january moooooooooooovies
waaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy overdue, since these are movies from way back in january!
movies in this post:
fight club, the firemen's ball, george washington, ghost world, half nelson, holiday, the host, idiocracy, in the mood for love, jules and jim, keys to the house, kicking and screaming, the last king of scotland, letters from iwo jima, little dieter needs to fly.
for more pictures and movies covered last year, it's better to check out my stuff at myspace:
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fight club - oh it had been quite a while. nothing much i can say. a favorite, a classic. mostly overlooked when it first came out, many people bitched it was too violent or whatever. it just rules. brad pitt's best role. edward norton rocks it. cinematography is beautiful and gritty and this movie is quotable as all hell. i hope that when and if the other chuck palahniuk books are made into movies, that they get the same amount of care and respect and awesomeness as fight club.
the firemens ball - one of those "it happens all in a few hours/one day/night" sort of movies. it's fun, 60's flick which mostly centers around the antics of these old, slightly perverted firemen in this party and how things go wrong. the humor still works. it's short and nice and worth the watch.
george washington - i love this strange little indie movie, the first by director david gordon green. gorgeous visuals, interesting and off kilter story with a poetic touch of southern weird.
give this one a chance-but i do warn it's not for everyone. it's not as extreme as gummo, even though some messed up things happen. there's some humor, some drama...and even george washington himself becoming the town superhero.
synopsis - Over the course of one hot summer, a group of children in the rural south are forced to confront a tangle of difficult choices in a decaying world. An ambitiously constructed, sensuously photographed meditation on adolescence, the first feature film by director David Gordon Green features breakout performances from an award-winning ensemble cast.
thanks - still by circlelimit
http://community.livejournal.com/film_stills/169239.html
car scene with enid and seymour - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQTBh18oK6E
doug - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaKPWelHSTU
compilation of scenes - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8T516B1VT4
ghost world - definitely one of the best comic book movies and a personal favorite which i hadn't seen in almost 3 years. 3 YEARS! love this, so funny, so great, awesome cast, so right on. perfect adaptation of a daniel clowes comic/story.
thanks - still by vodiak
http://community.livejournal.com/film_stills/383382.html
trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67pjdgY497I
half nelson - very good, it doesn't follow the conventional drug addicted man, and neither the white teacher at the minority school with story. both leads, the shareeka epps and ryan gosling are great in this. not great, amazing! may not be for everybody, as it is very indie, lo-fi but film lovers, those who appreciate a good story which deviates from the norm and incredibly solid acting, CHECK THIS OUT.
synopsis - Ryan Fleck's feature film debut tells the story of an unlikely friendship that helps a self-destructive educator pull it together. In his struggle to balance his personal and professional lives, inner-city teacher Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling, in an Oscar-nominated role) spends most of his time nursing hangovers. But who could've known that a life-changing lesson would come from one of his students (Shareeka Epps)? Gosling and Epps both won Independent Spirit awards for their lead roles.
thanks - still by train stations
http://community.livejournal.com/film_stills/613889.html
holiday - brutal prison escape movie based on a true story. the bad guy is kinda campy but very easy to hate, so he must have done his job right. lee sung jae (attack the gas station, kick the moon, dance with the wind, public enemy) delivers quite a performance here and is rocking it like bruce lee with that physique. not a movie to watch on a rainy day when you're depressed, even less if you hate humanity and all that. another note on the bad guy, played by choi min soo-he has quite a resemblance to toshiro mifune and tadanobu asano, like a korean version if you will.
synopsis - Based on a true incident, the film revolves around a group of convicts, who escaped from a prison van with a loaded gun. Six were captured quickly, but the remaining convicts eluded police for nine days by taking families hostage and hiding out in their homes.
and to give a better understanding, here's part of a review by james mudge from beyondhollywood.com -
Holiday is based upon an actual incident whose roots lie in the Korean government's preparations for the 1988 Olympics. This saw them destroy countless neighborhoods to make way for new developments in order to impress foreign visitors. In most cases, these neighborhoods were squatter settlements whose inhabitants were forcibly cast onto the streets. This story is brought passionately to life by director Yang Yun Ho (Fighter in the Wind), who crafts it into a moving and violent tale of inequality.
