Ernest Alba's Blog : Movies

Film Review: Apocalypto

eialba — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 01:54:00 GMT

It was a bitterly cold afternoon, the first of the winter. The wind was blowing tiny flecks of snow into my face as I felt my nose turning a bright, numb red. As soon as we opened the door to the theater, a rush of warm, recycled air melted the ice instantly. All that remained was the watery residue of those tiny, icy daggers. Though my body felt instant relief and the memory of the bitter cold started fading almost immediately, there lingered in the corner of my mind the faint remembrance of the long, cold journey from MIT to Kendall Square Cinema.
...
As I paid for my ticket, debated getting popcorn (no), and filed into my seat, I still felt the aftershock of that cold night air. But ten minutes into Apocalypto, I was no longer in a theater in Cambridge with a cold wind howling outside - no, I was far away in the steamy jungles of pre-Columbian Mexico, basking in tropical sunlight with the people who very well could have been my direct ancestors. I was watching men hunting a wild boar, naked children playing with the other little critters that run around the jungle floor, and women nursing infants. The main character, a strong, resourceful young man who eventually names himself "Jaguar Paw," lives with his expecting partner, a beautiful, smart, and courageous girl named Seven, his son Turtles Run, and his dad Flint Sky in a small village under the protection of the immensely tall tree tops and dense jungle swaths that offers a wonderful atmosphere of tranquility. That night, there is a story-telling and a dance. Jaguar Paw lays quietly on Seven's lap, listening to the kicks of his unborn son. These first minutes of the film are my favorite. This is what I wanted to see - a glimpse of a people's culture that is rapidly being extinguished. These people that we meet in the first minutes of the film, however, are not the Maya people that we think of when we think of the Maya civilization. These people know nothing of the magnificent temples and pyramids built by the sweat and hard labor of the thousands of peasants that lived in the vast cities of ancient Mexico.

The next morning, a group of warriors comes into the village and kills several of the men, women, and children, razes the village, and binds the survivors. Jaguar Paw manages to lower his wife and son into a small but deep underground cavern before he is captured. The warriors march the captives through the jungle on the way to one of the large Mayan cities. It becomes clear that Jaguar Paw must escape somehow and rescue his wife and daughter before it rains and the cavern floods or they die of thirst. Through his journey, we are allowed to explore the surroundings and the people that made up this epic but little understood civilization. According to many sources, including Mel Gibson, this movie is quite accurate, as they consulted several history books to ensure historical accuracy.

Though some scenes in this movie allow a detailed look at the fascinating Maya culture, Apocalypto is not a historical epic or a docudrama. It is a chase movie set against an historic backdrop. It is possible that this movie will disappoint you if you are looking for something that might more appropriately be shown on The Discovery Channel. Jose and I quickly realized (he more quickly) that we weren't going to get what we were expecting. Barring that disappointment, this film is a greatly paced and involving thriller. I'm relieved that it is not nearly so violent and graphic as Passion of the Christ. The violence is stomachable, though parts of it are extremely graphic and brutal. Examples include a jaguar ripping a man's face off and a heart being removed while the victim watches it being removed from his chest. The sets are beautifully designed, especially the Mayan city. The actors are quite convincing; several are native Mayas that live in Mexico. I'm glad that Gibson has them speaking in Maya. I've long been an advocate of having characters from other countries speak in their corresponding languages not speak English in an accent from their respective countries. It's one of the reasons I disliked Memoirs of a Geisha. Having to sit through Chinese actresses struggling to speak English with Japanese accents was beyond tedious. I'd much rather read subtitles, like I did during Apocalypto.
....
The unkind memory that had been tucked into the farthest recess of my mind jumped into the front once again as I exited the room, rounded the corner, and saw through the window the bare, brown twigs of the poor trees stiffly moving in the wind. The journey back was going to be just as long and cold.

Film Review: The Nightmare Before Christmas (in 3-D!)

eialba — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 08:21:00 GMT

I'm excited. After taking a long break from writing film reviews, I've begun writing again. Why did I stop? Because I hadn't seen any new movies lately. Really. That seems odd to me, considering that for the longest time, I'd watched at least one new film per week. For the past two months or so, I haven't seen any new films. And this review isn't even about a new film. It's about a well-established classic film that is being re-released in theaters across America in 3-D animation. Soon enough though, I'll get back in the habit (Saw 3 comes out Friday!) Anyway, despite the fact that I'm reviewing an old film, it's good to come back to writing reviews. My past several posts have been political in nature, and I'm tired of politics. It's time for a rest. Though mid-terms are coming up. Bah. It seems I've also written about music recently. I'm into music these days. It takes my mind off of things.

