Weekend Movie Recap

Over the past 3 days, I've been watching movies almost non-stop, putting a big dent in my "Movies To Watch" list. And now I'm blogging about them. Clearly, I'm obsessed.

Match Point: Not your typical Woody Allen film. There is no neurotic nerd who gets into relationship problems of some kind, it's set in London instead of New York, and Allen does no acting at all. This one isn't particularly funny either. But Woody claims that this was his best work ever. I might be inclined to agree had it not been about 40 minutes too long. It still deserved to be nominated for the original screenplay Oscar, but it definitely did not deserve to win, like how Crash didn't deserve to win. Still, I liked the theme of the movie...it was kind of about how some people are lucky and some are unlucky, like a tennis ball striking the net can either go over it, in which case you win, or it can bounce back to your side and you lose.

American Splendor: I only picked this one up because of Paul Giamatti. I didn't really know much about it beforehand, except that this was supposedly Giamatti's strongest performance. After seeing it, I'm inclined to agree, although there were some striking similarities between Harvey in this movie and Miles in Sideways. Both are kind of hard luck characters who think that the world is screwing them over. The writing was spectacular. This one actually won a shitload of writing awards, but couldn't stop the Lord of the Rings sweep of 2004 to win the Oscar. Anybody who likes indie film is probably well-acquainted with this one already, but if not, it should definitely be high on your list.

The Squid and the Whale: Again, I didn't have too much prior knowledge of this one, only that it was nominated for writing at the last Oscars. When I think of movies about divorce, I automatically think Kramer vs. Kramer, but this was significantly different from it. After I got into it, I started noticing elements of The Royal Tenenbaums, and then in the closing credits, I found out it was produced by Wes Anderson, go figure. The writer (Noah Baumbach) also did The Life Aquatic, so there's that too. It does a really excellent job portraying how joint custody can screw up the kids. I don't have any firsthand experience with this but I did notice that at some of my brother's hockey games, separated parents with joint custody would usually sit at opposite ends of the arena. It would be hard to grow up normal in that kind of environment. Frigging brilliant, excellent movie.

A History of Violence: Yikes. I have no idea what to make of this one. I was kind of hoping it would keep me on the edge of my seat, but the best action occurs in the first 15 minutes. And in stark contrast to Match Point, this one is about 40 minutes too short. I thought they could have dug into the main character's past a lot more than they did because it left quite a bit unanswered. Or maybe I just wasn't paying attention. And they might have given William Hurt a bigger part. He did a 5 minute bit and then the movie was over. I can't believe this was written by the same guy who wrote Judge Dredd...my stars. Overall, I was pretty disappointed by this one. It just didn't live up to its hype.

24: Season One: I don't even watch TV anymore. I just rent the DVDs. You don't have to wait a week between episodes and there aren't any commercials. But you may have to wait all night outside the video store, like when my roommate Marc stayed up all night watching 24, talked of going to Movie Studio as soon as it opened so he could get the next episodes because he was so hooked on the show. Thankfully, that hasn't happened with me. I'm amazed at how the writers could keep this thing going for 24 episodes and in real time. It must have been hard to think up things for all the characters to be doing at any one time. I guess sometimes they gave the characters busy work...like the time Rick spent 40 minutes digging a grave, and the time Terri and Kim spent a whole hour debriefing with Nina. But for the most part, the show moves fairly quickly, and Tommy Douglas III gives a pretty strong performance. I'm sure that if I ever had a day like that at that pace, I'd be passed out before noon. I'm still 8 episodes away from finishing, so I might comment more later.