Back, After a Long Absence

I'm back.

I'm not sure why, exactly.

I've been so busy with the real world that posting hasn't been much of a concern lately.

Earlier in the year, I finally opened a Netflix acount. And I thought I'd review the movies I was watching as I was watching them.

But then I got a work-related promotion, and I haven't had a chance to take full advantage of the Netflix account.

Anyway, here's a very quick rundown.

Directors: Martin Scorsese. Made around the time of the release of Casino, if I recall correctly. Interesting, not particularly relevatory. I suspect I'd sen this at some point in the past. Video quality was subpar.

Idiocracy. Hilarious. See it.

The Illusionist. Or was that The Prestige?

The Prestige. Or was that The Illusionist?

Seriously, both of these were decent flicks. But they've run together in my mind so that I can't distinguish them. And it wasn't that long ago that I saw them.

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. Great flick; the Roger Ebert review of this one says more than I'm capable of saying about this film. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but I did keep thinking, how is it that this guy's last name is so much like Lecter? That was disturbing.

The Island. Better than I expected it to be. Not quite as good as it should have been. But still, it was striving not to suck.

Babel. Maybe it's just me, but I hated this movie. It was boring. And no movie ha a right to bore me.

Grizzly Man. Excellent. Creepy. I wanted more depth, though. That guy was seriously deranged.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Maybe I didn't get it. And I generally like Robert Altman. But this movie was kind of dull. Of course, it didn't help that it looked prefectly dreadful on DVD -- this one clearly needs a good cleaning.

Vernon, Florida. A meandering, strange, and invigorating look at a bunch of really strange people in a really small town. This one has to be seen to be believed. And I saw it, and I'm not sure I believe it. Its tone is such that it's difficult to tell whether Morris likes these folks or has contempt for them. Or both. This one is worth seeing for the voices alone. Those folks can tell some stories, now.

World Trade Center. Better than I expected. Not as moving as I wanted it to be. Too much structure. Should have been more raw.

Vanya on 42nd Street. Louis Malle's last film. David Mamet did the adaptation. It's an odd movie. I think it's a pretty good one. But it seems now to be dated. And I can't remember where I've seen the lead actor before; his presence was jarring because I knew who he was from some other move but couldn't quite remember where. An whatever the other movie was, it was definitely not Vanya-like. (N.b. I was thinking about Wallace Shawn, and I was thinking of his part in The Incredibles, which is, by the way, incredible.)

The Last King of Scotland. Forrest Whitaker deserved his Oscar. This one mostly made me want to see the documentary about the real Idi Amin. I'm not sure that the movie did enough to convey the real horror there. It seemed kind of sanitized.

The Good Shepherd. Too long. Too contrived. Too much didn't earn its story; by that statement, I mean that the movie makes reference to events like the Bay of Pigs and expects you to fill in the blanks with your own conspiratorial thoughts about them all. I know (more or less) what happened at the Bay of Pigs. But the movie, for all its length, felt like it didn't really deal with what it was trying to deal with. I think I admire it for what it was trying to do, story-wise, but the main characters weren't sympathetic, or even especially likable. And if you're going to make a movie about the CIA, you'd better have a great plot twist. This one didn't.

Next up: the original Mutiny on the Bounty.