The MikeCam

So I went to see a midnight showing of Star Wars: Episode III tonight. Instead of an incredible, redeeming, climactic ending to the prequel trilogy, I sat through two hours of this:

(thanks xchel)
George Lucas can just suck my balls. Seriously, the man blows like a cheap whore. He can’t write his way out of a cardboard box and he has far too much money and interest in moviemaking for his or anyone’s good. He proved this pretty well with the first two prequels, but still I came back for more. What a sucker I was. Now, everywhere I look, I see Lucas taunting me, humiliating me. For the third time. I don’t know how anyone in their right mind and not on Lucasfilm’s payroll could possibly give any credit to this movie. I mean, the two plus hours were bad enough, but did they really need those cardboard “pwnd” cutouts in the lobby afterwards? I’ve been pwnd by George Lucas x3.

Watched The English Patient this afternoon. Great movie, a little convoluted and maybe even slow at times, but still very good. I guess my main gripe is that I felt like the stakes weren’t really escalated very high. The content was there, just something about the pacing made me feel a little detached and didn’t get me too worried about any of the characters.

Enjoyed seeing the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie in theaters the other day. It was visually fantastic and a funny movie overall, in spite of all the nay-sayer previews reports that came out. That said, however, I grant you that I have not gotten round to finishing the book and yet the film was still was not as funny as I had hoped. Still, I did enjoy it a great deal and look forward to seeing it again on DVD.

Saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on DVD the other day and enjoyed it tremendously. The acting is great, and it’s particularly refreshing to see Jim Carrey in a dramatic role. I’ve never been much enamored of all his annoying comedies, but I did enjoy The Truman Show and liked him in this movie a great deal more. I applaud actors like Jim Carrey and Jamie Foxx who can make the cross from comedy to drama and back again, it’s always exciting to see versatile actors in roles that are new and different for them. Anyway, the movie was a touching story and quite enjoyable, I highly recommend it.

Saw Sin City this afternoon and it was just as awesome as everyone says. The only thing that makes it mildly unsatisfying as a movie is that it is composed of vignettes, rather than a single unified story line. They alleviate this somewhat by capping both ends of the flick with Bruce Willis’s and Josh Hartnett’s stories and interlacing characters in several stories. Anyway, the style was beautiful and fantastically comic-booky and, although I haven’t read the comics myself, I’m told the movie is very true to the comicbooks, so that’s always good. It’s a bloody (literally) blast, and a terrific work of cinema.

The beginning did not impress me, but I’ve come away from it feeling just the opposite. It felt very, very real, particularly the first breakup scenes. I think Closer did a remarkable job of portraying real people in all the complexity and perversity and raw emotion of their relationships. Nicely done.

What’s up with the poster, though? They look like CG fakes…

When I watch Amélie, I am transported and transformed. I smile with an honesty and intensity and joy that I didn’t realize I could feel. When I watch it, I realize that it is by far my favorite movie and I love it. It is a masterpiece.

Excellent documentary and movie in general. I was very moved by it and, more than that, it truly made me think in a different way about some aspects of U.S. culture, particularly in comparison to other countries.

I say yes, a great movie, a great exploration of America’s violence problems. See it as soon as you can.

I just watched this terrific French film called Le dernier métro, or The Last Metro, about a theatre in World War II-era Paris. Like many European films — like the other two French films I’ve seen, that is to say — it is more about the fascinating and very important relationships between people than the twisting or grandiose storylines of many American films. The characters are as much a mystery to the viewer as they are to each other, and it is in the discovery of the characters’ real feelings and motives that the audience is satisfied.

As this is my first review here in my blog of blogs, I suppose I should set down some little review guidelines. Basically, I can’t often remember a lot of details and examples of things I can talk about objectively from a movie or play or what have you. I either liked it or I didn’t, sometimes to varying degrees that I will try to make clear. To keep it simple, though, because of my shortcomings as a critic and because of what I myself would like to see in reviews or recommendations, I will just give a sort sort of thumbs up or thumbs down and maybe sometimes a neutral — there’s no way I can score on any sort of point or star scale. I’ll also try to give a concise explanation of why I did or didn’t like a movie (book, show, etc.). That said, we’ll see how it works out and if I can’t find some nifty little icons for “recommend,” “don’t recommend,” and “neutral.”

In the meantime, I’ll just say that I really enjoyed this film and very much recommend it.