watching: Mad Max
I saw this the other night. In some ways it was better then director Andrew Dominik and star Brad Pitt’s previous collaboration “The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford” and in some ways it was worse. In retrospect, if the political subtext wasn’t sooooo heavy handed the movie would be perfect. However, the near constant press conferences and presidential speeches playing in the background reallllly start to grate.
Everything else? Fucking perfect. But that one negative is SUCH a negative that it really takes away from the film as a whole. It just comes off as preachy and obnoxious and I found myself groaning at the overuse of diagetic television news and radio footage. Really, everyone in the world of this film is constantly watching or listening to news coverage of the economic collapse and the 2008 election no matter where they are?
The dialogue is sharp and clever in a way that isn’t oppressively david-mamety and the movie can be really striking and beautiful at times. It’s also got my favorite opening scene and ending scene of any movie in recent memory.
If there was an alternate cut that toned down the constant stream of press conferences then it would be an A. As it currently stands it’s a B-.
I saw Wreck-It Ralph and I liked it a whole lot for a lot of reasons (John C Reilly’s performance, the tight plotting, etc.) However, if there’s only one reason you see this movie then it’s the opening short “Paperman”. I’ve been closely following the development of Paperman and it didn’t dissapoint. Groundbreaking and gorgeous, if things went my way the methods used for animating Paperman would become industry standard.
Oh yeah and Wreck-It Ralph was really good too.
now watching. I’ve owned this movie for (i think) 3 years now and had been putting off watching it for whatever reason (maybe because NGE was still too fresh in my mind at the time).
now watching: Comic Book Confidential
I have been putting this off for a while since i tend to be apprehensive of most documentaries about the field due to the tendency of documentary filmmakers exploring comics to often leap towards hackneyed “comic book style” (ecch!) transitions and effects (as well as them often seeming to be ill-informed, despite their research, due to a lack of legitimate vested interest) but how could I resist a film with this line-up of interviewees?
I saw this tonight. Marketing for this movie has been a bit… weird. The trailers were apparently cut by some studio intern whose never heard the word subtlety in his life. If you saw this movie because you thought the trailers looked good you’ll probably be disappointed. It also has one of the more inexplicably bad (and unsuitable) taglines in recent memory. Despite all of this I was, by all accounts, excited for this movie. The Proposition is one of the finer movies of the past however many years so John Hillcoat is all good in my book. As for Nick Cave, well, I think we all know how I feel about Nick Cave (blabla I LOVE NICK CAVE)
This isn’t as good as The Proposition. But not a whole lot is. It’s not perfect by any means but it’s still a pretty great movie. It’s not a masterpiece. What it is is a real damn competent piece of crime drama with a compelling setting and a tight cast. “Competent” almost sounds like a back handed compliment but, I promise you, it’s not. It isn’t high art but it’s still really fuckin’ solid.
