Recent Movies
Howl’s Moving Castle: I wanted to love this, and it’s exceptionally pretty, as you’d expect, but it just doesn’t work as a movie. There are all these long lingering shots of the characters and scenery, then there’s the jarring moments of “oh shit, we’ve forgotten about the story for the last 30 minutes, better cram some in now.”
It makes the story seem much more complicated than it actually is. I mean, come on, it’s loosely based on a (very good) children’s book. It’s designed to be easily understood. The audience were actually laughing in disbelief at the ending. I guess the optimal experience would be to read the book and then watch the film on mute…
The Aristocrats: Penn Jillette’s documentary showing 100 comedians telling their own version of an age-old dirty joke. The joke is terrible, and rarely told to anyone but other comedians, but that’s the point. It’s kind of an examination of the comedy mindset (or something.) It’s fun, but kind of patchy. Bits of it had me unable to breathe, while other sections dragged on for too long. Pretty much correlates to how much I like the people telling the joke, strangely enough. Ideal film to show to anyone who’s easily offended.
Crash: This is essentially Traffic but about race relations rather than drugs, even down to using the exact same character stereotypes. I sort of enjoyed it while I was watching it, but I had a constant “I’ve seen this before” feeling.
The Assassination of Richard Nixon: Confession time. I never actually managed to get all the way through this. I’m pretty sure there’s actually a good film there, but it’s so painful to watch, like a serious version of Frasier. A vaguely true story about a downtrodden salesman and the events that lead him to attempt to hijack a plane and drop a gas bomb on the White House. Lots of critics raved about it, but I just couldn’t make it to the end. I may give it another go later.
Riding Giants: I remember coming across Dogtown and Z-Boys while flipping channels a while back, and was surprised that it managed to hook me. It’s a documentary about the group of Californian kids who first really popularised skateboarding, made by Stacey Peralta - one of the kids in question. I’m not even remotely interested in skateboarding, but I liked the film a lot since it focused more on the people involved and the history surrounding the time.
Riding Giants, by the same director, is essentially the same film, but about surfing. It doesn’t work quite as well as the first film, mainly since Peralta isn’t really as close to the source material. In a way it’s more intense, since the risks involved in the sport were immensely higher. People could be and were killed while participating. It also loses something since it focuses less on the people involved, so, while I like it, I still prefer the first movie.
The Corporation: I’ve seen this before in the cinema, but one day recently I realised that I just wasn’t angry enough with the world so decided to watch it again on DVD. It’s still a great examination of the state of the world, but it loses some of it’s impact through being way too long. Towards the end it kind of meanders around and loses the focus it had at the start. Still a film that everyone should watch at least once though.
Gumball 3000: No, I’m not sure why. The local shop had a 3 for 2 rental offer, and this was the last minute “grab anything” choice. It’s actually pretty fun in a mindless sort of way. Dozens of people in a 3000-mile 1-week race across America. If you’ve seen the Jackass episode where they took part in the European version of the race, then you’ve essentially seen this film too.