Well, I haven't used this in about... four months, but whatever. I saw a couple of excellent movies recently that I feel the need to write about.
The Departed (****)
The Departed is a movie about organized crime, a subject that Martin Scorsese has made movies about before, but The Departed has a distinctly different feel to it than any of his other films, though its every bit as good. It is apparently loosely based on a Hong Kong cop drama from a few years back called Infernal Affairs. The central characters are two men who are each moles in their respective organizations: one a police detective feeding information to the mob, the other an undercover cop who has infiltrated the mafia. But the man who steals the spotlight is Jack Nichelson as the head of the mob organization. At times he's hilarous, at other times he's stone cold scary. It's a great performance that could become as referenced as his Joker performance in the original Batman.
Unlike Raging Bull, which jumps from a number of key points in Jake Lamotta's career and then holds there, allowing scenes with long conversations between characters to play out, The Departed has a much more fluid and dynamic feel to it that really works for the film. Scenes are often very quick and we jump back and forth very quickly from the police to the mob and back again. Trying it all together is a great soundtrack in which the same music is often allowed to play over the course of several distinctly different scenes. The effect keeps the tension driving and provides a glue to connect for very frantically paced scenes. In a way, it actually reminded me of the way the anime series Fooly Cooly used its soundtrack provided by the band The Pillows. The Departed is a different sort of Martin Scorsese movie, but a great one.
Casino Royale (***1/2)
Die Another Day sucked. I feel the need to express that up front. The James Bond series has always had some level of absurdity to it, but by Die Another Day it had reached a tipping point where it felt to absurd, even for Bond (somewhere around the point where he managed to outrun a heat ray from space in his Aston Martin, which could also turn invisible). Apparently realizing this, the filmmakers behind Casino Royale wisely took the film on a different tangent. In a way, Casino Royale is the Batman Begins for the Bond franchise. A lot of the ridiculous fluff has been stripped away, allowing for the focus to be left on the core elements of the series, and of the Bond character itself.
Casino Royale wastes no time distancing itself from previous Bond movies, even forgoing the famous "blood dripping down the gun barrel" opening briefly to make room for a gritty, black and white flashback sequence where Bond kills two people in a fairly merciless faschion. The scene establishes a darker, more sinister side of Bond that hadn't existed in recent films. I haven't read the original Ian Fleming novel, but I'm told that the film stays resonably true to the story, with many of changes being necessary ones for purposes of updating the setting from the early cold war, to post 9/11. The middle act of the movie revolves entirely around the high-stakes poker game (baccaract in the book) that Bond enters into to counter Le Chiffre, who is using the money to pay a terrorist organization that he has been bankrolling. This section could be brutally boring, but the filmmakers do an excellent job of adding just enough intrigue outside of the game itself to keep the tension moving without being a complete distraction.
The new Bond girl is Vesper Lind, played by Eva Green. Vesper is much smarter and more independant than the average Bond girl, something they actually tried with Halle Berry's character Jinx in Die Another Day and failed miserably by comparison. Vesper is also unique among women in Bond movies for several other reasons, firstly that Bond seems to have genuine feelings for her beyond her being another girl of the evening, and the other reasons involve plot points that I won't give away.
Casino Royale is a great action film that keeps things exciting while focusing on its characters rather than prop gadgets and special effects. It establishes Danial Craig as an excellent new Bond, who is every bit as witty as previous iterations, while adding an aura of edgyness and intimidation that hasn't existed for a long time. After Die Another Day, I wasn't sure if I wanted to see another Bond movie again, after Casino Royale, I wish the next Bond was out already.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Friday, July 28, 2006
Clerks II
Clerks II
***1/2
Clerks II doesn't have the same indy movie feel as the first film, it doesn't have the same deep philosophical conversations, and it doesn't have the same emotional weight to it... but damn is it funny. Clerks II shows once again what most people already know, that Kevin Smith's films are some of the best dialogue-driven comedies out there. The movie is, in a lot of ways, in more the same category as Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back in that the humor is a lot more farcical and ridiculous, whereas the original Clerks had its fun, but tried to keep everything fairly plausible and down to earth. For example, there's a Bollywood style dance scene inexplicably thrown in the middle, among other things.
