movies
OK... 2 movie reviews coming your way.
On Friday night, my friends Kris and Jim took me to the glorious spectacle that was Inglourious Basterds! The film was one of Tarantino's best films to date... being remarkably well written and containing a lot less violence then I expected, but where the violence came in, it was brutal and unforgiving. While Brad Pitt was simply fantastic in his role as the leader of the Nazi-killing team of Jewish soldiers bringing fear to the entire Reich (all the way to Hitler himself), the real winner in this movie is Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa "the Jewhunter". In fact, the opening sequence involves a confrontation between Landa and a French dairy farmer. Landa is charming and friendly... and yet, the scene is tense and unescapable.
Eli Roth plays Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz... and I wonder what the movie would have been like if the role was played by Adam Sandler as originally intended.
I have to say that the ending gives you a full bang for your buck... and is simply audatious. I have no other way of saying it without telling exactly how the movie ends.
Now...
Over the weekend, I also saw "Cold Souls", which was a tremendously clever movie. As you know, it stars Paul Giamatti as himself... and due to difficulties he's having with a production of "Uncle Vanya", he looks into a company that claims to be capable of removing your soul. Paul is convinced to have his soul removed so that he might be able to deal with the emotional strains the play is putting on him. Unfortunately, with the removal of his soul, Paul finds himself unable to relate to the play... or his wife... and has no real connection to life around him. At first, he tries the experimental process of having the company load another soul into his body, but in the end, it just doens't feel right... so he asks for his soul to be returned. Unfortunately, Russian soul traffickers ave stolen his soul... and a young lady who has removed her soul so she can smuggle souls into and out of America finds that after taking Paul's soul to Russia, she wants to learn more about him. I'll leave it there, other than to say that we look at the tale of 3 different people who lose their souls... and each has a different result. Despite the humerous notion of the movie's premise, this movie is deep and insightful and more emotional than funny.
The movie experience for me was augmented by the fact that after the movie, I ran into two women who were probably in their late 50's or early 60's (not that I have a good ability to determine age)... anyway... they were quite content to talk about movies and we discussed this film and I mentioned "Synecdoche, New York" which they now seemed keen to watch.
A good weekend of movies.
On Friday night, my friends Kris and Jim took me to the glorious spectacle that was Inglourious Basterds! The film was one of Tarantino's best films to date... being remarkably well written and containing a lot less violence then I expected, but where the violence came in, it was brutal and unforgiving. While Brad Pitt was simply fantastic in his role as the leader of the Nazi-killing team of Jewish soldiers bringing fear to the entire Reich (all the way to Hitler himself), the real winner in this movie is Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa "the Jewhunter". In fact, the opening sequence involves a confrontation between Landa and a French dairy farmer. Landa is charming and friendly... and yet, the scene is tense and unescapable.
Eli Roth plays Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz... and I wonder what the movie would have been like if the role was played by Adam Sandler as originally intended.
I have to say that the ending gives you a full bang for your buck... and is simply audatious. I have no other way of saying it without telling exactly how the movie ends.
Now...
Over the weekend, I also saw "Cold Souls", which was a tremendously clever movie. As you know, it stars Paul Giamatti as himself... and due to difficulties he's having with a production of "Uncle Vanya", he looks into a company that claims to be capable of removing your soul. Paul is convinced to have his soul removed so that he might be able to deal with the emotional strains the play is putting on him. Unfortunately, with the removal of his soul, Paul finds himself unable to relate to the play... or his wife... and has no real connection to life around him. At first, he tries the experimental process of having the company load another soul into his body, but in the end, it just doens't feel right... so he asks for his soul to be returned. Unfortunately, Russian soul traffickers ave stolen his soul... and a young lady who has removed her soul so she can smuggle souls into and out of America finds that after taking Paul's soul to Russia, she wants to learn more about him. I'll leave it there, other than to say that we look at the tale of 3 different people who lose their souls... and each has a different result. Despite the humerous notion of the movie's premise, this movie is deep and insightful and more emotional than funny.
The movie experience for me was augmented by the fact that after the movie, I ran into two women who were probably in their late 50's or early 60's (not that I have a good ability to determine age)... anyway... they were quite content to talk about movies and we discussed this film and I mentioned "Synecdoche, New York" which they now seemed keen to watch.
A good weekend of movies.