Juno

This was an adorable film written by a Minnesota stripper. I didn't realize that it was going to be so "ahhh" inducing, despite the fact that I knew it was about teen pregnancy. The main character Juno was very interesting. I was expecting her to be harder, more bitter. But she was adorable in an awkward and quirky way. Usually when they show "loner" or "outsider" types in films they don't have a positive outlook at all. Also, teen pregnancy is usually portrayed as such a negatively life changing thing. The girls are portrayed as slutty pariahs. This film wasn't like that. Juno was looked down upon by some for being pregnant, but her family was very supportive and nobody really called her slutty.
The upper crust couple was also interestingly portrayed. Vanessa's character was frighteningly upper middle class in the beginning. But, as the film went along, her desire and readiness to be a mother was...touching.
Where exactly does the slang "wizard" come from anyway?

Tin Man

For those of you who haven't heard of this, it is a mini-series that just aired on the Scifi channel. Technically speaking, it isn't really scifi; it is more of a fantasy. Anyway, it is an adaptation of the Wizard of Oz, based on the original books, not the 1939 film.
I was extremely disappointed in the Dorothy character. She seemed very flat to me, which is a shame because I have enjoyed watching the actress in other things. It seemed like she was trying to act good, because the Dorothy character is supposed to be good. However, I think that she only succeeded in sucking all of the personality out of the character. She had very little facial expression and, at times, she delivered her lines very ackwardly. To me the mark of a good actor is someone who can deliver a line so that you don't feel that they are delivering a line at all. Apart from the actress I was disappointed in the character herself; she didn't seem very realistic to me. For one thing, she didn't seem at all concerned about the parents she grew up with. She just accepts that they aren't her real parents and doesn't even seem to care that they exist once she has begun her quest.
I also object to the title. It just doesn't seem to embody the spirit or meaning of the film (is film the right term to apply to a mini-series?). Am I missing something. Overall the film was ok, sometimes quite good, and certainly visually spectacular. But, it could have been better.

A History of Violence

Call me stupid, but I didn't understand the meaning of the title until just before watching it. I kept wondering why they were referring to the history of all violence in the title of this film. Then I realized that they were talking about the history of the main character. Other than that wee bit of intellectual excitement, the film was a complete waste of time. The point seemed to be to show us all as much gore as they possible could in the two hours. They also decided to include some completely gratuitous sex. I'm sure they had some sort of message that they wanted to convey about marriage and relationships, but it all seemed kind of weak. The premise also seemed stupid. Some one that has that much violence in their past, who in fact seemed to enjoy that violence, doesn't seem the type of person who would choose to start his life over all fuzzy wuzzy and such. Also, the guy had supposedly been out of action for almost twenty years. Are we supposed to believe that he could remember how to fight well enough to defeat men who kill for a living?

Freedom Writers

I wasn't expecting very much going into this film. Everyone was saying that it was so good and incredibly inspirational, which always makes me very leary of films. In that respect it was very cliche and ordinary. The story is terribly inspirational, more so because its based on fact. However, I found the characters extremely flat and predictable, especially the teacher. Everything she did was represented as altruistic and noble. She never had any doubts, she was never selfish, and she never even considered compromising her principals. To me that just doesn't sound like a real person. That is why I usually hate these kinds of "inspirational" films, they are to predictable and unrealistic.
There were parts that I found amusing and sad, as they were intended to be. I can't say that it is a completely worthless film, but it didn't really leave that much of an impression on me.

American Psycho

Christian Bale makes an excellent psychopath. I really think that this film uses him as a metaphor for the AIDS epidemic in the 80s. He seems so safe and sexy. The society that he was appart of engaged freely in sex and drugs. They thought it was ok to do these things and that there would be no consequences. But, Patrick Bateman was the hidden danger in their midst. Maybe I'm reading too much into this.
Another thing that I like about this movie is that it is such a dark comedy. It's told from the point of view of a crazy person so you never know what is real or what is just in his head. He's really quite amusing, especially his terror that other men will have more impressive business cards than he does. Plus, he's hot!

