I have a couple minutes here, so I thought I'd recap some film stuff from

the last few days.



movies in the theater

Code 46: [C]

Boring. I mean, I like Tim Robbins, but he couldn't save the film. The pacing was a bit slow, and the plot didn't stray far from most sci-fi-future-type films. If you're thinking of seeing this, don't. Go buy Brazil instead. They're not the same, except for the goverment-official-falls-in-love-with-a-civilian aspect. Oh, and there's a totally gratuitous shot of nudity. Lame.



The Forgotten: [C]

Julianne Moore did well, I thought. In fact, I enjoyed the film until about halfway through, when it was apparent that it was, in fact, not a psychological thriller, but an alien thriller. Phooey. Even so, I stuck with it, and they did quite well, until they let the alien guy's face slip into alien mode for a second: fired. The only salvageable aspect was that since all of her memories of her "dead" son were slightly overexposed and had an orange-ish tint, so when the final scene (when she has her son) was also that same orange tint, I was able to reconcile it in my head by saying that she's making up that, too, and is actually off in an asylum somewhere.

This just added: apparently Ebert agrees with me. Plus, he (as I) did not know how to review the film without spoilers. Check out the intro to his review:

Warning: This review contains spoilers. If it didn't, I can think of no way to review it at all, short of summarizing the first three minutes and then telling you some very strange stuff happens. My advice: If you plan to see the film (which I do not recommend), hold the review until afterward.

Yep.



The Brown Bunny: [B]

So much has been said about this film that I really don't want to rehash anything. Instead, just go look at Ebert's review of the theatrical release. It addresses a lot of things, but mainly how the Cannes release and the theatrical release (which I saw) are essentially two different films. So, the "worst film in Cannes history" (or whatever Ebert said) was not what I saw, and I wondered when I saw it what Ebert was talking about. So, yeah: just read Ebert's review. I agree with him, mostly, though I do think that the sex was a bit gratuitous, and the film could easily have been edited to an R without losing its effect.



movies on dvd

I caught up on my PT Anderson films this week. Over the weekend I saw Hard Eight, his first full length film. Apparently the studio screwed him over, up to and including changing the title and re-editing the film to be more of a gambler/mafia genre pic. I'd love to see the director's cut, but chances are slim, i think. It wasn't bad, and I could definitely tell it was PT Anderson, but overall, I'd give it a B-, as released.

Also, I finally borrowed and watched Boogie Nights, PT Anderson's second film, and the first one he had control over. It's a great film, with the PT Anderson elements definitely coming out, especially all of the long shots and camera sweeps that I've come to love in Magnolia, his next film after Boogie Nights. The characters here are just as well developed as the ones in Magnolia, though their stories are less coincidentally and more obviously related: this is one group of people, for the most part. Overall, I give it an A, where Magnolia would get an A+.