The Onion recently posted their top films of 2007. I'm really off this year, as I've only seen one of the recommended flicks (Zodiac, and while I thought the beginning was excellent the second half didn't hold up its end). So here are the movies I really want to see:


No Country For Old Men
Into The Wild
Once
The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
Atonement
Sweeney Todd (not sure about that one though, seems like yet another Burton/Depp surreal flick...)
Gone Baby Gone
Ratatouille (still haven't seen it, SHAME!)
Before The Devil Knows You're Dead


Anyone on my flist seen any of those? Recommended/not?

Woohoo! Children of Men is coming out on DVD in two weeks! Preordered!!


Okay, so the bf and I went to see "300" last Friday. The theater was packed and the audience was about 90% high school and junior high boys. If that wasn't bad enough, I sat next to two young boys (R rated movie, no parents in sight, big shocker there) who tittered (PUN!) every time they saw a woman's nipple and provided running commentary throughout the whole movie ("OMG, he just chopped off that guy's ARM!!"). So yeah, the audience did not help my enjoyment of the movie. At all.

Overall I thought the movie was very disappointing. The plot was your run of the mill slice and dice featuring CGI enhanced burly men versus, I kid you not, a huge, (intentionally?) gender-uncertain, Goa'uld-voiced Persian king and his army of monsters. So Persia pisses of Sparta, Sparta goes to fight, cue slow motion fight scenes and beheadings galore. Really, the movie ran way too long for what it delivered in terms of plot.

Character development was slim to none, and it's hard to root for the characters when you have no idea what makes them tick outside of slicing and dicing. Oh, except they toss "defective" babies off a cliff. Kinda hard to root for that. Also, when the Persian messenger gets all uppity when the Spartan queen talks to him, she responds that she's earned the right because "only Spartan women give birth to real men." Weee...women are awesome because they serve as incubation vessels for the next generation of men! Feminist POWA!

Oh, and the dialog was BAD. Stuff like:
Persian Messenger: "This is madness! This is insane!!"
Spartan King: "THIS! IS! SPARTA!!" (kicks messenger into well)
and
Spartan King: (before the final battle) "EAT A HEARTY BREAKFAST LADS, FOR TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL!!"

I haven't read the graphic novel, but I hear that the movie is based on it practically page for page. I can't tell if something was lost in translation or if Miller's story just wasn't meant to work in movie format.


Recommendation: Go see it if you don't mind a lack of plot, few interesting characters, and numerous slow moments but would rather see some slice and dice in glorious bluescreen CGI. One of my friends reported that "Troy" is far better than "300", if that's any help.


One bonus, those of you who are familiar with HBO's "The Wire" will recognize the Greek politician who takes advantage of the Spartan queen.

Random blurbs:

-It snowed heavily last weekend and again last Thursday and Friday. The snow is currently several inches above my knee. Ack!

-Fortunately, the snow did not hamper our second attempt to get up to the cities for some dim sum. Yum. Shrimp balls, fried spicy squid, shu mai, congee, coconut buns. No chicken feet in sight though. Total for 6 people for lunch: over $100. Wow!

-Taxes are done! Hooray!! :)

-Watched "Poseidon", the recent remake of "The Poseidon Adventure" where a large cruise ship is flipped by a freak wave and a group of people try to escape as the ship sinks. Meh, this one was rather forgettable - the original was far better. I never liked the concept of "daddy's little girl" making the transition from her daddy to her lover in the movie Armageddon and I didn't care for it here either. Some undercurrent of how women always need a man to protect/be there for them that never sat right with me. Fergie (the singer, not the British royalty :P) was smothered by a large wave of water so that was something. I swear, her and Gwen are the two biggest wtf?s for me in popular music right now.

-Also watched "North Country", a movie about the first women in a large MN mining company, the awful sexual harassment by the mining men, and the resulting class action lawsuit. Not bad, but really more like one of those typical "victim" Lifetime movies for women. You know, just horrid, awful stuff happens to the main woman star, men are the ones generally doing and perpetuating such acts, NONE of the men are willing to stand up for her and even some of the women turn their backs on her, and all of the management men are stereotypical sexist jerks. And then the woman starts standing up for herself and the attacks get worse until someone (generally male) starts standing up for her too. And she wins in the end and her enemies are crushed and saddened and everything is bright and cheery. It was very anvilicious to prove its point and left little room for actual discussion.

I watched "United 93" last weekend. I admit, I've been avoiding both of the Hollywood movies based on the events of 9/11. The idea of revamping what happened that day from the distorted and blatant lens of Hollywood and then selling the result back to the public bothered me. But The Onion gave it such high praise (every movie editor had it near the top of their best 10 films of 2006 list) that the bf and I decided to snag it at the video store.

Fortunately, it was an excellent film and several elements flew right in the face of the traditional Hollywood movie. First, the movie is shot like a documentary, complete with shaky-cam, with the POV of the flight coordinators and passengers who have no idea what's going on. The viewer is completely insulated from outside events - you don't even see the first plane hit the WTC or the plane hit the Pentagon. Second, there are no recognizable actors in the movie which really helped to humanize all the people involved. Take that, Nicholas Cage. Third, the passengers are not blatantly portrayed as the "good guys" just as the terrorists are not blatantly portrayed as the "bad guys." The director and writer obviously worked hard to present the events as neutrally as possible to let the viewer reach whatever conclusions they want.

I highly recommend watching it, but only if you're okay with revisiting the events of 9/11 and don't have a fear of flying. I thought it was gripping from start to finish and there were scenes that were so real that I couldn't bring myself to watch them. The tension and buildup as the terrorists decide when to storm the cockpit is pure agony to watch.

Besides being quite a witty mock-newspaper, The Onion publishes the top picks of movies each year. A handful of movie editors for the company get together and select their top ten choices, as well as their thoughts on overrated and underrated films, best actor etc. I always look forward to the article since the editors' views often match my own, and they tend to recommend fantastic foreign and independent films I've never heard of. Alas, the 2006 list was published back in December and I somehow didn't find out about it until now. But here it is! http://www.avclub.com/content/node/56789/1

Below are the top picks of 2006 (*s indicate duplicate votes):

***** A Prairie Home Companion
***** Children of Men
***** United 93
**** The Departed
**** Half Nelson
*** Brick
*** The Devil and Daniel Johnston
** Letters from Iwo Jima
** Pan’s Labyrinth
** The Prestige
* L’Enfant
* Volver
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Inside Man
Mutual Appreciation
Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple
Idiocracy
The Queen
Stranger than Fiction
Shortbus
The King
Babel
Old Joy

And out of all those I've seen exactly two - Children of Men and The Queen. Looks like a trip to the library is in order. ;)