The film's plot follows Ji Kang Hyuk (Lee Song Jae, also in Public Enemy), whose best friend is gunned down during one of the clearances, and who is himself sent to prison. Here, he has the misfortune to fall under the care of Ahn Seok (played by Choi Min Soo, who starred in the director's Libera Me), who just happens to be the man who killed his friend. After suffering under Ahn's brutal regime, Ji and a motley gang of other inmates manage to escape, planning to draw attention to the oppressive and corrupt laws which have ruined so many lives.
Holiday certainly benefits from its real-life origins, and is believable throughout, giving the story an emotional punch. Although there is an air of doom hanging over the characters, and anyone familiar with the story will know in advance how it ends, the film retains a bitter, almost defiant feeling of hope. The viewer comes to share the characters' rage at the injustice inherent in the system that has treated them as animals. The escapees are a good mixture of characters, none of whom is the usual stereotype that usually pops up in such films, and thankfully the director steers away from whitewashing their criminal backgrounds and tendencies. Although the fact that they have all received weighty prison sentences for relatively minor offences is frequently cited, the film pulls no punches about the basic fact they are capable of violence and immoral acts.
Lee Song Jae, in particular, is effective as Ji, a man who has had an unfortunate life of hardship and betrayal. The audience comes to root for him without ever being pushed to like or sympathize with him through cheap emotional tricks. Unfortunately, Choi Min Soo gives a completely over-the-top performance as the hateful, borderline psychotic Ahn, wide-eyed and grimacing in cartoon fashion, standing out from the rest of the cast in an almost surreal fashion. Despite his efforts, Holiday works well as a genuine piece of social commentary and avoids most of the clichés which have plagued similar efforts.
idiocracy - good concept that needed more work. surprised it wasn't released wide, there is plenty of good humor that appeals to the general public. even though it's flawed, it's very entertaining still, has some good social commentary and has a lot of funny parts and sequences. it's like the US being overrun by beavises and buttheads. and i also understand that like office space, mike judge had a lot of problems making this movie. poor luke wilson always gets stuck in either bad movies or movies that have problems. wes anderson, please let him be in your movies again.
trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stqgz19uNR0
in the mood for love - i can't shut up about amazing this and amazing that but deal with it, i've been watching a lot of favorites lately. an amazing movie by wong kar wai, helped by the cinematography of christopher doyle and the two amazing leads, maggie cheung and tony leung (chiu-wai). these two have strong chemistry-and were able to recreate that in the more widely seen hero (and another personal favorite). a love story that doesn't happen. cheating spouses, how they deal with it, how they almost came together but didn't. beautiful, serene.
synopsis - Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are polite and formal-until a discovery about their respective spouses sparks an intimate bond. At once delicately mannered and visually stunning, Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments in time.
thanks - stills by inuit mexico http://community.livejournal.com/film_stills/166440.html
and bottledstatic http://community.livejournal.com/film_stills/291304.html
jules and jim - i can see why this is a classic, since it's way ahead of its time in visual storytelling . i liked the style in which the story was told and the friendship between the two men was interesting. where it starts to lose my interest, is when the woman comes in...well no that's a bit off to say, considering she arrives early in the picture...she's psycho and everyone just lets her have her way, to the point that she tries to kill one of the dudes and it's like no big deal! so she's a very annoying character, with obvious psychological problems. it's even more annoying that these guys love her so much they put up with her crap. still, it's a good movie.
synopsis - legendary director François Truffaut's early masterpiece Jules and Jim charts the relationship between two friends and the object of their mutual obsession over the course of twenty-five years. Jeanne Moreau stars as Catherine, the alluring and willful young woman whose enigmatic smile and passionate nature lure Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) into one of cinema's most captivating romantic triangles. An exuberant and poignant meditation on freedom, loyalty, and the fortitude of love, Jules and Jim was a worldwide smash upon its release in 1962 and remains as audacious and entrancing today.
keys to the house - italian, very good acting on a bit of a depressing story...quite an understatement, quite a depressing story. yeah that's better. a father meets his 15 year old son who is mentally retarded and what happens because of it. very good.
kicking and screaming - i love this movie and i'm glad criterion put it out recently, it's written and directed by noah baumbach (sp?) who wrote/directed squid and the whale. it has a lot of good dialogue and characters, a story about college graduates that don't know quite sure what to do with themselves. i just wish it were a little longer. more people need to see this movie.
