Tonight's film was the sprawling slice-of-life in LA piece by Robert Altman (based on the work of Raymond Carver) known as Short Cuts. And when I say sprawling, I mean a HELL of a lot of movie: a 3 hour running time and 22 major characters. And a hell of a cast playing those characters, I might add. In the briefest possible summary ( Read more... )

Tonight's film was Atom Egoyan's skillful adaptation of Russel Banks's novel The Sweet Hereafter, concerning the aftermath of a small British Columbian town in which a bus accident has killed fourteen children and crippled several others. Okay, this is the kind of movie that makes me want to make movies... want to write... want to do SOMETHING. ( Read more... )

FIRST:

( Survey, Stolen From Kendra )

Finally got around to watching another movie. Tonight's feature was Francis Ford Coppola's expertly crafted 1974 artish film The Conversation, about the moral and professional crises of conscience a survelliance man faces after taping a couple in San Francisco's Union Square. First of all it's worth noting that both this film and The Godfather Part ( Read more... )

Tonight's film was Peter Jackson's biggest pre-LOTR success - a love/murder story about two schoolgirls called Heavenly Creatures, which actually first came to my attention because of that commercial where Kate Winslet's rattling off some of the stuff she's done in movies. I've been noticing that most of the movies I enjoy involve some severe ( Read more... )

Tonight's film was Woody Allen's first black & white feature (or so I'm told) - an ode to the shallow neuroses and decaying values of the inhabitants of Manhattan. It seems an odd juxtaposition, next to last night's entry, but the two movies are really about the same thing - it's just Happiness is very... exaggerated, not so much in SUBJECT per se ( Read more... )

Given that we have signed up for the MVP thing at Hollywood video, I have deiced that I'm going to watch a new movie every night.

Tonight's film was Todd Solondz's second feature, the apparently controversial and certainly...um.. challenging Happiness. When I say challenging, I'm talking on a Lars Von Trier or Harmony Korine level. Basically, this ( Read more... )

Just saw Crash which was ... good. Difficult, but in the pleasurable kind of way - things happen you don't expect for both good and ill. On the surface it's racial overtones could be a turn off, but what saves it is that it's not a sermon about race, or even specifically prejudice - just assumption in general. It suggests everyone is the way they ( Read more... )