Disturbia

Operation Stupid is officially over!

Disturbia, staring the surprisingly good, Shia LaBeouf, is a very clever teenage horror/comedy. Depicting our tech dependant lifestyles spot on is what I truly love about this film. With some very good films under his belt I'm sure LaBeouf will become an excellent actor. He really is the best thing in the 2006 political drama, Bobby.

After the death of his father, Kale, is put under house arrest for knocking out his Spanish teacher. Under extreme boredom and after a few good comedy moment, he begins spying on his neighbors in a very Hitchcockian fashion.

There is some truly funny lines in this film, but the thing is its so realistic and natural. They talk the way we talk and act the way suburbia kids do. From eating peanut butter and chocolate syrup and red bull while watching Cheaters to our extreme paranoia. Or maybe that's just me.

But soon after the comedy banter between Kale and his Korean friend and the love interest and about 80 minutes, Disturbia becomes a very tense thriller. It was expected and built up to but I really expected the horror elements to be far more prevalent in the movie. That's what makes this different...and still very familiar. Hahaha. See Rear Window and The 'burbs.

Fargo

Fargo is such a good Coen Brothers' film. I'd think it was one of the best. Fargo merges the serious Coen films such as No Country for Old Men with some of they're more comedic movie like The Big Lebowski.

Fargo is the true (or is it?) story of a bizarre kidnapping conspired by the victim's husband, non other than William H. Macy, in order to get some cash out of his father-in-law. The kidnappers are Coen regulars, Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare. Stormare plays the quiet and subtle, but sadistic, Gaear Grimsrud. Buscemi, quite the opposite of Stormare, is the load and annoying Carl Showalter, creating an odd couple.



Along the way people began to interfere with Macy's plan. His father-in-law get the police in on it. Frances McDormand, Joel Coen's wife, is a pregnant cop in search of the kidnappers. She puts on one of the best voices in the film besides Macy.

So, I think this is one of the Coen's best. It has great comedy, good tension, although not a tense as No Country.

Donnie Darko

I promise, that one day, everything's going to be better for you.

Richard Kelly makes one crazzzzzzy sci fi thriller that needs you attention! Donnie Darko is a love it or hate affair. So, this film is a dark, comedic, sad, happy, confusing (the first time), drama set in 1988.

I remember the first time I saw this. I was probably about 12 and my dad had this recommended to him. Frankly, I wasn't looking forward to it, but after i saw it i knew it was brilliant! My dad, not so much. He just didn't understand it and just didn't care. I was so engrossed I wanted to watch it again in hopes of understanding.

Fast forward a few year and I see it on TV and it re sparked my interest. Soon I buy the DVD although my parent's protest (they just don't get it I guess) and watch it over and over.

Now then, premise. Donnie Darko is about, well Donnie Darko. I know what your thinking "Sounds like a superhero". Well how do you know hes not? Haha. Donnie is a weird kid. He has massive sleepwalking problems, but that's the first of his issues. Soon he if visited by a very...ugly bunny. Frank is his name. And Frank tells him the world will in in 28 days... 6 hours... 42 minutes... and 12 seconds.

Donnie goes to a very...bad prep school in a small West Virginian town called Middlesex, a very normal town with normal kids. But soon things get strange, out of the ordinary. A jet engine falls in Donnie's room. Thanks to Frank and his sleepwalking he is still alive. From there things go bad. Awesome surreal bad.

Although this film could never of been made in the 80's it has a very 80's feel, which is great. Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal give the performances of there career, playing siblings. Through its absurdity, Donnie Darko can be seen in two different ways. One may see it as a reverse It's a Wonderful Life set during Halloween, or a Messianic tale of a flawed savior. All and all, see this film. Maybe it'll break your top ten. By the way, President Roslin is Donnie's mom. All thoes Battlestar geek like me will get that.

High and Low

High and Low is Akira Kurosawa's beautiful social commentary on Japanese business and culture. This film is a film of two halves really. Post-WWII Japan was a very hard time. A whole country if grief and sorrow after the war. With Films like Godzilla coming out, everyone needed a way to express their inward feelings.




Toshirô Mifune, a Kurosawa regular, plays a longtime shoemaker, Kingo Gondo (almost sounds like a Muppet). The movie opens with other executives of the powerful company paying Mifune a most unpleasant visit. They give a proposition. The other shareholders want to overthrow the 'Old Man', the company president and start making crap shoes so people will have to buy more often. Mifune is absolutely outraged at this and throws them out.