At its core, though, Clerks II, like the original, revolves around Dante and Randal. And even though its been more than a decade in between films, the characters still hold up pretty well. Dante is almost identical, save for maybe a bit less depression, while Randal doesn't seem to age quite as well. Some of the outrageous stuff Randal says-- and it is at least equally as ridiculous as anything from the original-- somehow seems less funny and maybe a little creepy now that the character is supposed to be 32. Despite this, Randal still has a number of laugh out loud moments, and he steals the movie with one bit in particular toward the end that I won't give away.
Clerks II takes place during Dante's last day at Mooby's before he moves to Florida with his fiance, the fast food joint where Dante and Randal go to work after the Quick Stop burns down in an accident. Rosario Dawson plays their boss and does an excellent job playing a character that probably has the most deadpan serious dialgoue in a movie with a lot of ridiculous gas. She develops an interesting relationship with Dante, and not just interesting because she's not his finace. Jay and Silent Bob make their requisit appearances and... basically are Jay and Silent Bob. There is another newcomer, Elias, a devotly relgious 19-year old whose main concerns are Transformers and Lord of the Rings. His main purpose is to be a whipping boy for Randal, but he does manage to have some funny moments of his own, and Kevin Smith's dialgoue brings the whole thing to another level beyond the traditional "watch the nerd get abused" scene.
Not everything works in Clerks II. You've probably seen the trailer which shows a donkey at one point. Yeah, it's pretty much what you think it is, and where the scene is going is blantly obvious from the get-go, but it gets drawn on way too long. But again, most of the movie is genuinely funny, and if you laughed at all at any of Kevin Smith's other films Clerks II is a must-see.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Dark City
Dark City
****
I blind bought this at Fry's because it was a scant $5.88 for the DVD and, wow, I'm glad I did. I absolutly ate this movie up. The inevitable question "What's it about?" is a hard question to answer without giving a lot away, but you can draw a lot of parallels between this film and The Matrix which was made one year later, only, as cool as the Matrix was, I think in some ways this is an even better film.
The film takes place entirely within a city (which is indeed dark) where mysterious pale creatures that wear fedoras known as Strangers fly around and use their telepathic powers to alter reality (no, seriously). If you watch The Venture Brothers on Adult Swim, the guys roaming around the courthouse that Brock calls Strangers in the Trail of the Monarch episode are taken right from this movie.
As the movie opens, we see a man awaken in his bathtub to find a dead woman in his apartment. He is frightened and confused, and realizes that he has no memory of who he is. He recieves a phone call from a strange man telling him that he'd been expiramented on. The man turns out to be a goofy looking psychiatrist who walks with a limp, played by Keifer Sutherland. He is the human assistant of the Strangers, helping them in expiraments on such subjects as the protagonist. As part of the entire process, every night at midnight, every human in the city loses conciousness and time seemingly freezes and the Strangers combine their power to reorganize the city. Buildings appear and disappear and different people wind up in different places, but when they regain conciousness the next day they don't seem to find anything out of place. In one instance, a newsstand is run by one man one night and a different man the next, though the second man claims he's worked there for 25 years. The Strangers run into a problem when John, the protagonist, stays awake during the "tuning" as they call it.
The bulk of the film follows John as he tries to reconnect his past, while at the same time learning bits and pieces regarding the nature and purpose of what it is that the Strangers do. There is a subplot with a detective, played by William Hurt, as he tries to solve the murder in John's apartment and several others with the same pattern. Hurt's character is straight out of the 40's detective movie tradition, like Maltiese Falcon, and many of the visuals are out of the same ilk. The city is very gothic looking, a little bit like the Tim Burton Batman films, and it takes on a life of its own, both literally as the Strangers alter it every night, and figuratively in a countless amount of imaginative shots. About every 30 seconds there was something visually that jumped out at me that made me say "Oh, that's cool." The film is only 90 minutes long, but it seems like they packed about 3 hours worth of shots into the movie somehow and they're all great to look at. The movie supposedly is very similar to Metropolis, which I haven't seen, but I have seen M, by the same director, and I think it's fair to say that there's a lot of M in this movie as well.
Basically, if you're looking for something to watch, go out and buy this movie. For 6 bucks it's hard to really go wrong with this.