I've been to 3-D movies before, mostly at Six Flags Over Texas. They always seemed gimmicky to me because I could simply take the glasses off and the magic was gone. At least with two dimensional movies, the magic emanated from the screen and not from a prop. With this 3-D release of "The Nightmare Before Christmas," however, the 3-D aspect of it works. The reason for that is quite simple. With other animated movies, you are watching animation that is two-dimensional converted to three dimensions. It doesn't intuitively make any sense. But with this movie, which is made with clay figures, the animation is already 3-dimensional, it just had to be converted to two dimensions to be shown on a flat screen. Now it's being converted back to its original format. So instead of seeing Jack as a stick figure with a circular head, you see Jack as a wiry but fully-formed body with a spherical head. In addition, the way the 3-D is used here, things don't just pop out of the screen, they pop into the screen. That is, you can see a background, a mid-ground, and a foreground. It gives the illusion that you are sitting in front of an actual mini-stage where all of these clay puppets are moving around and acting on their own. It's a bizarre but thrilling feeling.

As for the movie itself, if you have not heard of "The Nightmare Before Christmas," it is based on characters and story by Tim Burton, the director of the original Batman movie and "Edward Scissorhands." He's known for his dark sense of humor and love for the macabre. His treatment of the material in "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is no different. It stars Jack Skellington as the Pumpkin King, a tall, thin skeleton with an at times menacing but usually jovial demeanor. He has an innate talent for scaring people, perfect for someone who is in charge of Halloween. However, he soon becomes tired of it and after wandering in the woods, he finds a portal to Christmastown. Enchanted by the notion of Christmas, he captures Santa Claus and takes his place. With the help of everyone in Halloweentown he assembles a completely new set of reindeer, sleigh, costume, and toys. Only his close friend Sally sees the danger of trying to be something you are not.

Aside from the innovation of stop-motion animation, the characters in this film are wonderfully complex and deep. One of the most touching moments in the film is when Jack is furiously pondering the reason behind Christmas and he hears rapping on his window. He looks outside and Sally is waving at him from below. Hanging from a rope is a bucket holding a bottle of wine and a plate of food. He looks inside, smiles and looks back down. She's gone. In that moment we see what Christmas is about. Meanwhile, Sally is sitting behind the stone wall beyond Jack's house, hands clasped around her chest, thinking of Jack and smiling. You can sense the great affection she feels for Jack.

What moves people? Many times it's words. Many times it's music. How sensical it is, then, to combine the two. "The Nightmare Before Christmas" does just that. Beautiful poetry:

Oh, somewhere deep inside of these bones
An emptiness began to grow
There's something out there, far from my home
A longing that I've never known

Is coupled with melodies of the highest caliber, as only Danny Elfman can deliver. This is the beauty of musicals. They do something that no ordinary film can do: they combine the best modes of expression in this world, music and literature, into one medium. There are naysayers; people who say musicals take them out of the experience or makes the dialogue feel forced. In some cases, this is true. It is true of any medium, however, that there are bad works. But after one takes the time to watch musicals and comes to understand them, they can be a source of many strong emotions. One just has to look for musicals that are well-written in both musical composition and dialogue. "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is one such musical.

Review - V for Vendetta

eialba — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 11:51:00 GMT

V for Vendetta was originally a graphic novel by Alan Moore. The screenplay was written by the Wachowski Brothers, household names after the Matrix Trilogy. It tells the story of a Britain similar to Nazi Germany, including the red insignia, the Hitler-esque leader, complete government control over the media, and strict militaristic control over all citizens. This Britain exists sometime in the near future, when Dell LCD panels are still around, but now even the poorest people can afford to have one in their homes. Before discussing the merits of the movie, I'd like to mention something important, in my opinion. This novel adapted to screenplay adapted to film is extremely similar if not exactly like George Orwell's 1984. I mean, there are scenes that are carbon copies of scenes that took place in 1984. (SPOILER WARNING) For example, there is a scene where we see V's scarred hands. There is a similar scene in 1984 where we read about Winston's varicose veins. Both of those scenes take place in the beginning of the story, as we are introduced to the characters. The Evey character has characteristics similar to Julia's in 1984, not to mention the obvious fact that they are the counterparts of the male leads in each story. There is a scene, quite famous in 1984, where Winston is taken in by the police and interrogated over several days. The same thing happens to Evey. The same emotional tension, the same purpose, and the same treatment. It's the same! Then, there's the supreme prime chancellor, or whatever his title is. He is always seen on a huge screen shouting at everyone. If that ain't 1984, I don't know what is. So, this movie is a blatant retread of the type of philosophies, social doctrines, moral evaluations we've seen over and over before. Does this keep the movie, or any movie, from being great? Absolutely not.

