A pedantic first half followed by an engaging, inovative and quizzical second half about the distinction between being asleep and being awake and can we even tell the difference? Just the thing for someon interested in examing the inherent paradoxes of consciousness and the allure of lucid dreaming. The first half gets an overbearing C and the second half which gets its shit together gets an B+. 
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Waking Life
Waking Life
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A pedantic first half followed by an engaging, inovative and quizzical second half about the distinction between being asleep and being awake and can we even tell the difference? Just the thing for someon interested in examing the inherent paradoxes of consciousness and the allure of lucid dreaming. The first half gets an overbearing C and the second half, which gets its shit together, gets an B+.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Starts out smart and genuinely ambivalent about what it means to have a normal life. And then it turns into a demonic thriller, which is too bad. Still, the dark atmosphere and feel of the thing was done with aplomb. B-
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
American Beauty
There is no variation in this film, and it is all one giant philosophical mistake.
The superficial, real-estate wife, who decides that murder is the answer. The closet-military-nazi, who decides that murder is the answer. The teenage daughter who jokes about murder being the answer. The pretend lolita who thinks beauty and sex are the answers. They’re all exactly the same.
That leaves us with two characters: Kevin Spacey and Rick.
Spacey’s position is a reaction to numbness. He begins substituting rose petals, old pictures and nostalgia for beauty. He is not free, he is nihilistic. Instead of assuming responsibility, he wants as little as he can e.g. working at Smiley’s. He doesn’t think through his actions with regard to others because he has “nothing to lose.” The nihilistic predicament is the situation in which we know that our most cherished values are untenable, and yet we seem incapable of giving them up. We are forced––condemned––to believe in something we know can’t be true.
What to do with Rick: he’s a voyeur; he’s fascinated by death; he sentimentalizes death, maybe. But he, too, does whatever he wants: in response to the structure and discipline of his father’s rules, he becomes a drug dealer, an occupation that has consequences that are never addressed. He defines voyeurism in his own terms: its more a curiosity than an obsession to him, though others might strongly disagree. He sees beauty in a floating plastic bag, entirely untethered, but he imagines there’s its expressing a communion with him. He, too, is a sentimentalist, given how he sees himself as a God smiling at death, betraying his ultimate implied fear of it.
Rick is also ironic and sarcastic and knows how to be himself without subverting himself to the rules of others. But that irony, I think, becomes corrupted; at least, in this film, it’s used mostly as a self-defense mechanism. Notice how he begins to see the world through the video camera and not with his own eyes––he beings to see ironically, at a distance, through a manufactured view-point.
Rick is the only character that has the chance to be free, though the movie attempts to bludgeon even that small hope.
But the film did win best picture because it appeared to most as a motivational speech. Yuck. C-
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
The Adjustment Bureau
I love Matt Damon, deeply, profoundly. Superficial philosophy, not as much. B-
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Breaking Bad: Season 3
Saturday, July 30, 2011
The Trip
Reminded me of how being British and being funny goes a long way, but sometimes doesn't go far enough. B-
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Breaking Bad: Season 2
Whatever was unbroken in the first season gets broken in this one. Including my heart and soul. Saddest thing is that if this is a show about the middle class getting fucked everywhich way and worse, these characters don't have it as bad as most of the real U.S.A citizens that are getting nickled and dimed but who forgot their high school chemistry. I cannot go on. I must go on. A
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Beginners
Two days after seeing it, I can’t remember what it’s about. Which doesn’t matter because it wasn’t about narrative as much as it was about melancholy, wistfulness, and playfulness, and how it’s possible for these these tones to coexist and turn into more than sentimental slop, even in the face of death and heartache. Both the male and female love interests play their roles quietly, growing into themselves rather than yelling at one another when things get broken and lonely. And she’s got beautiful eyes which are a delight to spend 2hrs looking into. 73/B+
[From now on, I’m gonna try to adopt the 0-100 scale which allows for more discernment space (while keeping on the Grade-school scale training wheels for now). But so 80 doesn’t equal B- and 70 doesn’t equal C-. Rather, with the whole scale in play, a 50 is a fine Cish movie, 60s are are all good movies, 70s are like really really good movies, 80s the best of the year, and 90s are eternal masterpieces.]
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Six Feet Under
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Bad Teacher
Starts bad and stays bad. Which is really good and honest. Extra credit for having our Bad Teacher show Lean on Me, Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds to her class instead of pretending to teach. Does raise a worthwhile question: why is it so hard to capture teachers authentically, without a comedic framework? B
Friday, June 24, 2011
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
It added approximately 38,000 years to my concept of humanity. Not bad for a 3D film by a german with a headlamp. A-
Monday, June 20, 2011
The Tree of Life
A poem, a movie, a hymn. Solemn and joyful, both. A way of seeing the microscopic as no different than the cosmic. About the minor details of life, which turn out to be all there is. Literally so. It's about trees and sunflowers if you must know.
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