****
I blind bought this at Fry's because it was a scant $5.88 for the DVD and, wow, I'm glad I did. I absolutly ate this movie up. The inevitable question "What's it about?" is a hard question to answer without giving a lot away, but you can draw a lot of parallels between this film and The Matrix which was made one year later, only, as cool as the Matrix was, I think in some ways this is an even better film.
The film takes place entirely within a city (which is indeed dark) where mysterious pale creatures that wear fedoras known as Strangers fly around and use their telepathic powers to alter reality (no, seriously). If you watch The Venture Brothers on Adult Swim, the guys roaming around the courthouse that Brock calls Strangers in the Trail of the Monarch episode are taken right from this movie.
As the movie opens, we see a man awaken in his bathtub to find a dead woman in his apartment. He is frightened and confused, and realizes that he has no memory of who he is. He recieves a phone call from a strange man telling him that he'd been expiramented on. The man turns out to be a goofy looking psychiatrist who walks with a limp, played by Keifer Sutherland. He is the human assistant of the Strangers, helping them in expiraments on such subjects as the protagonist. As part of the entire process, every night at midnight, every human in the city loses conciousness and time seemingly freezes and the Strangers combine their power to reorganize the city. Buildings appear and disappear and different people wind up in different places, but when they regain conciousness the next day they don't seem to find anything out of place. In one instance, a newsstand is run by one man one night and a different man the next, though the second man claims he's worked there for 25 years. The Strangers run into a problem when John, the protagonist, stays awake during the "tuning" as they call it.
The bulk of the film follows John as he tries to reconnect his past, while at the same time learning bits and pieces regarding the nature and purpose of what it is that the Strangers do. There is a subplot with a detective, played by William Hurt, as he tries to solve the murder in John's apartment and several others with the same pattern. Hurt's character is straight out of the 40's detective movie tradition, like Maltiese Falcon, and many of the visuals are out of the same ilk. The city is very gothic looking, a little bit like the Tim Burton Batman films, and it takes on a life of its own, both literally as the Strangers alter it every night, and figuratively in a countless amount of imaginative shots. About every 30 seconds there was something visually that jumped out at me that made me say "Oh, that's cool." The film is only 90 minutes long, but it seems like they packed about 3 hours worth of shots into the movie somehow and they're all great to look at. The movie supposedly is very similar to Metropolis, which I haven't seen, but I have seen M, by the same director, and I think it's fair to say that there's a lot of M in this movie as well.
Basically, if you're looking for something to watch, go out and buy this movie. For 6 bucks it's hard to really go wrong with this.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Crazy People
Bill O'Reilly owned. I salute you Keith Olberman.
Also, Pat Robertson says he can bench press 2,000 pounds.
Also, Pat Robertson says he can bench press 2,000 pounds.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
X-Men 3
X-Men 3
**
The first X-Men movie was decent. It was a little rough around the edges, but it did a great job of introducing the characters and the main themes that have always been at the core of X-Men stuff. Then Brian Singer took everything that working in X-Men and built off of it to create X2, which is right up there with the best superhero movies made during this recent wave of them. There were some amazing FX sequences, but at its hart, what made X2 really work was that it made you care about the characters. It did a great job of accentuating the bigotry and persecution that the X-Men have faced throughout their history, especially through Brian Cox's fantastic villain William Stryker.
Now with Singer off to direct Superman Returns, Brett Ratner has stepped for X-Men 3: The Last Stand (as a sidenote, was this honestly the best subtitle they could come up with). Ratner tries to remain faithful to the precedents set by Singer in the first two chapters, but ultimate it feels like he created "X-Men Lite." By that I mean it sets up as much if not more story than the first two, but never really lets any of it develop, instead giving way to big action scenes, which, though they look impressive, are not necessary at all in many cases. The movie only runs for about an hour and 45 minutes, almost half an hour shorter than X2, supposedly in part because of how much filiming was rushed to get the movie out in time for Memorial Day. In this short space the movie tries to tell both the film version of the Dark Phoenix saga that was hinted at by the end of the 2nd film, while also following another plot regarding a "mutant cure" being developed. The movie never really slows down to give either of these story lines the exposition they need, and the movie ends up feeling very disjointed and not very emotionally hitting.
SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON
I didn't find much of the story incredibly effective, but the entire subplot with Jean Grey seemingly ressurected as the Phoenix was a complete mess. I didn't think it was absolutely necessary for the next movie just because of the one shot of the Phoenix in the water from X2's ending, and trying to cram it into this movie when its already trying to go in a totally different direction with the mutant cure premise was clearly a mistake. None of the stuff from the original comic book version of the Phoenix saga involving aliens and spaceships was included because the audience wouldn' t buy it, but the explanation given here is no less absurd. At the showing I was at there was audible laughter as Professor X explains how Jean Grey "wrapped herself in a cacoon of telekenetic energy." He then vaults himself into a big explanation about psychic barriers in Jean's head evidently somehow giving her multiple personally disorder. All of this would've been fine with me if we were allowed to see more of what's going on in Jean Grey's head, but in the next scene we see of Jean Grey break out of the X-Men and basically totally succumb to the Phoenix side of her personality. Before she's captured, we see her arise from the water at Alkali Lake and attack Scott. We see like a 2 second shot of Scott apparently being hurt and then later an explanation by Wolverine that he suspects that she killed him, but that's it. Cyclops is the leader of the X-Men and is at the forefront of both of the previous two films, and yet he's killed in an emotionless scene maybe 20 minutes into the film. This point is entirely ignored until we see a brief shot of his grave next to Jean's at the very end of the movie. Really, the Phoenix effect didn't really work for me. They tried to give Jean a very demonic sort appearance with the help of some CGI, but I thought it was one of the least effective effects in a movie that really had some pretty good ones.
Ian McKellon is good again as Magneto, and he manages to at least keep his side of the story fairly interesting. Magneto has always been an effective villain because he doesn't see himself as one, and there are several good scenes to that effect in X-Men 3, like when he takes the stage at an underground mutant rally trying to convince its audience that the so-called voluntary mutant cure will actually be used to exterminate the mutant population. Kelsey Grammer wasn't bad as The Beast, but not much was done with him. People would weren't familiar at all with X-Men would've gotten the whole "he looks really scary, but he's actually really smart" concept, but that's about it and The Beast is a much deeper character than that.
The movie does have some good moments. The opening scene with a much younger Professor X and Eric Leinshier going to visit Jean Grey was a good scene to get the audience primed again for the X-Men universe after a couple years layoff since X2. I thought the scene where Logan fights his way up to Jean and kills her not only looked cool, but was probably the most moving scene of the movie (in comparision to Professor X's death, where he just sort of shatters into a million pieces in a fairly cheesy effect).
The movie's ending(s) in particular left a bad taste in my mouth. Firstly, we see Magneto seemingly able to move a metal chess piece just as the credits begin to roll. If you remove the last shot of Magneto moving the piece, I think it becomes an excellent scene that brings the tragedy of his character full circle. Instead it becomes a dime a dozen cheesy cliff-hanger ending. Then for good measure they added an "after the credits" scene where it is implied at Professor X is still alive. I think its also very much noteworthy that Scott's dead body is never seen, nor anything to suggest to the audience "Yeah, he's gone for good." Watching the ending I could almost hear the studio execs sitting around saying "Okay, we need to leave ourselves an out in case we want to make X-Men 4."
Is X-Men 3 a horrible movie? I would say no (I do know some people who would say a resounding yes). The climactic action sequences genuinely did hold my interest, and it retained at least a glimmer of what made the Singer movies work. But to me it was somewhat sloppily done, the focus seemingly more on cool special effects rather than fleshing about the story. I'm not going to pretend like SFX sequences don't make for an exicting movie because they do, but X-Men at its core for all its laser blasts and adamantium claws has always been a very human story, with ethical and philosophical issues. The sense of humanity wasn't there in this movie and it needed to be at least 20-30 minutes longer for any of the characters to properly develop. X2 will always been one of my favorite movies from this era of superhero movies, but oh what could have been with X-Men 3.
**
The first X-Men movie was decent. It was a little rough around the edges, but it did a great job of introducing the characters and the main themes that have always been at the core of X-Men stuff. Then Brian Singer took everything that working in X-Men and built off of it to create X2, which is right up there with the best superhero movies made during this recent wave of them. There were some amazing FX sequences, but at its hart, what made X2 really work was that it made you care about the characters. It did a great job of accentuating the bigotry and persecution that the X-Men have faced throughout their history, especially through Brian Cox's fantastic villain William Stryker.
