The Social Network (2010)

I finally got around to watching this on DVD. I particularly enjoyed the scene that introduced Sean Parker: quoting quotes at IMDB

Amy: You don't know my name, do you?
Sean Parker: Is it Stanford?
Amy: [playfully] I should just kick your ass! How do you go to a party and you meet somebody...
Sean: [Cutting her off] Amelia Ritter, but you prefer Amy. You're from Orinda. Your father's in commercial real estate, and your mother's ten years sober.

Imdb leaves out the bit where Amy, the French major, asks the self-described "entrepreneur" what he "preneurs". It also leaves out that Sean was reading "Stanford" off the ass of her underwear when he answers that first question. Does Stanford really sell asswriting panties?

Final thought: has no regrets over not using livejournal or facebook after watching that

JCVD

Imagine Dog Day Afternoon with Jean Claude Van Damme, that's roughly what you get with JCVD. Van Damme is not playing some character, though. Van Damme is Van Damme, broke, frustrated with the job offers he is getting, depressed that he just lost custody of his kid (opposing counsel having made a big show of how Van Damme's complete works are child inappropriate in court), back in his native Brussels where everyone knows and loves him. And inside a bank with hostages.

The crowds don't cheer "Attica!" here, they do cheer "Jean Claude". Press is there with a massive crowd before the SWAT team arrives. And there is a bit of strangeness to this robbery, just like there was in Dog Day Afternoon (which appears to be deliberately referenced). I don't think the trailer gives away the twist, which comes out maybe a third of the way in, but other sources might. And the story is probably better if you don't know it.

Four five-minute single take shots out of five.

JCVD at IMDB

Dog Day Afternoon at IMDB

Final thought: right across the street is a video store, adding lots of movie refs here

Audition (1999)

Audition (1999) at IMDB

(mild spoilers)

Shigeharu: Even though I've only met you twice your biographical essay for that fake audition has won my heart, I want to marry you, Asami.

Yasuhisa: Don't do it. She seems creepy, plus I did some background checks on her and nothing in her resume can be confirmed. Her last agent has been missing for over a year.

Shigehiko: Do whatever you want dad, I'm busy with my girl friend.

Asami: Even though I act meek and submissive in public, I'm really into dominance. And to make sure your only thought it me, I'll kill everyone else you might love (and your dog too!) and then cripple you so you are dependent on me. Plus I'll have you live in a sack when I'm bored.

Old guy in wheel chair: I'm sick! And creepy! And your step-dad, Asami!

I could barely watch this movie. The first two thirds is dreadfully slow and full of obvious hints that there is something wrong with Asami but Shigeharu is willfully blind. Then in the last third the monster comes out and makes Kathy Bates' Annie Wilkes from Misery seem tender and caring.

I had heard good things about the movie, and I'd liked the director Takashi Miike's comedy film Happiness of the Katakuris, so I watched this, Miike's best known film. And I watched it to the end, but I would't recommend it: can't unwatch.

I saw it several weeks ago and little bits of the visuals keep coming back to me, but I don't have any eye bleach strong enough.

1 cut off tongue dancing around a floor on it's own out of five principal characters.

Misery at IMDB

The Happiness of the Katakuris at IMDB

Final thought: seems like this was a low budget rush job, too

Tree of Life

Tree of Life at IMDB

This a long, beautiful to look at movie with a strong religious current flowing through it. It attempts to represent on film all of creation, from the cosmos to the microscopic, from volcanos to childbirth, dinosaurs to modern steel and glass cities. It deals with love, death, faith, morals, and hypocrisy.

Even while admiring the beauty of some of the shots and sequences, I found it very hard to get engaged with the story and the characters. There a huge hurdle to get over in the first hour of this two hour and twenty minute film, as we take the tour of creation at a time when we don't know much about the characters or much about why we are seeing this all.

Once the tour is over, the story resumes. With little to no dialog, it does a great job of showing time pass from a couple without children, to the first pregnancy and birth, baby time, toddler years, the second child, and then reaching adolescence.

After a while I found it jarring that something is always moving, if not the subject in the film, then the camera is wandering. The cuts are fast and frequent, the motion never letting the movie have a true quiet moment. This is a story that needs some quiet. Perhaps the objective is to force us to recognize that life doesn't accomodate, but I'm sure that's the most effective way to get it across.

Three pairs of animals out of six pair on a toy ark.

Final thought: will still think Branch Davidians when thinking of "Waco, Texas"