Movies

Another attempt to shorten my list of movies where not having seen them makes me an absolute philistine, according to various friends: Papillon, with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffmann. Ignoring the tragic history behind it (the French penal system in French Guiana during the colonial era — I didn't know about this from school), it's great entertainment. There is a kind of happy end, but nowhere close to what Hollywood does to its stories these days...

A long time on the “to watch” list: The Fifth Element by Luc Besson. I don't know why but I had always been sceptical if I'd enjoy this one, but my feeling was completely wrong. Real fun.

While I think the basic idea of superheroes getting older and having a midlife crisis, or a daughter, (and of course during the film, getting back into action) could make a wonderful film, the ending of Watchmen left me with a bad feeling about the whole film. But then I never read or watched superhero cartoons anyway, so maybe it's just that I'm not the intended audience for this one.

Finally, V for Vendetta is another interpretation of the 1984 theme (actually, it's the interpretation of a graphic novel, but I've not read that), with a very well chosen John Hurt as “Big Brother” (or, I should say, High Chancellor Adam Sutler.) With quite a few slapstick moments, this isn't really as dark as the theme might suggest.

Having stupidly, and very painfully, ruptured a ligament in my foot (while getting off a bus. Not drunk, no sports whatsoever.) I was less mobile than I wished to be and could finally make some time to watch Nikita by Luc Besson (I've not seen much he was involved in; Léon was one of the exceptions which I like very much. I've got the DVD of The Fifth Element right here, so no need to chastise me that I haven't seen that one yet.)

But back to Nikita: you may know that I like strange movies for some values of strange. Nikita obediently starts off in a very dark mood. And then suddenly turns into quite a “normal” secret service thriller with a romance element. I liked both parts of the movie very much, but it took me a bit by surprise at first.

I also like fun stuff, and so I've watched my first three episodes (9 to 11) of Kottan ermittelt, wonderfully silly Austrian whodunnits from the late 70s/early 80s. If you don't speak german (and understand it well, even I have difficulties understanding some of the Viennese dialect), you just don't know what you're missing. Or if it is translated (don't know): probably like watching Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis in German. Which I did, because my french is not that good, but I'll have to watch it again en français, just to get the Authentic Expierence™ of this wonderful movie.

Update: Speaking of a foot, and of movies: I don't think I've mentioned My Left Foot on my blog so far. The biography of Christy Brown, a cripple who grows up in a poor Irish working class family to finally become a famous artist. I found it just a bit corny (hmm. Not sure if that's the right word here, shows up for kitsch in any case), but still very impressive.

Obediently following Xan and Simon's recommendation, I finally got around to watch La cité des enfants perdus (Caro/Jeunet.) Hmm. I liked Delicatessen better. OTOH my wife, who usually leaves me to watch those strange / dark movies alone, watched it with me and enjoed it more than she did some of the other strange movies I could convince her to watch with me in the past. I find this strange; it's certainly not that the movie is not strange enough...

A small curiosity is that a friend gave me 37°2 le matin (Betty Blue) only a few days before it was screened on the French/Germen culture channel arte. Apparently higher powers decided that One Should Watch This Film. Which I enjoyed from beginning to end. (Why do I include the arte Logo here? Because they deserve all the publicity they can get. It's about the only TV channel I can watch without getting annoyed at the content. They actually think about what they send, and also often get the watchers thinking. I watched the movie from DVD, though, because I don't own a TV receiver.)

Long time since my last movies posting ...

Just discovered the U.S. TV series Supernatural, in an episode showing the two heroes being introduced for the first time to the writer of the book series “Supernatural”, which contains the life of the two heroes. (Strangely, it showed up when I searched for Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs on a torrent search engine.) I'm not quite sure what to think about the series, judging from that episode. I read a lot of fantasy and I like the real-world / fantasy world crossover every now and then, but Supernatural is quite cheaply made. Watching this one episode was fun, but I have no idea if I would actually watch it regularly. (I find, generally, that fantasy is difficult in movies. Lord of the Rings is very well executed and mostly presents the world as “just a normal world”, and I'm forever thankful to Jackson that he shares my opinion — I think he says as much in the bonus materials on one of the DVDs — that magic with smoke and flashes mostly ends up in major silliness. I have neither read nor watched anything of the Harry Potter epic, so I can't comment on that.)

While I can't comment on Reservoir Dogs yet, I finally got around to watch From Dusk Till Dawn by director Robert Rodriguez, and with Tarantino (also co-writer of the movide, and if you watch the making of, co-director even if it's not in the titles) and Clooney as two of the main characters, together with a wonderful Juliette Lewis. That's certainly one of the movies I'll watch again, several times. Great soundtrack, too.

Yesterday, I was a bit disappointed after I watched Time Bandits; Gilliam's later films got much better.

It takes something to make a stop motion movie in today's time of cheap and easy computer animation ... so I really liked Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, if not for the rather straightforward story, but for the look and the atmosphere. The movie is also more a musical than a film, which I like very much as well.

Last weekend I found yet another movie that satisfied my apparent need for the strange and bizarre: Delicatessen by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

(You can find older movie-related posts on my old blog.)