Posted by barb on May 19, 2005 in
Movies 4/5 stars
Yes, I’m one of the millions of Americans who took time off from work to see this on the first day. It was worth it! I wanted to be a “virgin” going in — I avoided all of the previews and tv promos (much to Andrew’s annoyance). Why? Well, going in, we already know the major plot points: Anakin turns into Darth Vader, Luke and Leia are born, the Jedi are decimated, Yoda and Obi-Wan go into exile, Palpatine takes over the republic and declares himself emporer. Since I already knew what the major plot points had to be, I wanted the “how” of them to be a complete surprise.
I really enjoyed this last installment of Star Wars. It was far better than Episode I, and better even than Episode II. I can’t compare it to A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, or Return of the Jedi — those were so integral to my growing-up years, that nothing will ever compare to them. However, it was a very strong finale for the series.
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Tags: reviews
Posted by barb on May 15, 2005 in
Movies 3/5 stars
I never said I only watched intelligent movies. I loved The Brady Bunch growing up, and really liked the first movie. This one was fun too.
Tags: reviews
Posted by barb on May 14, 2005 in
Movies 4/5 stars
With reviews of this movie all over the place, Andrew and I didn’t know if we’d enjoy it or not. Turns out I loved it; he hated it. I have read the book, several times, but not for many, many years, so I’m not burdoned by remembering the exact story. Not all of the “funny moments” worked, but there were enough that I had a lot of fun.
Tags: reviews
Posted by barb on May 13, 2005 in
Movies 2/5 stars
This film noir parody just didn’t do it for me. There were many moments where I could tell that something was supposed to be funny, but it wasn’t. I did laugh a couple times, but more often I rolled my eyes.
Tags: reviews
Posted by barb on May 8, 2005 in
Movies 1.5/5 stars
This documentary charts the path of Enron from conception to its downfall in 2001. I was lost for the first 15-20 minutes of this documentary. Granted, I don’t know much financial jargon, and don’t have much clue when it comes to financial matters and institutions, but then this film is not geared toward those already sophisticated in these matters. I sort of followed the goings-on after that, but in talking with Andrew afterwords, found that the film didn’t really highlight some of the most egregious things done by Enron. In addition, they misrepresented the weather-options that Enron had started to get into (the way it was portrayed in the documentary was that Enron was going to either control the weather or “trade” weather among regions).
Stylistically, I was bothered that every single interview was set up so that the camera cut off the subject at the forehead. Every last one of them. And, for some reason, 99% of the zooms on a photograph also cut the subject off at the forehead. Why? What purpose did that serve? One purpose was to bug me…
Can’t say I recommend this one — the information is likely better obtained through a book.
Tags: reviews
Posted by barb on May 1, 2005 in
Movies 4/5 stars
Nicole Kidman plays Silvia Broome, an interpreter at the United Nations who overhears a threat against a soon-to-be-visiting dignitary. The secret service begins an investigation, headed by Tobin Keller, played by Sean Penn, and as they dig deeper, we learn more and more about Broome’s questionable past.
I’m never sure if I’m going to like a Nicole Kidman film, but the promos for this one sucked me in. I’m glad I went, because it was rather good — there were a lot of twists, as there should be in a good thriller. I’m not sure that I saw the end coming, though there were certainly clues there (again, as a good thriller should have).
Tags: reviews
Posted by barb on Apr 30, 2005 in
Movies 1/5 stars
While Andrew disagreed, this movie had the feeling of a SciFi Channel horror flick.
The general story is that a guy wakes up from a 28-day coma and finds that everyone in the city is gone. Well, not everyone — the people that he finds are insane — infected with something, and out to kill anyone who is not infected.
The quality of the film itself was better than a SciFi Channel movie, the filming, pacing, and situations felt much like the formulaic flicks on SciFi. The music was distracting at times, often not at all in-line with the happenings of the film (or the overall tone of the film). And, basically, I was bored (yet too tired to actually move away from the TV…sigh, that’s pathetic).
Tags: reviews
Posted by barb on Apr 3, 2005 in
Movies 4/5 stars
San Francisco is home to a flock of wild parrots and Mark Bittner, an out-of-work musician, has befriended them. He is careful to point out that he does not “take care of them” — they are wild, and can care for themselves — but he does feed them, and takes in any of the sick members long enough for them to heal.