Now with Singer off to direct Superman Returns, Brett Ratner has stepped for X-Men 3: The Last Stand (as a sidenote, was this honestly the best subtitle they could come up with). Ratner tries to remain faithful to the precedents set by Singer in the first two chapters, but ultimate it feels like he created "X-Men Lite." By that I mean it sets up as much if not more story than the first two, but never really lets any of it develop, instead giving way to big action scenes, which, though they look impressive, are not necessary at all in many cases. The movie only runs for about an hour and 45 minutes, almost half an hour shorter than X2, supposedly in part because of how much filiming was rushed to get the movie out in time for Memorial Day. In this short space the movie tries to tell both the film version of the Dark Phoenix saga that was hinted at by the end of the 2nd film, while also following another plot regarding a "mutant cure" being developed. The movie never really slows down to give either of these story lines the exposition they need, and the movie ends up feeling very disjointed and not very emotionally hitting.
SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON
I didn't find much of the story incredibly effective, but the entire subplot with Jean Grey seemingly ressurected as the Phoenix was a complete mess. I didn't think it was absolutely necessary for the next movie just because of the one shot of the Phoenix in the water from X2's ending, and trying to cram it into this movie when its already trying to go in a totally different direction with the mutant cure premise was clearly a mistake. None of the stuff from the original comic book version of the Phoenix saga involving aliens and spaceships was included because the audience wouldn' t buy it, but the explanation given here is no less absurd. At the showing I was at there was audible laughter as Professor X explains how Jean Grey "wrapped herself in a cacoon of telekenetic energy." He then vaults himself into a big explanation about psychic barriers in Jean's head evidently somehow giving her multiple personally disorder. All of this would've been fine with me if we were allowed to see more of what's going on in Jean Grey's head, but in the next scene we see of Jean Grey break out of the X-Men and basically totally succumb to the Phoenix side of her personality. Before she's captured, we see her arise from the water at Alkali Lake and attack Scott. We see like a 2 second shot of Scott apparently being hurt and then later an explanation by Wolverine that he suspects that she killed him, but that's it. Cyclops is the leader of the X-Men and is at the forefront of both of the previous two films, and yet he's killed in an emotionless scene maybe 20 minutes into the film. This point is entirely ignored until we see a brief shot of his grave next to Jean's at the very end of the movie. Really, the Phoenix effect didn't really work for me. They tried to give Jean a very demonic sort appearance with the help of some CGI, but I thought it was one of the least effective effects in a movie that really had some pretty good ones.
Ian McKellon is good again as Magneto, and he manages to at least keep his side of the story fairly interesting. Magneto has always been an effective villain because he doesn't see himself as one, and there are several good scenes to that effect in X-Men 3, like when he takes the stage at an underground mutant rally trying to convince its audience that the so-called voluntary mutant cure will actually be used to exterminate the mutant population. Kelsey Grammer wasn't bad as The Beast, but not much was done with him. People would weren't familiar at all with X-Men would've gotten the whole "he looks really scary, but he's actually really smart" concept, but that's about it and The Beast is a much deeper character than that.
The movie does have some good moments. The opening scene with a much younger Professor X and Eric Leinshier going to visit Jean Grey was a good scene to get the audience primed again for the X-Men universe after a couple years layoff since X2. I thought the scene where Logan fights his way up to Jean and kills her not only looked cool, but was probably the most moving scene of the movie (in comparision to Professor X's death, where he just sort of shatters into a million pieces in a fairly cheesy effect).
The movie's ending(s) in particular left a bad taste in my mouth. Firstly, we see Magneto seemingly able to move a metal chess piece just as the credits begin to roll. If you remove the last shot of Magneto moving the piece, I think it becomes an excellent scene that brings the tragedy of his character full circle. Instead it becomes a dime a dozen cheesy cliff-hanger ending. Then for good measure they added an "after the credits" scene where it is implied at Professor X is still alive. I think its also very much noteworthy that Scott's dead body is never seen, nor anything to suggest to the audience "Yeah, he's gone for good." Watching the ending I could almost hear the studio execs sitting around saying "Okay, we need to leave ourselves an out in case we want to make X-Men 4."
