Sophinisba Solis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophinisba) wrote2010-04-30 09:26 pm
sophinisba) wrote2010-04-30 09:26 pm
Netflix roundup
I watched a bunch of movies in the fall and wrote up little reviews of most of them but then didn't post because I didn't finish the reviews, which was partly because I hadn't finished one of the movies. I haven't been watching a lot of movies lately, but here is that old post, with a few additions, and no spoilers to speak of.
Fiction movies!
Julie & Julia
This was great! Especially the Julia parts! Meryl Streep is awesome!
Brick Lane
I thought I would like seeing this movie about a Bangladeshi family in England especially once I realized that it was mostly centered on the mother of the family. It turned out to be mostly about her having an affair with this young British Asian guy though, and although he was pretty hot, infidelity is not really my thing. Plus in general I just found this movie to be really slow.
King Arthur
I thought this would be fun to watch, seeing as how Clive Owen is hot and Keira Knightley is hot and I now find Arthurian legends hot. The movie takes place in the 5th century BCE so it's supposedly about the hero the legends are based on, which I also thought would be neat because some of my favorite Merlin fics are about Dark Ages warrior types rather than pretty medieval castle people with nice dresses.
Alas! The movie was very bad! Clive Owen was fine and whoever played Lancelot was okay – smirked a lot for someone in the dark ages but he was nice looking – but all the other men (including Merlin woe) had big ugly beards and I could not tell them apart! There were Romans and Saxons and Woads and the story was very boring! There were these painfully long and incredibly violent battle scenes, like lots of body parts being chopped off with swords or people getting hit with arrows in the eye. D: When they weren't fighting they were making cheesy speeches. I was so damn bored!
The only thing that made this movie at all worthwhile was Keira Knightley as scantily clad savage warrior queen. OMG you guys, she not only handles a bow and arrow and a sword very sexily but she eventually starts ripping up Saxons with her bare hands and there is blood dripping from her mouth. a;sldfj;alskj lckjv;lkdjff ls !!!!
Love and Basketball
Pretty much what the title says! It's a sports/romance/starring Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps – Foreman from House before he got all mature and doctory! I liked them both a lot even though the story was a little eh.
Imagine Me and You
I'd seen this recommended as a nice, light romantic comedy for people who are sick of all their lesbian stories being about angst and death. It was pretty much good for that, but still angstier than I was expecting because it starts out with one of them marrying a guy, and the guy seemed really nice, and I felt sorry for him. Actually in general my favorite characters in this movie were the guys, plus the little girl, and I wasn't as interested in the two main characters. Anthony Head as the father of one of the leads was especially awesome in my opinion. Merlin fans, stick around for the closing credits!
Saving Face
I had seen this recced in pretty much the same way as Imagine Me and You and had them mixed up in my mind, so I was sort of disappointed when I watched the other one and there weren't any Asian characters in it. :D Saving Face is a lesbian romcom about Chinese American characters. It's awesome and I love it, especially the main character, Wil, and her Ma (see icon byglass_icarus!). I didn't love Vivian as much but still recommend this movie very highly! Also there were several lovely Saving Face fics at this year's Yuletide.
The Prince of Egypt
I watched this hoping I could something for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
in_the_beginning, but I still enjoyed it. I'd also seen it in the theater when it came out. I think some of the voice actors make it kind of silly, that Moses and Ramses were raised as brothers but one speaks with an American accent and one with a British accent, but I like the story and the animation, and the songs are okay. My favorite bits are the dream where Moses finds out about Pharaoh killing the Hebrew children, the dance with the Midianites, and, well, the crossing of the Red Sea. (I love how you see silhouettes of giant animals in the water.)
Things We Lost in the Fire
This is the movie where Halle Berry is a young mother and widow and Benicio del Toro is a drug addict. I liked it. Even when it was slow it was still pleasant to just stare at the people because they're so gorgeous, and beautifully filmed. Later I read some bad reviews including some that said this movie was all about giving the actors Oscar-worthy moments and not actually about characters or story. I can see that, but I still liked it pretty well.
The Method (El método)
Seven businesspeople in a room, trying to figure each other out for an hour and a half. I think this was a play before it was a movie, and it probably worked better as a play. This director, Marcelo Piñeyro, has made a lot of other movies that I liked better, but this was interesting.
Also documentaries!
Sound and Fury
Really fascinating documentary about an extended family with two sets of parents, one deaf couple and one hearing, trying to decide whether to get cochlear implants for their children. There's an amazing amount of family drama and strong feelings on both sides, and I really liked the way the filmmakers didn't take sides.
They made an interesting choice in that when the deaf people were signing they had actors doing voiceovers, rather than using subtitles. This took me a little while to get used to but I ended up liking it because it carried through a lot of the emotion that was clearly there in the way they were moving but would have been lost with subtitles.