Very soon he gets a call from a mysterious stranger (or is it?) saying he has kidnapped his son, but to their surprise Toshiro's son is still there...but his friend isn't! Soon we get the cops involved and we go to work trying to save the little boy. But the kidnapper's ransom is just about all poor Mr. Gondo has left because he sold most of his money to buy out the shoe company!






So eventually in the second half Toshiro takes a backseat while we follow the detectives and try to find the evil monster who did this dirty deed. The film takes a very weird turn there. As brilliant as this film is, I don't really like the twist. Well no, I do like it, but it just goes somewhere completely unexpected. So as a 'whodunit' some people might not like it, but i just think it feels a little weird. That being said, High and Low is Kurosawa at his best and something that should not be missed.

Mrs.Doubtfire

I can hip-hop, be-bop, dance till ya drop, and yo yo yo, make a mean cup of coco.

Mrs. Doubtfire is one of those classic films I remember from when I was very young. I recently had the chance to see the film on HBO and record it. This is one of those films kids and adults can watch together. Children will love the physical gags and adults can get the more mature jokes and not worry about the kids because chances are, it'll go right over their heads.

Robin Williams is hysterical as Danial Hillard, a recent divorcee hating every minute of it. The struggling actor is, as he puts it, "addicted to his kids". And now he has 90 days to prove that he is a responsible adult and can hold a steady job and create a living environment with his kids, all while only seeing his kids for a couple hours on Saturdays.

Soon Danial finds out that his corporate ex-wife is looking for a nanny. With a little help from his gay brother and 'Aunt' Jack his is turned into a British nanny. Easily he is back into his family's life in the skin of Mrs Euphegenia Doutfire.

Whats is also so great about this film is the references to other great films with a similar nature such as Some Like It Hot, Kramer vs. Kramer, Sunset Blvd, and Psycho. Robin Williams' excellent and layered voices also add comic genus that kids and adults can both enjoy.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

We are the Knights who say... NI.

This classic Python film was the first I saw. Still haven't seen Life of Brain. Filled to the brim with hilarious quotable genus, the Pythons really out did themselves. Everyone know this film even if they've never seen anything Monty Python.

With their first film, Monty Python rip apart medieval history, much like the show often did. We mostly see what is supposed to be King Arthur in search of the Holy Grail, By the way, this film is nothing like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. If what you looking for is an adventure about a cup...go away.

This film is just a ramp through raw British comedy. No seriousness needed. That's all i have to say. Hahaha.

SPAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let the Right One In

Let the Right One In is the Swedish vampire masterpiece from director Tomas Alfredson no one's been taking about. This film and book blew me away. I really can't praise it enough. First off, Let The Right One In isn't like the Twilight teen garbage. Now, it is a romance, a love story, but a very fresh one. It doesn't hang on the whole forbidden love stuff.







This is the story of 2 lonely 12 year olds set in a west Stockholm suburb. Oskar has almost no friends...until the girl next door moves in. Her name is Eli, played by the wonderful Lina Leandersson. She a bit weird though. She stinks, is extremely skinny, and doesn't even know what a Rubik's Cube is! But Oskar slowly falls in love with her. Eli give him this strength he never had.





Soon mysterious murders start to happen all around him. Eli had employed a elderly pedophile to do her dirty work. Everyone freaks out.








Eventually Oskar finds out his friend is a 200 year old vampire, and not only that, but a genderless vampire. But that's what makes this so different. Here is a kink in the wire that isn't found in any other vampire story.




That brings me to the difference between the book and the film. Both are perfect, but the book to film jump can never work out perfectly. Lindqvist's novel is 480 pages. The movie is 1 hour and 49 minutes. The book is deeply rooted in subplot and back story. And well, the movie doesn't have all that. It seems shallow and fleshed out compared to the book, but hey, that's the way it has to be. Still, the movie has a subtilness that the book doesn't, espesically in Eli's genderless issue.




All and all, see the film. And read the book if you want. Well, in the movie's defence, there stuff in the book that you just cant show in film. But hey, Let The Right One In is still one of the best films of 2008 and the greatest vampire film OR book ever (in my eyes).





Oh and by the way, they're already making an english remake.

Spirited Away

Spirited Away, one of the greatest animated films ever...well it my favorite, is Hayao Miyazaki 2001 masterpiece. This film is nothing short of genus. Now, I'm not that into anime but I really love this movie. Spirited Away was the last big completely animated movie. Sadly, every major cartoon is now made by computers.

Miyazaki tells us the tale of Chihiro, a whiny little 10 year old girl, forced to move away from her friends into a unknown town. Along the way her parents decide to take a 'shortcut' through an abandoned theme park. Soon they stumble upon a hep of food in a mysterious bar. Through Chihiro's protest, her parents continue to eat and soon turn into a disgusting pigs! Even though this is a child's film it can be extremely gruesome and gross is some parts.

