I didn't do anything, but I did watch a bunch of movies. Moved outside my comfort zone and found some there were really quite good. Let us go through them shall we? Luckily lovely Netflix records your viewing history.
The morning began with Eric Bana's Love the Beast. Which was a nice documentary about his Ford Falcon coupe that he has rebuilt with his mates for years and how he crashed out during a rally race and his personal search for whether he should restore it again or just leave it this time. It was a good documentary about a man's love of his car and really dives into the whole emotional connection people have with cars. Why people connect with cars and what cars represent.
This was followed by the animated film Dead Space: Downfall. It is set as a prequel to the video game Dead Space. It's basically Alien, but they had to be original so they threw in some neat religion and people going crazy to spice it up. Ultimately, I have to say it was quite good. Really an excellent sci-fi film, with very realistic dialog and when I say realistic I means everyone was swearing. This might not seem like a big deal, but in real life real people swear, especially when shit gets crazy like it does in this movie. There is also a lot of blood and human versus alien violence which I would be cheering, but in this case it was a bit over kill. Blood was all over everything all the time except the characters, which was a bit unrealistic even for a cartoon. Additionally, the first time a creature brutally stabs and rips a person apart it's gruesome, the fifteenth time it happens it's boring.
After the space slasher I moved to something a little lighter: Chaos Theory with Ryan Renyolds. This was a movie about a man who bases his whole life on preset lists and schedules and then one day his wife sets the clocks forward ten minutes and hilarity ensues! Or at least that's the tag line the studio sells. In reality there is a lot more to the story that the simple premise doesn't touch upon. Yes, things get out of hand when he is suddenly ten minutes late, but what is really impressive is the chain reaction of events that happen as this man's formerly structured life unravels. It is a really sweet (as in awwwwwww) movie about finding out that when everything seems lost you realize you never lost anything to begin with.
And then I think I had lunch. Left-overs, which it pretty much the number one reason to make big dinners.
Then the uplifting cheeriness was enough for me so I watched Brick. Having just plowed through the first season of Veronica Mars, I was a little reluctant to watch a film about a teenager trying to solve the death of his former girlfriend. The movie, however, is not nearly that simple. It took me a little bit to realize the film was noir and not just weird, and once I made that realization I loved it. It has been a long time since I've watched a noir film period, and this was great. The main character Brendon navigates the seedy underworld of his high school and the local drug trade to figure out who killed his ex, why they did it, and who set her up. Really an excellent film, if you're into the whole hard-boiled detective story set up.
Then having done drama I wanted something lighter and a bit more romantic (clearly I was running the gamut of genres today) and watched Conversations With Other Women starring Aaron Eckhart and playing a normal person: Helena Bonham Carter. The film is about a man and a woman who meet at a wedding reception and togetherness ensues. What is interesting is the constant split screen showing each actor at the same time instead of cutting between them talking. It was really interesting to be able to see their constant in time interactions with each other without the use of cutting between each of them. Really an interesting way to shoot a film. That and dialog was objectively fantastic. I wouldn't recommend it if you're on your second marriage or dating a divorced person or...well...it is a very mature relationship that the two get entangled in...aw hell, just see it. I do recommend it.
And from that I was ready for real comedy and watched Dracula: Dead and Loving It. I didn't watch the whole thing. It was pretty shitty. Not one of Mel Brooks' best. Don't watch this one unless you're a die-hard Mel Brooks fan, and even if you are you're better off re-watching Spaceballs for the two hundredth time.
After that I was back in the mood for some information: documentary time! I watched America The Beautiful, which was all about how body image in this country is really messed up and plastic surgery and eating disorders; the movie ran the gamut. It focused on this one girl who had started modelling at age 12. Throughout the journey she learns to hate herself and think she is ugly from working in the industry. The documentary really did a good job at covering the whole story about body image issues and as a person who has known people with body issues, I do understand how real the perception of ugliness is for people. Like any good documentary they present an issue, but don't give a solution. In this case however the solution is non-existent. Every photo is airbrushed to perfection in the media and people know this, but the double zero six foot tall figure is still the female goal. Ultimately the solution is self-esteem boosting and making it clear that what people see in the media isn't real and shouldn't be the standard for everyone to aspire to. The other side of the coin that isn't touched upon in the film is the growing obesity epidemic in this country. Though everyone should love the skin they're in, there is need for balance. Now this wasn't the goal of the documentary and what the film maker did was great, but there should be an understanding of both ends of the spectrum of the issue.
And now I'm going to give my eyes a rest and read a book. Such a novel concept I know.
See what I did there?
Slacker.
ReplyDelete