Street Fight
I loved this one too, definitely recommended it to my parents! It's about the 2002 mayoral election in Newark, New Jersey, a fight between the old time established politician Sharpe James and the young (handsome) upstart Cory Booker, with the filmmakers very much on Booker's side. It's a little like that older documentary The War Room about the Clinton presidential campaign, all that tension and drama that I love. In fact, it may be silly to hide spoilers for a documentary, but skip) the thing is, I had seen Cory Booker on TV as the mayor of Newark before I saw this movie, so I was sure he would win the election, but no! He lost in 2002, ran again and won in 2006.
Really interesting racial politics in this, with James accusing Booker of being white and Jewish and a Republican even though they're both black and Democrats. James appeared to be corrupt in a lot of ways and used a lot of dirty tricks against anyone who supported Booker, including the filmmaker. And this was the one thing I didn't really like about the movie, that this guy's view of himself as a heroic persecuted journalist sometimes got in the way of the more interesting story of the election. Still, I enjoyed this a lot.
(I'm currently listening to an audiobook of Gwen Ifill's The Breakthrough and it's got a more balanced picture of Cory Booker, who's also maybe a little more heroic than he needs to be in the movie.)
Jesus Camp
This is a documentary about camps and gatherings for young kids in certain Evangelical churches in the United States. This was another movie where I thought the filmmakers got in the way a little bit. The story of how these kids are brainwashed was disturbing enough and did not need the added creepy music or long sequence about the pastor doing her hair or going through a car wash.
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
This is the documentary Spike Lee made about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina for HBO. This is also the main reason I didn't make this post back in the fall. I just found this movie too painful to watch and could not get through it. It's four hours on two discs, mostly interviews and some news footage. The interviewees are mostly New Orleans residents plus a few scientists and celebrities and others. Every once in a while you hear Spike Lee asking a question but he really doesn't intrude much and it's these people telling their stories.
I … I don't have a TV and at the time that this happened I wasn't paying attention to the news other ways either and I just, I had heard some things but I really knew so little. Several of the people in this talk about the death of their family members, and they're almost all deaths that could have been prevented, that just came down to the authorities failing to help people, and you see how helpless they must have felt, and it's all so completely horrible. Eventually I got through the first disc and sent it back to Netflix and, um, pretty much just watched cute mindless TV shows for a few months after that. Then just recently I started watching the new David Simon show Treme, and I remembered I also had the second disc of this out, and I watched it, and I learned some more and was saddened and outraged some more. It's well done.
Fiction movies!
Julie & Julia
This was great! Especially the Julia parts! Meryl Streep is awesome!
Brick Lane
I thought I would like seeing this movie about a Bangladeshi family in England especially once I realized that it was mostly centered on the mother of the family. It turned out to be mostly about her having an affair with this young British Asian guy though, and although he was pretty hot, infidelity is not really my thing. Plus in general I just found this movie to be really slow.
King Arthur
I thought this would be fun to watch, seeing as how Clive Owen is hot and Keira Knightley is hot and I now find Arthurian legends hot. The movie takes place in the 5th century BCE so it's supposedly about the hero the legends are based on, which I also thought would be neat because some of my favorite Merlin fics are about Dark Ages warrior types rather than pretty medieval castle people with nice dresses.
Alas! The movie was very bad! Clive Owen was fine and whoever played Lancelot was okay – smirked a lot for someone in the dark ages but he was nice looking – but all the other men (including Merlin woe) had big ugly beards and I could not tell them apart! There were Romans and Saxons and Woads and the story was very boring! There were these painfully long and incredibly violent battle scenes, like lots of body parts being chopped off with swords or people getting hit with arrows in the eye. D: When they weren't fighting they were making cheesy speeches. I was so damn bored!
The only thing that made this movie at all worthwhile was Keira Knightley as scantily clad savage warrior queen. OMG you guys, she not only handles a bow and arrow and a sword very sexily but she eventually starts ripping up Saxons with her bare hands and there is blood dripping from her mouth. a;sldfj;alskj lckjv;lkdjff ls !!!!
Love and Basketball
Pretty much what the title says! It's a sports/romance/starring Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps – Foreman from House before he got all mature and doctory! I liked them both a lot even though the story was a little eh.
Imagine Me and You
I'd seen this recommended as a nice, light romantic comedy for people who are sick of all their lesbian stories being about angst and death. It was pretty much good for that, but still angstier than I was expecting because it starts out with one of them marrying a guy, and the guy seemed really nice, and I felt sorry for him. Actually in general my favorite characters in this movie were the guys, plus the little girl, and I wasn't as interested in the two main characters. Anthony Head as the father of one of the leads was especially awesome in my opinion. Merlin fans, stick around for the closing credits!