While Bittner does not describe himself as an eccentric, all the trappings are there — he has no visible means of support, and yet he has a constant influx of seed for the flock, a computer to record a diary of the flock, and a camera to photograph their comings-and-goings. He has sworn not to cut his hair until he has a girlfriend (not the best strategy, if you ask me). He doesn’t pay rent, though the “landlords” hesitate to call him a squatter.
Throughout the film, we get a picture of the flock and the members, all of whom Bittner has named and can distinguish by small markings. No one knows how the flock started, but certainly it was a pair of pet parrots who either escaped or were released. Many new members of the flock were also captive at one time, but there have also been many new babies born into the flock. At the time of the filming, there were about 45 parrots in the flock.
One of the most striking things for me were the shots of the parrots flying together as a flock. The picture that I usually have of parrots is that of a lone parrot in a cage or in a house. But parrots really are social animals, and seeing them fly together was breath-taking.
Tags: reviews
Posted by barb on Mar 26, 2005 in
Movies 4/5 stars
Born Into Brothels is a documentary about the children living in the red-light district in Calcutta. Zana Briski lived in the red-light district on and off for several years, getting herself into a position to photograph some of the goings-on in the lives of the prostitutes. But the first thing that struck her, when she first arrived, was all the children. These children have few prospects for rising above their mothers’ stations, particularly the girls.
Briski decided to teach some of the children photography. As she got to know the children, she worked to get some of them out of the brothels and into boarding schools (to get them out of the red-light district altogether). But it was exceedingly difficult — most of the boarding schools would not take children whose parents were criminals. To help pay for the schooling, Briski helped to arrange an auction of the kids’ photographs.
The film is not nearly as depressing as I had expected it to be. Much of the film focuses on the children and their photography. What really struck me was that there were fathers in some of the children’s lives. Fathers. In the red-light district. They were useless, for the most part, but the fact that they were there at all surprised me.
Definately recommended. Also check out Kids with Cameras — the organizatio aimed at teaching kids around the world the art of photography.
Tags: reviews
Posted by barb on Mar 12, 2005 in
Movies The Cinema Arts Theatre near us started showing the Oscar Nominated short movies yesterday, so we decided to check them out instead of trekking downtown for more of the DC Independent Film Festival.
The animated shorts were varied, running from silly to powerful to just plain weird.
- “Gopher Broke” was cute, in the spirit of shorts you might see before a Pixar flick.
- “Birthday Boy” was a wartime story following a little boy for an afternoon out playing, then waiting for Mom at home. It doesn’t sound like much, but it packed a great punch in the few minutes it had. This was perhaps my favorite of the animated shorts.
- “Ryan”, the Oscar winner, was just plain weird. It was about Ryan Larkin, a once prominent animator, now homeless due to addiction (though I knew none of this before or during my viewing of the film). The animation was so densely metaphorical that one would need hip-boots to really wade through it all. I’m sure the Academy loved it because it seemed so avant-garde, but frankly I was bored.
The theme for three of the four live-action shorts seemed to be kids in bad situations.
- “Two Cars, One Night” was set in a bar’s parking lot. Two cars hold children of the bar’s patrons, and the kids connect. I felt a bit like the dialog was what adults picture kids saying to one another, rather than what kids would actually say to one another. This was also one of those English-language films where subtitles would have been helpful, because the children where Maori, with very heavy accents.
- “Little Terrorist” is about a little boy who accidentally crosses the heavily guarded (and mined) border between India and Pakistan. He finds his way back with the help of a schoolmaster. The filmmakers from last weekend’s shorts that we saw at the DCIFF could take a lesson from this film. It had a “point”, but moreover, it had a good story and interesting characters. There was no need to hammer the point into the viewer’s heads — we got it all on our own.
- “Wasp”, the Oscar winner, was about a single mother trying to get back a bit of freedom with four children ranging from a year old to about 8 (?). This was a depressing “slice of life” kind of piece with the children waiting in a pub’s parking lot while Mom has a date inside.
- The best live-action short was “7:35 in the Morning”. It had no children, just a very weary crowd at a coffee shop. (I can’t say much more without giving away the twist — very good, though.)
Tags: reviews