This movie is great. It's exciting, it's fast-paced, it's intelligent, it's visually stunning, it's finely acted, and creatively directed. The music is unbelievable. It's used well in several scenes, like the opening scene where the statue explodes, the scene where V catches the politician in his greenhouse, and the scene where V shows Evey his jukebox. The finale is spectacular. The director, someone I have never heard of, uses a great deal of different techniques that work well in the context of the movie. One I caught, and smilingly acknowledged, was a direct copy of a shot used in the first Matrix movie - the old knife to the head trick where the guy falls back revealing a knife in his head and the killer in the distance. Another was the effective use of dominoes. The fireworks worked well. The montages worked well. The parallelism between V's rebirth and Evey's rebirth, one out of fire, and one out of rain, were too obvious and kind of silly. But, overall, the direction worked. Hugo Weaving, who was Agent Smith in the Matrix movies, is V this time around. He plays him well. Though we never see him (or do we?), he becomes a fascinating character. Natalie Portman, too, despite a lacking British accent, plays the role straight and does her job well. I especially commend the actors who played the "Voice of London" and the Supreme Chancellor. They were delightfully evil.

This movie has restored my confidence in the Wachowski Brothers. This time, the formula worked right for them. This movie is odd, but fun to watch. Though it is an extreme depiction of government-gone-wrong, it's interesting to see the blatant correlations between the plight of that Britain and this U.S. Watch it and listen carefully - you won't be able to miss it. And don't miss V for Vendetta. It's worth the trip to the theatre.

Am I too indulgent?

eialba — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 01:26:00 GMT

Looking over my reviews, one might think I'm too generous to movies. After all, I've given glowing reviews to nearly everything I've reviewed. But I don't watch movies often. Certainly, I watch them as much as the average young American (once a week), but I'm very selective about what I watch. Unless it's not my responsibility to choose the movie, I only watch movies I KNOW will be good. So that kind of limits the crap I watch. I have seen some movies recently that I didn't want to go see. And they've all been either atrociously bad or just alright. Included on the list are Annapolis, Elizabethtown, Waiting..., Fun with Dick and Jane, and Monster-in-Law. Why don't I review them? Well, if watching the movie wasn't fun, then thinking about the movie and then writing about the movie won't be much fun either. I'll leave that to people who get paid to write reviews.

Review: Rent

eialba — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 06:22:00 GMT

I've never seen a Broadway musical. But if I were going to go see one, Rent would be it. I've known about the importance of the musical in America's history. I've never known why. Now, I know. People like to talk about the savagery, the inhumanity, and the depravity of bohemians, people living unconventional lifestyles. They imagine their lives are fruitless and cold; wasteful and pained. Their beliefs stem from ignorance. This play, based on Puccini's opera La bohème, gives a vivid and realistic view of life for a sample of Bohemians living in the slums of New York City in the 1980s. Their lives are anything but what is ascribed to them. Their lives are warm and full; fun and intelligent. Also important, Rent deals with the emergence of AIDS as a national crisis, bringing to life the shocking fact (at least at the time) that AIDS affects everyone, from night club dancers and Harvard lawyers to documentarian filmmakers and MIT-trained professors. Rent takes the stories of these bohemians and sets them to rock and roll ballads. Rent would not have become as famous as it is - indeed, would not have been made into a film - unless it was very, very good. There's no doubt that Rent is a timeless classic. The script is light and witty, but full of emotion and purpose. The songs are sometimes melodramatic, sometimes goofy, but always instant hits. All of this remains intact in the movie rendition of Rent. The question is: Is the screen version good?

