movies for the week

[Guest godthedog]

so i'm bored & i already watched all my movies for the week, so i thought i'd share. feel free to add your own if you have as much free time as i do.

 

rented:

 

4 little girls, spike lee: awesome documentary about a church bombing in burmingham during the civil rights movement that actually moved me to tears. very extensive research & interviews with everybody from martin luther king's colleagues in the SCLC to george wallace, and does a pitch-perfect job of setting the atmosphere of civil rights-era burmingham, the day of the bombing, and everything in the aftermath (both good and bad). i'd put this up as one of lee's two or three best ever.

 

the wind will carry us, abbas kiarostami: there's a huge buzz going about how iranian cinema in general (and kiarostami in particular) is some of the best in the world right now, so i'd wanted to see this one for over a year and was excited when i found a copy of it. holy shit was i disappointed. so boring i had to watch it in three different sittings to not fall asleep. it spent 45 minutes building up exposition in the slowest possible way, then started to shape into something subtle and kind of nice with a purpose in mind, then it just fell apart. total "that was it?" ending, and i won't even gratify it with a plot summary. roger ebert and david bordwell can suck my dick.

 

american graffiti, george lucas: surprisingly, i'd never seen this one before. good coming-of-age tale about two high school grads' last night at home before leaving for college (with lots of other subplots going on among other characters), and it got that nostalgic tone just right. this really feels like one of those summer nights from high school that felt like anything could happen, that you look back on years later and think "this was what it was all about." george lucas used to be a damn fine director, and i hate what he's become.

 

stranger than paradise, jim jarmusch: this could've turned out really boring, but i loved it. there's no real plot, it's basically 90 minutes of some twentysomethings trying to find something to do and being indifferent about everything. they have no direction, no motivation, and no matter where they are (new york, cleveland, florida), they're always bored. somehow, i got a kick out of watching these people wallow in their pathetic, shitty little lives. feels like the ultimate apathy movie. great stuff.

 

the blue kite, tian zhuangzhuang: so yeah, there's this famous group of directors from the beijing academy called the "5th generation," and i learned all about it in school, and that's the context i saw this movie in. i've seen just a handful of movies from the famed 5th generation, but it seems like this one nicely sums up what they're about: huge, sweeping story of ordinary people trying to go through their day-to-day lives who are pawns in a political climate that won't let them attain any kind of happiness. that can be used to summarize almost any 5th generation movie i've seen, though the time periods are sometimes different (this one is 50s-60s). it's also got that 5th generation tendency to ramble on and on & lose my attention, but overall it's a very good movie. it's really moving when it stays focused, and (like every 5th generation movie) it's gorgeous to look at. very sad movie.

 

bought:

 

in the mood for love, wong kar-wai: $39 from borders, worth every penny. everything about this movie is beautiful: the story, the characters, the costumes, the settings, and every single shot.

 

so, that's pretty much been my week. that and work.

[LivingLegendGaryColeman 0]

I saw the Four Little Girls documentary in high school. A truly sad piece, but put together amazing. I agree with your thoughts.

 

I haven't seen the others, which surprisingly for me includes American Graffitti. I am one of those people who has seen SO many movies, but has often not seen classics or very well known ones. This is one for that category that I plan on viewing eventually.

[Guest evenflowDDT]

I'll agree with you on Kiarostami...I saw Close Up in a class last quarter, and I just couldn't stay awake through it. It was an interesting concept, interesting style of filming, and I really wanted to like it, I just couldn't. I did see clips from A Taste of Cherry that looked promising though.

 

I think the reason a lot of people are all over Iranian cinema is just that to us Westerners it just seems really different, new, and unique. Which it is. It's just not very compelling to me either.

[Guest godthedog]

his style is interesting for about 15 minutes, then you start to long for the simple things. like being able to see a character's facial expression.