Is X-Men 3 a horrible movie? I would say no (I do know some people who would say a resounding yes). The climactic action sequences genuinely did hold my interest, and it retained at least a glimmer of what made the Singer movies work. But to me it was somewhat sloppily done, the focus seemingly more on cool special effects rather than fleshing about the story. I'm not going to pretend like SFX sequences don't make for an exicting movie because they do, but X-Men at its core for all its laser blasts and adamantium claws has always been a very human story, with ethical and philosophical issues. The sense of humanity wasn't there in this movie and it needed to be at least 20-30 minutes longer for any of the characters to properly develop. X2 will always been one of my favorite movies from this era of superhero movies, but oh what could have been with X-Men 3.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Dark Victory
Just finished reading Dark Victory last night and liked it a lot. It's sort of an unofficial sequel to The Long Halloween, another excellent Batman miniseries by the same creators. Like its predecessor, Dark Victory follows Batman on the trail of a serial killer, in this case targeting former acquaintences of Harvey Dent. I've always found Batamn more interesting when he's confined to Gotham City as a detective. As cool as it is seeing him fighting alongside a crapload of Justice League members in stuff like Infinite Crisis, he always seems a little out of place. It's hard to imagine Batman as anything except a lone wolf type of character.
Like Long Halloween, the mafia syndicate in Gotham is again involved and there are a lot of references taken directly out of The Godfather films. This combined with the noir sort of feel that Sale's art has gives the series a great atmosphere. The plot of Dark Victory is less convoluted than Long Halloween. There is one definite identity of the killer, and the payoff at the end when all has been revealed comes together pretty well.
Dark Victory sets itself in the year after Long Halloween, "Year Two" you could say, and thus Robin shows up towards the end of the book. His presence feels a little tacked on. The circumstances in which his parents are killed vaguely ties into the larger plot of the story, but it doesn't really feel necessary, and when he and Batman finally team up and the end of the book it doesn't really seem to have much emotion behind it. This is a very minor complaint though, and Dark Victory as a whole is every bit as enjoyable as its predecessor.
P.S.: Tim Sale's Catwoman is hot.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
First post / E3 / M review
Yeah... hey. I have no idea if anyone is actually going to read this, but I'm going to start a blog nevertheless for the following reasons:
1. Some guy actually recommended keeping a blog as a way to hone your writing skills.
2. As Bender would say, "Everyone was doin' it, I just wanted to be popular!"
Perhaps I should use this first post to introduce myself, but that would make entirely too much sense. A lot of what I post here is going to be cross-posted with the blog I started on IGN, and thus if I start ranting about something that you don't know or care about (the next 2 paragraphs perhaps) you can probably chalk it up to that.
Anyway, the first E3 press conference was tonight, as Sony sort of meandered through a montage of farily ho-hum looking first party games, followed by some more interesting looking third party games, notably MGS4. Then there was the inevitable moment that seems to happen every year that turns normally rational people into crazed morons. In this case, it was Sony's announcement that the Playstation 3 will be able to be tilted, allowing for 6 direction movement by moving the controller itself. This is, of course, less than a year removed from the reveal of the Revolution (or Wii, whatever) controller which is entirely based off of its motion sensing.
Personally I think this is a non-issue and a cool addition to the Dual Shock design which I've always liked, (moreso than a lot of other people from what I hear) but as soon as it was announced people started flipping out, accusing Sony of stealing Nintendo's idea. Personally, I think this is absurd, as the two controllers aren't that similar, and the concept of sensing motion certain didn't begin with the Revolution controller, and this is far from the first example of companies in the game industry acting purely as a reaction to what another company did. At any rate, I don't see why people take this stuff so personally.
M
***1/2
I've developed quite a bit of interest in film, and I forsee a large portion of this blog, if I keep up with it, being devoted to movie reviews. I'm currently in a May Term course (if you're not familiar with this concept, some schools have a 4-4-1 schedule where after spring semester you take one course for like a month) on film noir and today we watched the German film M, which is not really a film noir, but its certianly a precursor to it.
The premise of M is set up for us early on as we see a notice posted in the street explaining that a serial killer has been targeting children. In this scene we first see the killer as a shadow against this poster as he approaches in unsuspecting little girl. From this point, the film branches off in a number of different directions, following the frightened citizens, who begin to point fingers at one another, the police investigation, a separate investigation carried out by members of a mob syndicate, who wants to get rid of the killer to end the police raids that are hampering their business. Many of these scenes are interesting, but I think the film jumps around a bit too much, and begins to lose momentum after the first hour or so.