Yes, it is. Chris Columbus, the director of Bicentennial Man, Home Alone, and two of the Harry Potter movies shifts gears and tries his hand at musicals. I suppose he likes challenges because if anything is a challenge to direct on film, it's musicals. So often, as was the case in the late 60's and early 70's, musicals fail to capture the magic of the stage and become massive flops. The reason is because the immediacy of the story is lost. Musical numbers tend to feel disconnected from the story because they don't seamlessly transition into one another. One minute, you're arguing vehemently, the next you're singing. When did you ever start singing in the middle of an argument? Also, plays tend to work with a minimum of background and props. When you try to keep that feeling of one background in a movie, it becomes boring. To counteract these effects, Columbus masterfully plays with different techniques including vintage camera shots, portrait-style shots, and dizzying camera tricks during dance sequences (see "La Vie Boheme" in the bar and "The Tango Maureen"). His interpretation of the musical is captivating, heart-wrenching, and extraordinary. The actors fill the screen with their presence. I especially love the character Angel played by Wilson Jermaine Heredia. A homosexual transvestite with AIDS, Angel lives life looking only to give others happiness. His cheery mannerisms and bright outlook in life lie in stark contrast to the terminal illness from which he suffers. He gives a performance for which he won a Tony award. He and the rest of the cast play their characters with passion, only occasionally suffering from the tendency to overact, a side effect of having to sing one's emotions. Yet, this film is a success on every level.

My Oscar Picks for 2006

eialba — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 01:19:00 GMT

Note: These are my picks for winners, not necessarily my favorites. I loved Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote and I loved Brokeback Mountain.

Picture

Picture

Brokeback Mountain

Crash

Munich

Capote

Good Night, and Good Luck.

Director

Ang Lee - Brokeback Mountain

Steve Speilberg - Munich

George Clooney - Good Night, and Good Luck.

Paul Haggis - Crash

Bennett Miller - Capote

Actor

Philip Seymour Hoffman - Capote

Heath Ledger - Brokeback Mountain

Joaquin Phoenix - Walk the Line

David Strathairn - Good Night, and Good Luck.

Terrence Howard - Hustle and Flow

Heath Ledger - Brokeback Mountain

Actress

Reese Witherspoon - Walk the Line

Felicity Huffman - Transamerica

Charlize Theron - North Country

Keira Knightley - Pride and Prejudice

Judi Dench - Mrs. Henderson Presents

Supporting Actor

George Clooney - Syriana

Paul Giamatti - Cinderella Man

Jake Gyllenhaal - Brokeback Mountain

Matt Dillon - Crash

William Hurt - A History of Violence

Jake Gyllenhaal - Brokeback Mountain

Paul Giamatti - Cinderella Man

Supporting Actress

Rachel Weisz - The Constant Gardener

Michelle Williams - Brokeback Mountain

Catherine Keener - Capote

Frances McDormand - North Country

Amy Adams - Junebug

Original Screenplay

Crash

Good Night, and Good Luck.

Syriana

Match Point

The Squid and the Whale

Adapted Screenplay

Brokeback Mountain

Capote

Munich

The Constant Gardener

A History of Violence

Editing

Crash

Munich

Walk the Line

The Constant Gardener

Cinderella Man

Cinematography

Brokeback Mountain

Memoirs of a Geisha

Good Night, and Good Luck.

Batman Begins

The New World

Art Direction

Memoirs of a Geisha

King Kong

Good Night, and Good Luck.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Pride and Prejudice

Costume Design

Memoirs of a Geisha

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Pride and Prejudice

Walk the Line

Mrs. Henderson Presents

Makeup

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

Cinderella Man

Visual Effects

King Kong

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

War of the Worlds

Sound

King Kong

Walk the Line

War of the Worlds

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Memoirs of a Geisha

Sound Editing

King Kong

War of the Worlds

Memoirs of a Geisha

King Kong

War of the Worlds

Memoirs of a Geisha

Original Score

Brokeback Mountain

Memoirs of a Geisha

Munich

Pride and Prejudice

The Constant Gardener

Animated Feature

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

Howl's Moving Castle

Original Song

In Deep - Crash

Travelin' Thru - Transamerica

It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp - Hustle and Flow

Foreign Language Picture

Paradise Now (Palestine)

Tsotsi (South Africa)

Joyeux Noel (France)

Don't Tell (Italy)

Sophie Scholl - The Final Days (Germany)

Documentary Feature

March of the Penguins

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Murderball

Darwin's Nightmare

Street Fight

Update: House of Wax

eialba — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 21:11:00 GMT

I failed in a fundamental way as a writer. I intended to convey an idea. I used words to express that idea. The finished product did not convey the idea I had intended it to. That is the ultimate failure for a writer.

