I watched Requiem for Dream. I wanted to watch it after reading about it (after having discovered it via the theme music in the Da Vinci Code trailer).

It was a roller coaster of a movie. I had a general idea about what the movie was: the crumbling of 4 lives as their drug addictions become worse and worse. However, I don’t think I was really prepared for it. It’s one thing to read a synopsis of the movie, and another to watch it unfold.

Requiem for a Dream is one of those movies that doesn’t pull any punches. One after another, it slaps you in the face, saying “LOOK! This is what drug addiction is like!” In the beginning of the movie, the four characters are starting to have problems. The mother is lonely and wants to lose weight. Marion (Connelly) isn’t quite sure what she wants, besides to spend time with Harry. Harry and his pal want want to get high, but they quickly move on to wanting to make money from selling drugs.. so they can get high even more often.

Things start to fly downhill from there. The mother becomes addicted to speed as her diet pill, prescribed to her by a doctor. She starts hallucinating, imagining she’s going to be on television, and then everything will be ok.

Harry and his buddy make a ton of money at first, but Harry and Marion quickly blow most of that feeding their drug addiction. The relationship between Harry and Marion quickly decays, particularly when Marion agrees to have sex with an old friend for money.

There aren’t any happy moments in the movie. Most movies introduce problems, and then counter those problems with solutions. Requiem doesn’t. It throws one problem after another, compounding each other, leading to the eventual downfall of all four characters. The movie ends with Marion attending an orgy for more drug money, since drugs are all she can think about anymore; Harry lies in a hospital bed with one of his arms amputated, due to it basically rotting off from repeated injections in the same spot; Sarah, the mother, is placed in a psych ward, after electrotherapy failed to help her; and Tyrone, Harry’s friend, ends up in prison.

Requiem for a Dream was a riveting movie. I wouldn’t say enjoyable – in fact, it was painful to watch for me. It kind of wrenched at my heart over and over. I genuinely felt sorry for all of the characters. I’m still a bit depressed from watching it. It’s not something I’d watch again, if I came across it while channel surfing. It was just too disturbing; I’d even go so far as to say upsetting. However, I’m glad I watched it. It made me see addiction in a different light than I had before. Even though I thought it was really disturbing and depressing, I think a lot of college students (or maybe even high school students) would do well to watch it (with a parent, in regards to high school students). Maybe it’d help steer them clear of drugs. I’ve never had any real inclination to ‘experiment’ with drugs, but after watching Requiem for a Dream, I know I sure as hell won’t be touching them.

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