To me, the film's real strength was the end, which allows the viewer to see the killer up close and in the light of day and allows him a chance to speak. It reveals that the killer is actually pretty pathetic, compared to his ominious presence earlier. He pleads that he's insane and that he can't control his actions, and it seems genuine. At this point a degree of moral abiguity is added to the film, which to this point cast the killer in a purely villainous light. Most everyone, understandbly wants the killer dead. The head of the mob syndicate, Safecracker, has a particularly empassioned speech at the end of the film in which he claims that the killer's insanity is actually more of a reason for him to be executing, saying that he believes that people such as him have no place in society and should be exterminated. His speech conjures up images of speeches given by Hitler, and it may not be coicidetal that this film was made in 1931, just as the nazi movement began. Thus, the proper fate of the killer, which seemed cut and dry at the beginning of the film, becomes a provocative debate at the film's conclusion. This more than anything is what I believe makes M an effective movie.
And I'm done.
1. Some guy actually recommended keeping a blog as a way to hone your writing skills.
2. As Bender would say, "Everyone was doin' it, I just wanted to be popular!"
Perhaps I should use this first post to introduce myself, but that would make entirely too much sense. A lot of what I post here is going to be cross-posted with the blog I started on IGN, and thus if I start ranting about something that you don't know or care about (the next 2 paragraphs perhaps) you can probably chalk it up to that.
Anyway, the first E3 press conference was tonight, as Sony sort of meandered through a montage of farily ho-hum looking first party games, followed by some more interesting looking third party games, notably MGS4. Then there was the inevitable moment that seems to happen every year that turns normally rational people into crazed morons. In this case, it was Sony's announcement that the Playstation 3 will be able to be tilted, allowing for 6 direction movement by moving the controller itself. This is, of course, less than a year removed from the reveal of the Revolution (or Wii, whatever) controller which is entirely based off of its motion sensing.
Personally I think this is a non-issue and a cool addition to the Dual Shock design which I've always liked, (moreso than a lot of other people from what I hear) but as soon as it was announced people started flipping out, accusing Sony of stealing Nintendo's idea. Personally, I think this is absurd, as the two controllers aren't that similar, and the concept of sensing motion certain didn't begin with the Revolution controller, and this is far from the first example of companies in the game industry acting purely as a reaction to what another company did. At any rate, I don't see why people take this stuff so personally.
M
***1/2
I've developed quite a bit of interest in film, and I forsee a large portion of this blog, if I keep up with it, being devoted to movie reviews. I'm currently in a May Term course (if you're not familiar with this concept, some schools have a 4-4-1 schedule where after spring semester you take one course for like a month) on film noir and today we watched the German film M, which is not really a film noir, but its certianly a precursor to it.
The premise of M is set up for us early on as we see a notice posted in the street explaining that a serial killer has been targeting children. In this scene we first see the killer as a shadow against this poster as he approaches in unsuspecting little girl. From this point, the film branches off in a number of different directions, following the frightened citizens, who begin to point fingers at one another, the police investigation, a separate investigation carried out by members of a mob syndicate, who wants to get rid of the killer to end the police raids that are hampering their business. Many of these scenes are interesting, but I think the film jumps around a bit too much, and begins to lose momentum after the first hour or so.
To me, the film's real strength was the end, which allows the viewer to see the killer up close and in the light of day and allows him a chance to speak. It reveals that the killer is actually pretty pathetic, compared to his ominious presence earlier. He pleads that he's insane and that he can't control his actions, and it seems genuine. At this point a degree of moral abiguity is added to the film, which to this point cast the killer in a purely villainous light. Most everyone, understandbly wants the killer dead. The head of the mob syndicate, Safecracker, has a particularly empassioned speech at the end of the film in which he claims that the killer's insanity is actually more of a reason for him to be executing, saying that he believes that people such as him have no place in society and should be exterminated. His speech conjures up images of speeches given by Hitler, and it may not be coicidetal that this film was made in 1931, just as the nazi movement began. Thus, the proper fate of the killer, which seemed cut and dry at the beginning of the film, becomes a provocative debate at the film's conclusion. This more than anything is what I believe makes M an effective movie.
And I'm done.
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