See, I didn't mean to give the impression that House of Wax was a great or even a good movie. It was competent and entertaining. But I focused on praising it simply because I was so impressed that it wasn't awful. I should have spent some time criticizing it for its shortcomings. Alas, some people got the wrong idea. This movie is good for a rental. You'll like it. But you won't think too much about it after it's over.

Someone might look over my review and see that I said, "good, competent horror film..." In the context of the sentence and paragraph, however, it should be clear that "good" does not mean "good movie" in the general sense. Here, it means "well-behaved," which should be obvious from the context.

Review: House of Wax

eialba — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 00:49:00 GMT

I've seen enough horror movies to be a skeptic. When House of Wax presented itself and focused on its casting of Paris Hilton, I groaned and decided to skip it in theatres. Now it's on DVD, and I'm willing to give it a try. Last night, alone at Marc's house, waiting to pick him up from work, I sat back with popcorn and Raisinets and braced myself for an incompetent stab at horror. haha, stab. To my surprise, this movie avoided nearly every cliche in the genre and turned out to be a scary, enjoyable film.

Above all, I hate characters that act irrationally. Fear is a powerful tool. It gives us the ability to do things we never thought we could do. It does NOT make us unable to do anything but accept our grisly fate. Girls are NOT only good at screaming at the top of their lungs. Bad guys, especially ones that are human, are NOT invincible or even that strong. You can at LEAST put up a fight against them. You can outsmart them. You can defeat them. This movie has some of the smartest, most attentive, most resourceful teenagers I've seen in movies lately. They stick together, for one. They fight back competently. They don't make stupid, dangerous decisions like letting a stranger help too much, intruding on private ceremonies, or leaving their friends behind. You can root for these people because they give you reason to root for them.

Best of all, the movie doesn't capitalize on tired shock moments. For example, a hand is sticking up out of the ground. You wait for the gruesome shot of the whole body accompanied by a sudden cacophony of sounds to aid in scaring you. Instead, the hand is from a mannequin. Or consider a knife pulled out as a stranger goes to open the door of your car. As soon as that door opens, he's going to run that knife into your belly inside the car - but wait, he opens the door and steps aside for you to leave...and let's you go. This movie surprised me by not stooping to the level of typical horror/slasher movies. It had a heart. Well, considering. For example, the heroine takes the time to understand one of the killers and pleads with him to not kill her. She understands him and pities his situation.

Finally, it does what any good, competent horror film should do. It answers the question we are all wondering about, how did no one know about these crazy people? And it leaves a nice, little cliffhanger, just something to wonder about after the main storyline has finished.

Review: Silence of the Lambs

eialba — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 06:50:00 GMT

I need a second perspective. I need someone to watch Silence of the Lambs and tell me that it's good. Because from what I'm seeing, it ain't. It might be that I have a biased view. While I'm watching the blasted movie, I can't stop comparing it to the book. I couldn't stop doing that with Memoirs, either. That might be why I can't enjoy movies that I've already read. Then I think to myself, what about Jurassic Park? And Sphere? Then again, there are very specific reasons why I like those movies so much, despite their lack of detail from the books.

Silence of the Lambs just seems cheesy. It's like they tried to replicate exactly some of the stuff from the book, trying to retain the same jokes, even, and failed to make it interesting in the final product. For example, in the book when Starling meets Chilton for the first time, he tries to push her around and come on to her many times, and she just pushes right back, wittily. He calls her Miss Sterling, emphasizing Miss. She responds, no, it's just Starling with an a. He criticizes the FBI's decision to send her, a girl, to meet Lecter. She says, yes, the Bureau is certainly improving. He asks to show her around Baltimore, she looks away, making him realize bluntly that she finds him distasteful. In the movie, the only time she puts him down is when he realizes she doesn't want him to be there when she talks to Lecter and complains that she should have told him that at the office instead of making him walk down to the cells with her. She smiles and says, "And deprive me of your company?" - good one, Clarice. One of my favorite parts of their ongoing rift is completely omitted from the movie. Later on when she comes back to interrogate Lecter and Chilton is much less willing to let her, in the movie, all he says is, "I'm not a turnkey here, Miss Starling, I don't come running down here at night just to let people in and out." But in the book, he continues, "I had a ticket to Holiday on Ice." And here's the good part, verbatim.