Sacred to death, Chihiro runs in fear encountering many ghost and spirits. Eventually she excepts that she is there to stay. Through guidance from the mysterious Haku, she gets a job at the local bath house for the spirits and begins a very Wizard of Oz-esque search for home and the place where you belong.

The characters are perfectly drawn (no pun intended) with emotion and life. Even the villain have sympathy.

The monsters at Disney brought us the American release a couple years later. Of course they had to toss in their two cents. As little the difference is, the American dialogue changes the end vastly. Don't get me wrong, watch the dubbed version if you want but it is different. And I don't really have a problem with the change.

2001: A Space Odyssey

This film is brilliant! 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of those movies you hear about and hear about as a kid. Surprisingly, many people say its very dull and boring. I couldn't agree less. Sure there is no dialogue for the first 20 minutes and when people do start talk, nothing much is said.

What really tells the futuristic tale set 7 years in the past is the visuals. The incredible special effects (remember, this is 1968) still amazed me and sucked me into this world. What Kubrick did with this film MADE science fiction. Before 2oo1 scifi was Plan 9 from Outer Space. Nowadays you cant go anywhere without seeing ether a direct reference or a subtle homage to this film. From the computer in WALL-E to the airlock scene in Sunshine.

When the film starts we are welcomed to a black screen with haunting black music and my God once you think about why Stanley did that its brilliant! From there we see THE DAWN OF MAN. After a large black monolith just appear and all the apes start using tools and weapons and not just their fist as savage as it still looks. After 15 or 20 minutes we travel millions of years into the future. In space we see Dr Floyd leaving earth's orbit and going to the moon to investigate a monolith(much like the one at the start of the film) discovered on the moon. From there things get really weird and it would be to hard for me and would quit frankly ruin it for you.

2001: A Space Odyssey is one of those movies that everyone on the face of the planet should see atleast once. Even if you think its boring as hell, watch it. Then you can go back and watch Eagle Eye or whatever else crap is out these days.

The Shining

I give you...the greatest horror epic of all time! The Shining is Stanley Kubrick's only horror believe it or not. Staring Jack Nicholson as... Jack Torrance. Haha. I stand by this as the best Stephen King film and one of the best horror film ever.

When I first saw this, I had no idea what to expect. About a year ago, during Halloween on like HBO or Showtime. I also think it was my first Kubrick film...no that was 2001. But yeah, it disturbed me. I also began reading the book but never got through it. I don't remember why. One day I'll finish it.

Like most book to movie adaptations thinks get lost. Some of which are details of the lady in the bathroom and moving hedge animals. Well, I can see why Kubrick cut out the hedge demons. He wanted his movie to much more grounded in reality. Legend says King hated this movie. Probably because Kubrick cut detail of Jack's alcoholism, which was very personal to King and a important part of the book.

In case you don't know, The Shining is this magical telepathy connection to the dead, spirits or something. If you understand it, you may be able to harness it. But if things get out of control, it will drive you mad. Jack Torrance embodies the evil uncontrolled side, while Danny, his son, manages to keep it from ripping him apart. Its hard to sum up this movie in a short blog and i really don't want to ruin it for any one so just see it.

There Will Be Blood

If you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and I have a straw and my straw reaches across the room and starts to drink your milkshake. I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!



No way No Country For Old Men is better then this. Paul T. Anderson's masterpiece on capitalism, corruption, greed and religion is EPIC. This is also Daniel Day-Lewis's best. These crakin' Hollywood epics are few and far between nowadays.



This is one of those movies you should see at least 2 times. It takes a while to sink in. You can easily miss key plot point even if you do give it undivided attention. It tell the rise and fall an extremely monstrous oilman. It begins with a just one lone man digging from the black gold all by his lonesome. This man is Danial Plainview.



Now some of the things this guy does may upset you. It may anger you, but his is a very mean man. Its always hard to watch something that so closely follows a villain. Especially one that follow him so closely. We rarely leave his sight.

But the thing is, hes not that bad, you can really empithize with him so much. Espacaly at the end. How he often destorys the demented Eli, the false prophet will make you very happy.

What gets the film going is Danial's discovery of oil under the Sunday Ranch. He and Paul Sunday, who is kind of a nutter himself, don't exactly get along. The music and cinematography perfectly reflect the the story. One event comes to mind about half way through.

There Will Be Blood is based on Upton Sinclair's Oil!. If you see this...don't read the book, its very different, but still good. I read the book first so I wasn't really disappointed it either. Either way, There Will Be Blood is a modern classic in the truest sense.