El Espinoza del Diablo

I'm really tempted to write in Spanish for this post, but I won't because I know that the few people who read it don't speak Spanish :( Anyway, before watching this film I thought that it was supposed to be a horror flick. It has some scary movie qualities and there was a least one part where I almost jumped out of my seat, but overall it was more of a sad drama. In an interview that I saw with the director, G. del Toro, he said that he wanted to portray just how dangerous it was to be a child. He succeeded with this film! The lives of the boys in this film were perilous and it was shown just how fragile we humans are.
One of the discussions that the group had after watching the film is "why did the director choose this title?" In the film one of the characters, Dr. Caseres, shows the one of the boys, Carlos, a jar with a preserved fetus inside it. The fetus has a protruding backbone that is oddly deformed. Dr. Caseres explains that the people in the village call this deformity "the Devil's Backbone" and say that children born like this were never supposed to be born. The fetus is preserved in a special mixture of rum and other spices, "limbo water". Dr. Caseres sells limbo water to the townspeople because they believe that it cures infermities and impotence. Anyway, one of the theories about the title was that the film was about a child who shouldn't have been born, Jacinto. I like this theory, but I'll propose another. Santi is suspended in the kitchen cistern. Whenever he is seen in the film, it's as if he is floating. He tries to warn Carlos that the boys are in danger and in the end he helps them to defeat their enemies. The very water that he is suspended in is used to save them.
The properties of the ghosts in this film are interesting too. They seem to be subject to some of the laws of physics, but not to others. They don't walk through walls, they cast shadows, and they leave behind physical evidence of themselves (footprints, a dropped handkerchief, blood, etc.). On the other hand they can be invisible, they exist, and they seem to be able to move to where ever they want to be. Is this because they still expect certain laws to apply to them and the other things happen when they aren't thinking about it?

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

This movie has the most real people that I've ever seen in a movie. They are not polished, they don't have special skills that will make them better able to defeat the threat and they don't have archetypal flaws that can be exploited. The characters are just people who happen to be there at the time. The film really makes you believe that this could happen to you, that the whole world could change and go completely crazy and that you could be left with an imminent threat of individual extinction. It wasn't really a directly terrifying film, but I think that it's one of those things that will sit in the back of your mind and bother you for the rest of your life. That's how Tremors was for me. The film isn't scary at all (I didn't even find it so as a child) and at times it was even funny, but to this day I sometimes still find myself rushing across open ground so that I won't be caught there.
Invasion also has some very interesting camera angles and monster make up. It went along w/ the theme of the film that everything could appear completely normal, but there is just something a little off about it. There is one point when Donald Sutherland's character is coming through this doorway. His sticks his head through first to make sure that there isn't anybody on the other side. The camera angle makes is such that he looks, at first, like he's coming up through a trapdoor. But, he's really just coming through a regular doorway. At another point, Lennard Nemoy's (sp?) character is walking to his car. Behind him the street must be on a hill or something like that because it's tilted relative to his body. As the camera follows him, you can't really tell that it's a hill (at least I couldn't) until he reaches his car and you can see that his side of the street is level relative to his body. The make up during the growth of the podpeople is cool too. They start out looking very fetal and covered w/ this grey hair. Then they gradually come to look exactly like the people that they are copying. The details are exact, right down to a bloody nose, a scar, or a pompous mustache.
One thing that I did not like about this film is that the group kept trusting people, even after they realized that people were being exactly duplicated. I wouldn't trust anyone that I hadn't been w/ the entire time. That just doesn't make sense to me.
I also didn't like that the whole helpless female heroine thing that they had going on. It was more subtle than in other films, but it was still there.
An interesting point that they made at the end of the film was to follow Donald Sutherland's character around during his daily routine. At this point you can't tell whether he is a podperson or whether he is just pretending to be one. Don't worry, I won't give it away. But, the point is that life is pretty much how it always was. Except that there was no crime or pain or war. There was also no love. The podpeople said that they had the same memories that the original person did. Did the original people really die? Or, were do they still exist, but in a different form?