I suppose it's hard to put thoughts like that into movies, unless it's done throughout and established as a device. But you lose so much when you can only see actions. Thoughts must be allowed! If I were to become a director, if I wanted to show someone thinking, by Job, I would do it. Otherwise, you have to make obvious gestures, actions, and camera motions. Like, when Hannibal uses the metal clip from the pen to make a pick for a lock. If we could read his thoughts, we would know that he had seen the pen laying forgotten on his cot. Instead, we get this awful, embarassing zoom in on the pen laying on the bed. It's the kind of thing that would make a slow person light up and go, Ohhhhh! and a somewhat smarter person like me groan. As if now we have this big realization that he's going to use it. A totally unnecessary shot. There are many shots like that in the movie.

I just can't get over the fact that this isn't as good as the book. The characters aren't as engaging, the killer isn't as intense or scary, he's more like a rock queen in the movie than anything else. This isn't good even as a movie. It's too deliberate and stagey. I can't believe it won 5 of its 7 Academy Award nominations. The 5 it won were the important ones, too, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and get this, Best Picture....come on! It beat out Disney's Beauty and the Beast, which, by the way, is the only animated movie to have been nominated for Best Picture. It deserved that award way more than Silence of the Lambs.

Final Note: I'd like to give a shout-out to my main man, Anthony Hopkins. He's the saving grace of this movie. Hannibal the Cannibal...you da man. In just 16 minutes, you created one of the most memorable criminals in movie history, among the likes of Tony Montana, Jules & Vincent, and Jimmy & Tommy all of whom had over an hour each of screen presence in their movies. You deserve to have the record for shortest performance ever to win an Oscar.

Review: Hostel

eialba — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 19:35:00 GMT

I felt ashamed sitting in the theater, watching Hostel. This is a purely exploitative thriller with no redeeming value whatsoever. I've never seen more sex and naked breasts in a movie theater than last night. And there was only sex and naked breasts in the first forty-five minutes! This movie is clearly made to entertain, and it nakedly shows that. No pun intended. And that is where the problem of Hostel lies. This movie has no meat on its bones, kind of like some of the poor victims in this movie. It has a premise: this torture chamber which unsuspecting victims are conned into entering. But it has no delivery; it can't! I'm thankful that the director and writer (same person, Eli Roth) knew when too much was too much. If he had shown too much violence, people would have walked out of the theater. I suspect the movie would have tanked. For example, one of the Americans is given a sleeping pill, and when he wakes up, he is strapped to a chair. We get the obligatory, "where am I? let me go!" demand/plea. We are, of course, right there with him, and we are bracing ourselves for what is going to happen next. Well, the torturer grabs a drill and starts drilling into the guy's legs. The guy hollers and begs for mercy. It's horrible. Then we see a toe being snapped between two pincers. More pleading and begging. Then..gasp! The torturer unshackles him, opens the door, and tells him he's free to leave. The guy can't believe it, but he ain't waiting around. He leaps up....and screams his lungs out. We get a beautiful shot of his ankles....they've been sliced open, so when he gets up, the skin, the muscle, the tendon spread apart. He falls to the floor. At this moment, the audience is thinking, my god, this is only the beginning of the movie, how much more of this can I endure? Roth is right there with us. He closes that scene and gives us time to breathe, by giving us a little detective story with the American guy's friend trying to find out what happened to him. When he finally shows up at the torture chamber, maybe twenty minutes later in the movie, we're ready for some more gore. But after seeing the "more," we realize that maybe we don't want to see that much more. Which is why the wonderful director that he is, he only shows us fleeting scenes of tortures. You can't really make out anything since it's so dark, but you get the gist. You see one person in a cage. You see someone else hanging from chains. You see someone being burned. But these, you only see for a second at the most because anything else and you'd want to leave. But see, that's the problem. We can only handle so much gore, so we can't spend much time in the torture chamber. And we don't. I bet only 25%-30% of the movie is actually in the torture rooms. And we're glad for that, but it makes the movie really insubstantial. In fact, it makes the very beginning of the movie embarassingly long. You get the feeling that the guy is trying to stretch out the running time of the movie by having all these seemingly unneccessary scenes in clubs, bars, and motel rooms. And just to keep you in your seat while you wade through that stuff, there's always some naked girl in the background. This movie is really short and very simple. Not nearly as intelligent or scary as Saw and Saw II. It's something you might want to rent some time, or see in Corsicana for two bucks. I wouldn't waste four.

