Roads to hell, good intentions, blah, blah, blah… I started this post two weeks ago, thinking I'd do one every week. I see a lot of movies and it seemed to make sense. Funny how life gets in the way of our intentions. Not that that's going to stop me from (finally) posting this, of course.
Boogie Woogie
I sometimes suffer from the conviction that I have art-house sensibilities. Movies like Boogie Woogie, I've decided, exist to dissuade me of those art-house pretensions. I'll blame Netflix for this one (indirectly, of course), since I saw the trailer for this movie in front of something else I'd rented from them, thought it looked fun and immediately dropped it in my queue. None of this is meant to say that this is neccesarily a BAD film... god knows I've seen worse. There are several very good performances and one or two interesting characters. But none of this adds up to a compelling whole for me, and I found myself counting the minutes till it was over. Longest 90 minutes in recent memory (and I frankly find it hard to believe it was only 90 minutes).
Smokin' Aces 2: Assassin's Ball
I have no defense for this one. I'm a sucker for action movies, and I liked the first one. But that movie knew what it was, and did it well, I think. The story for Smokin' Aces was a messy concoction about gangsters and the FBI that had no pretensions to being anything other than what it was… a big, dumb action movie with lots of guns and hot chicks, and just enough story to hang it all on (yeah, I know — action-porn.)
Smokin' Aces 2 dumped the character of Aces in favor of a ludicrous story about preventing a hit on a soon-to-retire FBI analyst. But somewhere along the line the director decided to play politics. Now don't get me wrong… anyone that's read my blog (well, at least a few years back) knows that I'm not averse to having a political point of view, and have no trouble expressing it. Likewise, I have no trouble with a movie being political. But seriously… a movie ludicrously named "Smokin' Aces," its prime selling point being over-the-top action and massive gunplay, is going to try and make some kind of cogent political statement about the iffy nature of our foreign policy? Please, tell me no one on this film took any of this seriously.
Black Swan
From the ridiculous to the sublime, right? This one hardly needs my comments heaped on it for accolades… Five Academy Award nominations add to its already impressive list of awards, so I'm a little late to the party just seeing it this past week. But it was well worth the wait. Amazing performances throughout and the last act was spellbinding. I loved that you couldn't tell, from moment to moment, whether Portman's character was 'in the real world' or caught in her own fantasies. The complexities of each character, the way you can look at the actions of Kunis' and Cassel's characters and not know if their actions are true or the facade that Portman sees… I wanted to turn around and watch it again right away to delve deeper.
Repo Men
(obviously, I'm all over the place this time.) Dark and twisted, I can understand the low review scores for this one. It's a hard film to say "I enjoyed", due both to the dystopic theme and its very interesting ending. But I did like it (and will cop to enjoying it.) But then, Brazil is one of my favorite movies, so obviously I'm predisposed to the genre. I especially enjoyed the way it sucks you in at the end, leaving little clues as to the ultimate resolution, but you only realize they're clues once you know the full story. (Yeah, I know — foreshadowing. Still, I liked the way it was handled.)
Boogie Woogie
I sometimes suffer from the conviction that I have art-house sensibilities. Movies like Boogie Woogie, I've decided, exist to dissuade me of those art-house pretensions. I'll blame Netflix for this one (indirectly, of course), since I saw the trailer for this movie in front of something else I'd rented from them, thought it looked fun and immediately dropped it in my queue. None of this is meant to say that this is neccesarily a BAD film... god knows I've seen worse. There are several very good performances and one or two interesting characters. But none of this adds up to a compelling whole for me, and I found myself counting the minutes till it was over. Longest 90 minutes in recent memory (and I frankly find it hard to believe it was only 90 minutes).
Smokin' Aces 2: Assassin's Ball
I have no defense for this one. I'm a sucker for action movies, and I liked the first one. But that movie knew what it was, and did it well, I think. The story for Smokin' Aces was a messy concoction about gangsters and the FBI that had no pretensions to being anything other than what it was… a big, dumb action movie with lots of guns and hot chicks, and just enough story to hang it all on (yeah, I know — action-porn.)
Smokin' Aces 2 dumped the character of Aces in favor of a ludicrous story about preventing a hit on a soon-to-retire FBI analyst. But somewhere along the line the director decided to play politics. Now don't get me wrong… anyone that's read my blog (well, at least a few years back) knows that I'm not averse to having a political point of view, and have no trouble expressing it. Likewise, I have no trouble with a movie being political. But seriously… a movie ludicrously named "Smokin' Aces," its prime selling point being over-the-top action and massive gunplay, is going to try and make some kind of cogent political statement about the iffy nature of our foreign policy? Please, tell me no one on this film took any of this seriously.
Black Swan
From the ridiculous to the sublime, right? This one hardly needs my comments heaped on it for accolades… Five Academy Award nominations add to its already impressive list of awards, so I'm a little late to the party just seeing it this past week. But it was well worth the wait. Amazing performances throughout and the last act was spellbinding. I loved that you couldn't tell, from moment to moment, whether Portman's character was 'in the real world' or caught in her own fantasies. The complexities of each character, the way you can look at the actions of Kunis' and Cassel's characters and not know if their actions are true or the facade that Portman sees… I wanted to turn around and watch it again right away to delve deeper.
Repo Men
(obviously, I'm all over the place this time.) Dark and twisted, I can understand the low review scores for this one. It's a hard film to say "I enjoyed", due both to the dystopic theme and its very interesting ending. But I did like it (and will cop to enjoying it.) But then, Brazil is one of my favorite movies, so obviously I'm predisposed to the genre. I especially enjoyed the way it sucks you in at the end, leaving little clues as to the ultimate resolution, but you only realize they're clues once you know the full story. (Yeah, I know — foreshadowing. Still, I liked the way it was handled.)
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