Displaying Category: Movie

You think things are bad now, in a world where we all communicate virtually through email and SMS and tweets... Now imagine a world where we all live virtually. Based on the complete lack of buzz surrounding this movie, I'm not sure anyone really expected much of it. Oh look, another Bruce Willis film, except now he's wearing a terrible hairpiece. Except this movie was really good. Not just for the slightly twisted murder mystery, but for the rather challenging questions it raises about what it means to be human. At some point, we all question who we are, but wouldn't that question get complicated if we could be anyone? You just pick out a surri with whatever features you like (male or female) and you go live your life virtually through a robot while you lie in a recliner back at home. Then when mom tells you to go out and play, you just get in your chair and have your surrogate go out and play for you.

These surrogates wipe out human imperfection. They all have perfect skin, perfect teeth, perfect hair (hence the hairpiece), perfect body shape and tone. And everyone has one. Everyone is perfect! It's perfect! But is that the human experience? Part of what makes us human, part of what makes our personalities are these physical imperfections. This scar factored into my life somewhere. This baldspot is part of me. Hiding all these things behind the synthetic skin of a robot disconnects us from these things that make us human. I hadn't thought about this till now, but it would also seem to indicate cosmetic surgery (the completely elective type) as the tiniest of baby steps toward this artificial world. That and maybe video games...

So yes, I really enjoyed this movie, mostly because it kept me thinking the whole way through, challenging so many ideas and presenting new ones. Also, it was a pretty fun ride.

4/5

I suggested earlier this month that a Mechwarrior movie seems like a really good idea... and now there are rumors of just such a movie in development.

*crossesfingers*

The word on the street is that a Highlander reboot is in the works with Fast and Furious director Justin Lin attached as the director. I certainly love me some Highlander and the thought of seeing a modern recreation of the movie (trying to ignore most of the sequels) is kinda exciting. The comments in the linked thread are interesting mostly for their guesses/suggestions for cast members.

Basically, go watch director Shane Acker's original short film that the feature length movie 9 is based on. While the stories differ, you pretty much get the idea of what goes on in this world and it doesn't consume an hour and a half of your life. That isn't to say there is anything especially wrong with 9, it's an entertaining action movie, it's just not a thinking movie. There aren't any particularly challenging issues to consider, it's just a simple and fun ride. Really, the most interesting parts to me were the tiny flashbacks to the times of the humans and to see glimpses of how they brought about their own destruction. I know, dark, right?

3/5

A film about two people trying to communicate. Simple enough. Except Adam, the title character, has Asberger syndrome, and Beth, well, she's female, so it's all sorts of complicated. It's actually a pretty good movie full of funny and touching dialog. Plenty of emotional goodness and honesty that I really appreciate in a movie. I found it quite satisfying.

4/5

I've been trying to figure out a way to explain how much fun this movie is without making it out to be a cinematic masterpiece. Because, you know, it's an explosive action movie with spraying blood and gibs and boobs and crazy plots to take over the world, but it's also spectacularly entertaining!

All that stuff is great, but what makes Gamer so compelling is how it plays games (pun intended?) with so many elements of our society we've come to accept. The Internet, gaming, reality TV, the prison system, incomprehensibly rich geniuses... It takes all these things and more, slides them a half-step forward and it all suddenly seems both absurd and frighteningly close. It's fiction in completely clear terms, but it's also so close to where we are now that you can see our world and the world in the movie merging such that you can't see where one stops and the other starts. It's more than a little disturbing.

And it's also awesome.

4/5

Hey look, another Mike Judge movie! I felt pretty good about this movie. It wasn't hilarious or awesomely excellent or highly critical of American society (like Idiocracy) but it was funny and full of interesting caricatures... so in the end, I felt good about it. If anything, I felt like it all wrapped up a little too cleanly, because while it had a tone of "life is complicated and it sucks" through most of the movie, the ending just made everything neat and tidy with a pretty bow and, in a way, didn't feel true to the rest of the film. Still, I'd recommend it if you're looking for something fun.

4/5

After watching District 9 and seeing the trailer for Avatar and thinking back on the Matrix movies, we've definitely seen pretty good on-screen representations of land-walking, manned, robot-like tanks or "Mechs." So where is our Battletech/Mechwarrior movie already? And yes, I am totally ignoring Robot Jox and Robot Wars. Seriously, we need an American studio to finally produce this...

I had actually planned on seeing Julie & Julia, but apparently the film was damaged the night before and the replacement hadn't come in yet. So we got free tickets and I took the opportunity to see a different movie since I was there already. Inglorious Basterds was starting in fifteen minutes, so that's what I saw. And hence no ticketstub.

So I got pretty much what I expected from a Tarentino film. It's long. There's some pretty graphic violence. People like to talk. A lot. I actually kind of liked the movie, but I'm not entirely sure why. There were lots of really really slow sections as characters sat around a table and talked about all sorts of random things. I found the language to be interesting and some of the conversations were intense, but what with those conversations making up most of the film, it definitely felt long. I would probably only recommend it to people who are already familiar with Tarentino films and really enjoys them.

*SPOILERS FOLLOW*

Also, while the film has a historical setting, it is almost comically not historical in terms of the facts. I mean, it's a well known fact that the entire German high command didn't die in a small cinema in Paris, thereby ending the war in 1944. I find it almost absurd that the movie even suggests this without any explanation. No suggestion of an alternate timeline, no backhanded "...and that's how it would have gone, if things had worked out..." Nothing. It felt weird.

4/5

Post Grad follows a fairly predictable trajectory as recent college graduate Ryden (Alexis Bledel) discovers that life after school isn't so much under her control. When she fails to get her dream job and is forced to live at home with her perfectly normal abnormal family, her confidence in herself and her dreams begins to waver. Most of this is handled well and convincingly, though I kind of felt like Michael Keaton as Ryden's Dad was attracting way too much attention to himself. What really attracted me to the movie, though, was the romantic sub-plot between Ryden and her best (and as far as we can tell, only) friend Adam, who has clearly been in love with Ryden for years and clearly dealt with her "just friends" response for just as long. There were some really good juicy slivers of romance in there, but it rarely got as intense as it was suggesting it might. So while I was finally choked up a little at the end, I still felt like some really great potential was squandered on less interesting sub-sub-plots involving Dad.

Still, Alexis is good and I am always happy watching her do... whatever.

3/5