What a Disappointment

eialba — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 00:33:00 GMT

Why is this happening at the box office? King Kong should be blowing the competition (Narnia and anything else that comes along) OUT OF THE WATER. It's clearly a better movie. There's no doubt about that. But for some reason, Narnia beat it out this past week, and this week Hostel beat it AND Narnia. It still hasn't made its budget back. This is a real bummer.

In numerical terms: on its opening weekend, Narnia made 67 million. Kong: 40 million. To date, Narnia has made 250 million. Kong: 192 million. This weekend, Hostel took 20 million. Narnia took 15. Kong: 12.

Review: The Island

eialba — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 20:11:00 GMT

I've heard bad things about The Island. Mainly, that it's not good. I forget the reasons. Especially when I think of how good this movie is. This is a good movie - a solid sci-fi action picture. In the near distant future of 2019, things haven't really changed that much. There are a few more skyscrapers and transportation is better, but the (sometimes obliviously) greedy, selfish lives we Americans live remain thankfully intact. Ewan McGregor, Sean Bean, Steve Buscemi, and Scarlett Johansson fit perfectly into their roles as, respectively, a curious, intelligent person, a misguided philanthropist and capitalist, a good-hearted, wise-cracking IT guy, and an agile, athletic, and ass-kicking counterpart to McGregor.

After reading a few reviews, I've reached a conclusion. Critics know too much. Because they've seen this type of movie done before (and done better), they have little patience for this movie. Having seen very few of these types of movies, I enjoyed it. To be sure, it's a bit shallow in the latter half of the movie, but that's okay. I cared about the characters (Johansson - so hot!) and enjoyed the action sequences. This is an exciting movie worth watching.

Review: Love Actually

eialba — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 00:18:00 GMT

Looking for love? Look no further, you've found Love Actually, a movie so full of love, you begin to wonder if love really means anything more than thinking someone else is attractive, personable, and available. Love Actually tries to squeeze several love stories into a two hour span, leaving little room to create quiet, thoughtful moments. This movie is full of movement, excitement, laughter, and revelry. Carrying along the mood is a memorable soundtrack filled to the brim with British pop classics ranging from The Beatles to Dido. If there is one thing you come away with from this movie, it's that love abounds. There's always room to love, and love always has a chance.

This isn't a great movie. It's too tame to be great. Not once did I laugh extremely hard, want to cry, get mad at any character, or even feel overtly happy when the girl got the guy. But it's really hard to get too attached to any of the characters considering they each get about fifteen to twenty minutes of screen presence to tell their story. So, perhaps it's not a terrible fault of the movie, but an unfortunate side effect of the time constraints. The experience is an enjoyable one, nonetheless. We do invest some of ourselves in the characters and are intrigued by their actions and reasons. Much of this attachment to the characters comes from the fact that they are played by actors like Liam Neeson and Hugh Grant, with whom we are familiar. If not already known, the actors are extremely likeable as is the case with Liam Neeson's character's son and Hugh Grant's love interest. And because they are likeable, our interest is piqued, and we are hooked for the duration of the movie.

Marc's List

eialba — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 00:44:00 GMT

I wasn't raised watching movies. Some families go to the theater every weekend. The only movie I remember watching in a theater as a child was The Little Rascals. It seemed like a spur of the moment decision of my parents to take my sister and me to see it in Dallas one Sunday afternoon. I vividly remember to this day the feeling of being in a dark theater seeing so many bright colors on an enormous screen, the biggest I'd seen in my life. I'd never seen anything like it. I remember being absolutely enthralled. After that, I rarely got to see movies. They were expensive to see in the theater, to rent, and to buy. That's another reason I probably read so much when I was younger. Besides The Little Rascals, the only movies I remember seeing as a child were Chuck Norris's Delta Force, and Rain Man, which I absolutely loved. Just the idea of movies excited me, even though I could never see them. I've made up for it. In the past two years, I've seen at least one movie every week, sometimes two. My DVD collection has ballooned to probably over 100. And I buy ONLY movies I really like. I don't buy movies that are just good for a while. I read up on directors, actors and actresses, writers, and film composers. I'm right now reading my first history of Hollywood. The world of film is an exciting one, and one I want to be a part of. Now as a hobby - later as....maybe something more.