synopsis - Paralyzed by postgraduation ennui, a group of college friends remain on campus, patching together a community for themselves in order to deny the real-world futures awaiting them. Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Noah Baumbach's hilarious and touching directorial debut was one of the highlights of the American independent film scene of the nineties, speaking directly to a generation of adults-to-be unable to reconcile their hermetic educational experience with workaday responsibility, and posing the eternal question, where do we go from here? Stingingly funny and incisive, Baumbach's breakthrough features endlessly quotable dialogue, delivered by a stellar ensemble cast.
an example of the dialogue -
Max: I'm too nostalgic. I'll admit it.
Skippy: We graduated four months ago. What can you possibly be nostalgic for?
Max: I'm nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I've begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I'm reminiscing this right now. I can't go to the bar because I've already looked back on it in my memory... and I didn't have a good time.
the last king of scotland - the movie it self is fine, does it's job as a messed up thriller based on real events. it's well shot, well acted...but forest whitaker fucking OWNS it. his performance is definitely gold, a complete towering monster with quite a precense, as well as being quite charming. very insane performance.
synopsis - Forest Whitaker stars in an Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning role as brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in this drama. During an African medical mission in the 1970s, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy) impresses Amin by acting swiftly in a crisis. Installed as the dictator's personal physician soon thereafter, Garrigan enjoys the perks of his new position, until he begins to become aware of Amin's inhumanity -- and his own complicity.
trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fGgkDGF2Ts
letters from iwo jima - a masterpiece for sure. well characterized, not patronizing, good adaptation and some fine acting by way of fine directing. you see the movie mostly from the point of view of two characters- the general, tadamichi kuribayashi, played by ken watanabe who is just...wow and such an incredible actor. anyway, bound by duty to do the job as best he can, fight a battle he really doesn't want to fight but he must (and make note-despite being vastly outnumbered, . and then there's the lowly soldier with equal good and shitty luck, depending on the situation-saigo, played by kazunari ninomiya.
during the battle he befriends shimizu (ryo kaze), a late arrival to the army and the friendship they create is quite touching. it's a powerful movie which doesn't waste one second of screen time, it gives you enough about these characters and a bit of background to make you care and get involved, it's moving, well shot (i liked the lack of color), a story very very well told and the better film compared to flags of our fathers. its a shame it hasn't been released as wide as it could be, not much support but then it's not surprising-it's a movie which requires people to...oh no! READ. and see things differently. it's no mystery that patriotic war movies do so much better than ones that make you think.
synopsis - As tens of thousands of Allied troops push further inland, the Japanese troops defending Iwo Jima during World War II prepare to meet their fate in this Clint Eastwood-directed Oscar nominee for Best Picture, a companion piece to his hit film Flags of Our Fathers. Japanese Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) knows his men are outnumbered and, with no hope of rescue, that most will eventually die in battle -- or end up killing themselves.
some interesting bits from wikipedia -
"There were two things of which Kuribayashi was certain: that Iwo Jima would eventually fall to the United States and that he and his garrison would all perish. Nevertheless he was determined to make the fall of Iwo Jima as costly as possible to the United States. General Kuribayashi had studied carefully other US assaults and had determined that he would not seriously contest the beach landings. Instead, the defense of Iwo Jima was fought almost entirely underground. However, to appease those in the Japanese High Command, he committed a battalion of troops to defensive positions just off the beaches. Naval gunfire and intense naval air support had wiped out nearly all of these defenders before the first LVTs touched the volcanic ash of the Iwo shore."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadamichi_Kuribayashi
"The Allied forces suffered 26,000 casualties, with nearly 7,000 dead (nearly one-third of all the Marine deaths in World War II)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima
rescue dawn trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wj8QKds5w8
somebody posted the new yorker article detailing all the shit herzog went through, very interesting, highly reccommended read - http://imdb.com/title/tt0462504/board/nest/41488552
little dieter needs to fly - nice documentary by werner herzog (and the inspiration for "rescue dawn" with christian bale, which he had so many problems making) about a german american pilot shot down in vietnam or so in the early stages of the war. being captured, escaping and surviving in the jungle.