Movies
Started (it’s a 2.5 hours long…!) watching: Frankenstein đē. It’s a Del Toro movie, no mistaking it… the costumes, the buildings, the choice of the story, of course. Still have an hour and change ahead of me.
The Blues Brothers, 1980 - â â â ÂŊ
Oh man, what a trip.
I watched it a long time ago, and I forgot all about it - today I had more appreciation for it. The plot and some of the comedy won't work today, but it was clear from the start that this movie is not about the movie - it's about the music.
Famous songs, famous musicians (there was a part where I was like "wait a minute, is that actually Ray Charles? Shiiiit, this is Ray Charles!"), and just a whole lot of fun. They don't make such crazy car chases anymore.
I'm glad I didn't do reading before the movie and went into it pretty much completely blank (as I said, I didn't remember anything), it simply showed on my Netflix queue, and I was thinking, sure, why not.
Good stuff, it definitely heightened my weekend by a notch.
There Will Be Blood, 2007 - â â â
It's not a bad movie, but I didn't finish it. It's unsettling to watch Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Michael, destroying himself piece by piece. I might come back to it at another point when I'm in the right mood.
The Big Lebowski, 1998 - â â â ÂŊ
Every time I watch this movie, I pick up some other meanings I didn't before. Sometimes you just need to shrug it off and go bowling.
The Terminator, 1984 - â â â ÂŊ
The Terminator is a classic, but I don't think that should automatically earn it high ratings. After all, the idea for the movie is redundant (even back then), and the skinny plot is a rough skeleton meant to serve the action scenes. But there are a few gems in this movie.
I was surprised by the attention to detail they took. There is a quick scene where Sarah (Linda Hamilton) and Reese (Michael Biehn) escape the police station and hit the Terminator with the car. It's only a second, but you can see their bumper is all bent from hitting him since he is made of steel. Earlier, the Terminator gets his face burned lightly, and it took a while to understand that the "something is weird about his face" was the lack of eyebrows he lost in the fire after that scene, going forward (until he put on the sunglasses). Some details in the background and people seem so natural in LA because, well, as it turns out, James Cameron shot some of these scenes raw, without asking permission and without warning people who were captured on the camera without knowing.
Watching the film also made me realise that it really is about The Terminator, not about Sarah Connor. As for Reese, I forgot his name entirely until I watched this movie again today.
The Terminator is one of the best and few examples I can think of where the sequel is even better than the first. In order to see and understand it fully though, it's best to watch the first. I'm glad I got to watch it again today on a whim.
28 Days Later, 2002 - â â
I wanted to watch this again before its sequel, 28 years later - and then I found out there's also 28 Weeks Later. Seems like I have work to do.
28 Days Later sets us up with our usual blend of zombie apocalypse with its own little twists; there's nothing too original that we haven't seen before, one way or another. What is a bit different is that this movie is not about the zombi.. err, infected, as much as it's about human nature and violence.
Toward the end, there's a bit lord of the Flies kind of thing going on, but with grown men instead of.. You know what? Scratch that, they're nothing more than children with guns. This is also the point where the protagonist goes through some near death experience that tranfsform him into a lean mean killing machine who can take on the soliders and the infected and save his girlfriend who up to that point was a doing fine kicking ass on her own, but you know, her hero is around so now she's poor and helpless and can't do anything. They even got her a dress and all. That's where the movie went from 3 - 3.5 for me to a mere two stars.
Not sure if I want to watch the next one, hopefully it's not the same formula again.
Tampopo, 1985 - â â â
A fun movie. I haven't watched enough Japanese films to know if the style of parallel plots happening here is classic, or something unique to this film, but it works.
It's a comedy dipped with serious food passion (some sexual food-related scenes emphasize that), which centers around ramen noodles. The reason I picked this movie up in the first place is that its first scene is set in a ramen noodle restaurant, which is called - of course - Tampopo.
There's a bit too much women-cliche-gender role in this movie, but it is from the 80s and it is from a more traditional cinema, so that didn't surprise me; still, it was a bit annoying that they had to slap that "a woman chef! amazing!" thing at the end.
Warfare, 2025 - â â â ÂŊ
I decided to watch this on a whim today, and I'm glad I did. This is a difficult movie to watch, not just because of the subject matter but also because there's no real plot or story. I think that's part of the point.
This is an authentic story (as much as I can gather) of one of many instances - and just that, one moment (well, a 90-minute-long moment) of the war in Iraq, with all its horrors. It was created as a memory, like a journal note, of how things were back then for the people who were there; it's not the kind of movie you watch in a theater, eating popcorn.
What I appreciate about this movie is that it doesn't attempt to draw politics in. There's also no attempt at heroism or really any symbolism. It's a simple movie that makes a simple delivery.
The Shrouds, 2024 - â â â
I watched this one last night, but it was hard to follow. Not what I expected it to be. I am holding full judgment until I see it again and watch the details more carefully.