Despite all I know about film, two of my cousins know more. Marc, who now works at Blockbuster, knows a lot about movies. He has a collection of over 300 by now. And it increases by 2-5 films per week. And he knows about the people in the business. But there's still someone else who knows more - his sister Martha. She's a manager at a Blockbuster, and she is a guru. Don't play Hollywood Trivial Pursuit with her. She will murder you. I managed to secure Marc's top ten movies list. To tell you how much more he knows than I do, I hadn't seen most of these movies until this year, and I still haven't seen some of these. So, I now proudly present Marc's Top Ten Movies

Honorable Mention: Number 11 would be The Salton Sea

Review: Memoirs of a Geisha

eialba — Tue, 27 Dec 2005 17:09:00 GMT

Memoirs of a Geisha is a disappointment. That doesn't mean that it's a bad movie, but in comparison to the book and in comparison to our expectations for a movie produced by Steven Spielberg, directed by Rob Marshall (director of Chicago), scored by John Williams, and portrayed by Michelle Yeoh, Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, and Ken Watanabe, it fails to attain the level of passion, romance, and mystery that we expect. This is a forgettable experience, one of the least impressive of the aforementioned people's many wonderful works.

Memoirs of a Geisha, originally a best-selling novel by Harvard and Columbia graduate Arthur Golden, tells the story of a young Japanese girl in the early 1900's who was sold by her family to an okiya, a business that takes in women and trains them to be female entertainers (not prostitutes). There, the girl Sayuri learns to become a geisha and eventually becomes the greatest and most famous geisha in the region. Her childhood at the okiya and her rise to prominence make up the first two thirds of the movie. The final third recounts the effect of World War II on her life and the lives of those similar to her. It also finishes the thread of the story involving her long-time crush on the chairman of an electric company played by Ken Watanabe.

What follows is a laundry list of the faults in this movie. First, the romance falls flat. Are we really to believe that based on one moment together, lasting not more than ten minutes, when she was a little girl, an exponentially greater relationship develops without any further intimate contact between the parties? The few times we see them talk to each other don't belie any underlying feelings. Dialogue is a real weakness in this movie. It is further exacerbated by the fact that these people are speaking in English. This is one of my pet peeves in movies. Why must people who obviously do not speak English, speak English in an accent of someone from their respective countries? In this movie, we have Japanese people speaking English in Japanese accents. Why? Why don't they just speak Japanese and let us read the subtitles? Lucas probably agrees with me. In 1980, The Empires Strikes Back starred a Hutt by the name of Jabba. Jabba only spoke Huttese, and, therefore, spoke Huttese in the movie. Subtitles were graciously provided. Because of his language, Jabba became much more convincing as a character. He is an actual being with a language of his own that we can't understand. Language provides realism. When everyone speaks English, there's no sense of culture. Everyone becomes American. This becomes acutely noticeable in Memoirs of a Geisha where everyone speaks English. I suppose because their accents make their English sometimes unrecognizable, we can now qualify them as Japanese instead of American. But this ploy doesn't work. We become aware that these are Asian actors doing their best to sound as American as possible. They carefully enunciate every word, making sure they don't embarass themselves by pronouncing a word incorrectly. It becomes a distraction. Just let them speak in Japanese and we'll be glad to read the subtitles.

Second, this story has a purpose. It isn't clear, though, unless you've read the book. And though I think a higher percentage of the people who are going to watch this movie have read the book than is the case with many other movies, a large percentage of moviegoers have still not read the book. As such, many might think that this movie has no point since it isn't explicitly stated. This movie is a biography and a history. It's the biography of Sayuri, set against a historically accurate background. We are here to learn about the life of an actual geisha in the early 1900's in a fun way. Where this movie goes wrong is in its delivery. There is so much to tell about Sayuri's personal life, that we get little opportunity to see much of anything else, including the history and culture of Japan and its geishas. In this important aspect, the history of Japan's geishas, the film fails.

Unfortunately, this movie is not worth seeing. Please read the book, instead. It's an excellent book.