Saving Face
I had seen this recced in pretty much the same way as Imagine Me and You and had them mixed up in my mind, so I was sort of disappointed when I watched the other one and there weren't any Asian characters in it. :D Saving Face is a lesbian romcom about Chinese American characters. It's awesome and I love it, especially the main character, Wil, and her Ma (see icon by
glass_icarus!). I didn't love Vivian as much but still recommend this movie very highly! Also there were several lovely Saving Face fics at this year's Yuletide.The Prince of Egypt
I watched this hoping I could something for
in_the_beginning, but I still enjoyed it. I'd also seen it in the theater when it came out. I think some of the voice actors make it kind of silly, that Moses and Ramses were raised as brothers but one speaks with an American accent and one with a British accent, but I like the story and the animation, and the songs are okay. My favorite bits are the dream where Moses finds out about Pharaoh killing the Hebrew children, the dance with the Midianites, and, well, the crossing of the Red Sea. (I love how you see silhouettes of giant animals in the water.) Things We Lost in the Fire
This is the movie where Halle Berry is a young mother and widow and Benicio del Toro is a drug addict. I liked it. Even when it was slow it was still pleasant to just stare at the people because they're so gorgeous, and beautifully filmed. Later I read some bad reviews including some that said this movie was all about giving the actors Oscar-worthy moments and not actually about characters or story. I can see that, but I still liked it pretty well.
The Method (El método)
Seven businesspeople in a room, trying to figure each other out for an hour and a half. I think this was a play before it was a movie, and it probably worked better as a play. This director, Marcelo Piñeyro, has made a lot of other movies that I liked better, but this was interesting.
Also documentaries!
Sound and Fury
Really fascinating documentary about an extended family with two sets of parents, one deaf couple and one hearing, trying to decide whether to get cochlear implants for their children. There's an amazing amount of family drama and strong feelings on both sides, and I really liked the way the filmmakers didn't take sides.
They made an interesting choice in that when the deaf people were signing they had actors doing voiceovers, rather than using subtitles. This took me a little while to get used to but I ended up liking it because it carried through a lot of the emotion that was clearly there in the way they were moving but would have been lost with subtitles.
Street Fight
I loved this one too, definitely recommended it to my parents! It's about the 2002 mayoral election in Newark, New Jersey, a fight between the old time established politician Sharpe James and the young (handsome) upstart Cory Booker, with the filmmakers very much on Booker's side. It's a little like that older documentary The War Room about the Clinton presidential campaign, all that tension and drama that I love. In fact, it may be silly to hide spoilers for a documentary, but skip) the thing is, I had seen Cory Booker on TV as the mayor of Newark before I saw this movie, so I was sure he would win the election, but no! He lost in 2002, ran again and won in 2006.
Really interesting racial politics in this, with James accusing Booker of being white and Jewish and a Republican even though they're both black and Democrats. James appeared to be corrupt in a lot of ways and used a lot of dirty tricks against anyone who supported Booker, including the filmmaker. And this was the one thing I didn't really like about the movie, that this guy's view of himself as a heroic persecuted journalist sometimes got in the way of the more interesting story of the election. Still, I enjoyed this a lot.
(I'm currently listening to an audiobook of Gwen Ifill's The Breakthrough and it's got a more balanced picture of Cory Booker, who's also maybe a little more heroic than he needs to be in the movie.)
Jesus Camp
This is a documentary about camps and gatherings for young kids in certain Evangelical churches in the United States. This was another movie where I thought the filmmakers got in the way a little bit. The story of how these kids are brainwashed was disturbing enough and did not need the added creepy music or long sequence about the pastor doing her hair or going through a car wash.
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
This is the documentary Spike Lee made about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina for HBO. This is also the main reason I didn't make this post back in the fall. I just found this movie too painful to watch and could not get through it. It's four hours on two discs, mostly interviews and some news footage. The interviewees are mostly New Orleans residents plus a few scientists and celebrities and others. Every once in a while you hear Spike Lee asking a question but he really doesn't intrude much and it's these people telling their stories.
I … I don't have a TV and at the time that this happened I wasn't paying attention to the news other ways either and I just, I had heard some things but I really knew so little. Several of the people in this talk about the death of their family members, and they're almost all deaths that could have been prevented, that just came down to the authorities failing to help people, and you see how helpless they must have felt, and it's all so completely horrible. Eventually I got through the first disc and sent it back to Netflix and, um, pretty much just watched cute mindless TV shows for a few months after that. Then just recently I started watching the new David Simon show Treme, and I remembered I also had the second disc of this out, and I watched it, and I learned some more and was saddened and outraged some more. It's well done.
Via Network
And I did enjoy The Prince of Egypt, but yes, it is kind of silly that they couldn't match up accents better.
Re: Via Network
And yeah, the accents in Prince of Egypt made about as much sense as How to Train Your Dragon, where all the adult Vikings sound Scottish and the younger generation is American. :P
no subject
no subject
no subject
El secreto de sus ojos is also in my Netflix queue for whenever it may be released here!
no subject
no subject
no subject
I am so jealous of you right now. Farscape is one of those shows where I wish there was a pill I could take to forget the whole thing so I could watch it again for the first time.