Recent Films
You Kill Me – moderately ok Indiewood fare. The sections about alcoholism seemed heartfelt, and the acting and a number of the jokes were good, but seeing real human emotion squeezed into a romcom/violence cookiecutter was painful to the soul. The world does not need another hilarious hitman movie. The music was terrible, too.
300 – I was impressed with the action scenes; I’m a stickler for knowing what’s going on physically. Thumbs up to the CGI longshots of ramped violence, although the speed changes got pretty tiresome. Thumbs down to the loathsome politics. In 30 years this will be an extremely embarrassing movie, if it isn’t already.
Trailer Park Boys – felt like a double episode of the show – is that a good thing or a bad thing? Good because if you like the show, you’ll like the film. Bad because they missed an opportunity to paint on a much larger canvas. I wish terrorists had attacked the park.
Apocalypto – Fucking A! Leaving aside Mel’s questionable belief system, this was good times. Epic, yet refreshingly, violently different from the Hollywood norm. As it goes on, it gets a bit weaker, with classic hollywood plot contrivances and the like. Plus – again, here I go with the politics – the film sort of argues “if you are a bad society, you deserve to be invaded.”
Peeping Tom – A creepy classic. orth checking out. Rarely do you hear scopophilia name-checked in a film that’s actually entertaining. Plus, it was written by a Bletchley Park codebreaker. (hat tip to Leo for recommending this)
Five Deadly Venoms – I’d seen this before, but I watched it again, and boy is it good. Such an evocative film, with such an ingenious hook.