What are you watching and enjoying?


SuaveStar

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True Grit: The Coen Brothers went all out and they totally succeeded. First things first: Haliee Stienfeld is going to be huge. Maybe not in Hollywood, but this girl has chops. She may be on stage for the rest of her life, but she will fucking kill it. This girl built on everything Kim Darby did with the original, but somehow made it more honest and more real, which I would have thought was nigh impossible. Whatever small gripes I may have with the film, this girl has no faults within it. Insanely great performance.

Second, Matt Damon acts his fucking ass off. Glen Campbell's take on LeBouef was basically useless, but Damon's take on the character is incredible. Damon is a fine actor, but the script gives him so much to do, and Damon takes it all in stride, building a proud, strong character that has a very strong arc. Josh Brolin is a menacing Tom Chaney, but, I would have liked to see more of him. Barry Pepper spends all of his scenes mimicking Robert DuVall to the best of his ability, but I really would have liked to see something new brought to the character of Ned Pepper. A familar voice pops up briefly in J.K. Simmons, but it's voice only, adding a lot to the world being built. A couple of surreal moments occur in

Seeing John Redcorn hung and watching Bill Weasley take a fucking knife to the chest.

The film is fucking gorgeous from opening to closing scene. The opening shot is incredible, and throughout, the landscape is practically a character unto itself. The score is beautifully composed and works on almost every level.

The film's ending

while close in tone to the original book, thus darker, still maintains a certain level of optimism that I wasn't sure was possible.

And finally, the elephant in the room:

Jeff Bridges' Rooster Cogburn.

It is, on one hand, very much the same character Wayne played, but taken to a much more pathetic and tragic conclusion. Bridges is a powerhouse, bringing his own flair to Cogburn, while still paying tribute to the Duke's character.

My biggest gripe?

No General Sterling Price. I fucking loved that cat.

Great film: 9.5/10

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The Kids Are All Right (2010) - It's certainly an okay film, but I do not understand the critical praise it's received. The premise is that the children of a lesbian couple contact their sperm donor and he becomes a part of their lives. I think that looking at modern marriage through a lesbian marriage, rather than only looking at gay marriage through a lesbian marriage, is the right approach, but it's so poorly handled. First off, it's a dramedy. Now, you can balance drama and humor, but that balance is not in this film and it needs it.

More specifically, they handle marital unrest by having Julianne Moore's character have sex with the sperm donor because they both have laid back personalities. Now I know that cheating is a response to marital unrest, but isn't having the lesbian character have sex with a man an obvious and easy way to have your character respond to that unrest? What's worse is that the film ends on a joke and then a shot of the lesbian couple holding hands, like everything's going to be okay. After Moore's character committed infidelity.

Part of the problem is that the characters fall into easy categories. Bening's Nic is a serious perfectionist and Moore's Jules is laid back. Now I know opposites attract and that such opposite personalities can create tension, but there isn't enough depth given to the pair or Ruffalo's Paul that there's a reason for the cheating other than that Jules and Paul have the same personality.

Now make no mistake, Paul is an asshole and deserves what he gets. But it's also his presence in the kids' lives that allows them to take important steps forward. It's also clear that the kids have issues with their parents, but they aren't really resolved on screen. Everyone just seems to come together and be happy at the end.

Like I said, I like the premise of what the film wanted to explore, but it could have been handled so much better.

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Black Swan- I look at ballet dancers and see what other people must think when they look at wrestlers- utterly crazy people. This movie is really only a slight exaggeration of what I believe them to actually be like.

I'll be honest, this is great but very much in the mould of Perfect Blue to the point where it felt a more that a little derivative. That's not to say it wasn't brilliant and amazing to watch, but the other film really hung over it for me, just in the way that the main character progresses.

Still, nothing can detract from the astonishing performance of Portman in the lead, she's a shoe-in for a lot of awards sometime soon. The film too, it's total Oscar-bait, gritty and graceful all at once.

As for the more uncertain elements of reality, I'm usually a subscriber to Barthes Death of the Author theory wherein the intentions of the author are irreverent, the interpretation is the point where the piece is created. However in this case I'm going to have to state my belief that the uncertainty was the aim of the script, no one idea was true or false. Like Inception, where I feel the ending inspired far more debate than it was really worthy of, Black Swan is aiming to create uncertainty as a tool. Your version might be true for you, but there isn't a strict real/unreal interpretation that I could see as credible. This isn't a movie you can work out with a graph.

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I watched Inception again last night. It was good, but it wasn't as enjoyable as it was the first time. I think the whole end sequence really relies on you watching it once, as when you watch it a second time, you spend most of the time not actually watching the film, as you do try to work shit out and not really watch the movie.

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I think on reflection that Shutter Island is a better film than Inception when it comes to exploring the nature of personal reality. The conception of the lead character in both cases is so similar that it's hard to believe Leo agreed to do both, I can only imagine it was the chance to work with those directors that made him do it.

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Cars is the least of the Pixar films. That is not a bad thing. That's like saying that that's the worst cheesecake you've ever eaten. There's really no such thing as a truly bad cheesecake, just cheesecake's that aren't your taste. That's what Cars is. Cars is the Pixar film that is most targeted towards children and, as a result, there's less there for anyone else. It's one of those vegetable cheesecakes you're know is good but you can't get into. How I rant the Disney Pixar canon (and keeping in mind I still need to see Toy Story 3)



  1. Wall-E
  2. Toy Story 2
  3. Finding Nemo
  4. Monster INC.
  5. Up
  6. A Bug's Life
  7. Toy Story
  8. Ratatouille
  9. The Incredibles
  10. Cars

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I can't rank Pixar 1-10 like that, but there are tiers for their work-

1st- Toy Story 1, 2 & 3, Wall-E, Finding Nemo

2nd- Up, Ratatouille, Incredibles, Monsters' Inc.

3rd- Cars, A Bugs Life

Not too optimistic about the future though. Cars 2? Monster's Inc 2 sounds fine. Brave is their first fairy tale, but Shrek already did all the deconstruction, can Pixar reconstruct the Disney fairy tale? Might be their biggest challenge ever.

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