The End Of Suburbia

Last night I watched the documentary The End Of Suburbia. It's been in a Netflix queue for a long time, but its availability was always "Very Long Wait". I can understand why after seeing it; the film was quite thought provoking. It covers the emergence of the suburbs in North American society then discusses Peak Oil and how it will affect society.

Because so many people list in the suburbs, they are dependent upon cars (often gas-guzzling SUVs) to travel for work, shopping, leisure, etc. Moreover, most of what they consume (food from far away places such as California, Florida, etc.; cheap goods from China; etc.) is also transported long distances by transport trucks (as the North American rail system is not much to speak of). Consequently, when the supply of oil drops in the next few years, the economic upheaval will be massive due to the fact that our way of life requires an unsustainable of energy. Moreover, most homes are heated by natural gas and the electricity for those homes (air conditioners, etc.) often comes from burning natural gas. However, the production of natural gas will also undergo a collapse in supply at some point in the near future, exacerbating the pending energy crisis that has the potential to cause another Depression.

[For more information about Peak Oil, see my post nine months ago, Peak Oil? about an Australian TV documentary that's available free online for viewing].

Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader speaking at the Capitol Theater in Olympia, Washington.

I spent Sunday in Olympia, the capital of Washington State and an hour south of Seattle, with Dave and Caroline. We watched the documentary An Unreasonable Man, which was about Ralph Nader - his rise to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s as a consumer advocate, as well as his presidential campaign in 2000. It was in a theatre that reminded me very much of the Princess Cinema in Waterloo.

Later in the evening, Ralph Nader gave a lecture about his new book, The Seventeen Traditions, which describes his upbringing and the family values that were instilled in him. They also gave out copies of the book to everyone in the audience; I'm looking forward to reading it.

I found both his lecture as well as the documentary to be both interesting and informative. (I knew very little about Ralph Nader beforehand).

Best Movies Of 2006

Just like last year, I watched a lot of movies. (Perhaps even a few more). I saw a few really awful movies, but also a lot good ones and even a few great ones.

The best film I saw was Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List. It took me a long time to get around to seeing it (and it was so long that it took me two nights to watch it), but it's easily one of the greatest movies of all time.

I like drama movies. I saw a lot of good ones. So I don't think I can pick one or two that were the "best". A River Runs Through It was an interesting story about two brothers growing up in Montana at the start of the century. I liked Bill Murray in Broken Flowers. Another quirky story was the Irish ensemble Intermission about a bank robbery gone bad. Lord of War has another good mix of story and character were Nicholas Cage plays an arms dealer who tires of his career. Finally, The Passion of the Christ lived up to its reputation and was better than I expected.

The best thriller was V for Vendetta. The third time (after The Matrix) was finally the charm for the Wachowski brothers, who delivered another great movie. A notable mention goes to The Prestige, the bitter rivalry between two magicians that gives you a lot of "tricks" to figure out as the Hugh Jackson and Christian Bale's characters battle each other.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet is an awesome director. I like Audrey Tautou too. The best foreign film was A Very Long Engagement. It's about Mathilde (Audrey Tautou) searching for her fiancé because she doubts the fact that he was killed in World War I (as reported). The Motorcycle Diaries, the story of Che Guevara deserves a recognition as well.

The best comedy was easily the satire Thank You For Smoking. It's absolutely hilarious. Stranger Than Fiction stars Will Ferrell in an unconventional role (for him) and has a good (and funny) story too.

The best documentary was March of the Penguins, one of my favourite movies of all time. Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was good also.

The best action movies were Blood Diamond and Casino Royale, a great addition to the James Bond franchise - Daniel Craig is a great James Bond and Eva Green is very hot.

The best crime film was A History of Violence. It's a part drama, part thriller as the past of an "ordinary" man in a small town becomes exposed after he appears on the news for stopping a robbery at his diner.

The best historical movie was Good Night, and Good Luck. David Strathairn portrayal of Edward R. Murrow was good. Of all the movies nominated for the best picture Oscar last year that I watched (also Brokeback Mountain, Crash, and Munich), this was the one that I liked best.

The best biographical films were Kinsey and Michael Collins. Liam Neeson is the lead actor is both. I think he's one of the best actors in Hollywood.

The other good movies that I didn't mention above include Brokeback Mountain, Enigma, Kingdom of Heaven, Match Point, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Munich, Seven Years in Tibet, Syriana, The Future of Food, The Illusionist, The Pursuit of Happyness, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Wedding Crashers, Who Killed the Electric Car?, and You, Me and Dupree.

Now for a few "fun" categories for movies that weren't good, but are worth mentioning anyway:

I didn't see any superhero movies worth endorsement. I was disappointed with both X-Men 3 and Superman Returns. Both of which merit no more than 3 stars of out 5.

The best "B" movie was Snakes On A Plane. It has no chance of being even a "B+" movie (and I would give it 3 stars out of 5 and argue it isn't even good), but it was entertaining.

Last year, I called Spielberg's Close Encounters Of The Third Kind the most disappointing movie. This year, I'm calling out George Lucas and Peter Jackson for THX 1138 and King Kong, respectively. Perhaps ever director needs a mulligan. (Or maybe even more than one. Spielberg's War of the Worlds wasn't that great either and I'm not sure all of the blame can be assigned to Tom Cruise).

The movie that most exceeded by expectations was Kill Bill: Vol. 1. Quentin Tarantino is a self-indulgent director who movie making process is solely to satsify his whims, and not designed to improve the story or benefit of this audience. He emphasizes of style at the expense of substance and has a penchant for puddles of blood and streams of profanity. Nevertheless, Kill Bill was almost good.

The worst film is a tough call between Coffee and Cigarettes and Sin City.

Who Killed The Electric Car?

Who Killed The Electric Car? is a pretty good documentary. Until I saw it, I didn't know that electric cars actually existed. California had a law that car companies had to make zero-emission vehicles, and all the major car makers produced electric cars. They produced 2% of the pollution of a regular car (taking into account the pollution from the power plants that generate their electricity) and the electricity costs one-fifth the cost of gasoline (per mile) - an amazing piece of technology with a lot of potential to only get better.

However, the car companies, Big Oil, and the Bush administration sued California to kill the program and they succeeded. Why? There are a lot of reasons given in the movie; I thought one of the more compelling ones was that the car companies make billions of dollars in car parts and service (oil changes, oil filters, brakes, mufflers, etc.), but the electric cars have almost no parts (as there is no combusion engine) and the parts they do have (e.g. brakes) were designed to be a whole magnitude more efficient, so the don't need to be replaced.

21 Grams

The next movie in my Netflix queue is 21 Grams (which was recommended by Ramanan).

Netflix said it would arrive on Saturday, but it was late and didn't arrive until today. Just now I opened the envelope to pop it into my DVD player and the disc has a massive crack the size of its radius. Needless to say, it does not play. Thanks, Netflix. Now I will go an entire week without a movie. :-(

My first year with them went without a hitch, but this is the fourth time this year that I've been screwed, so I have a nagging suspicion that their quality is deteriorating.

30 Days

Season two of 30 Days premiered last night. Morgan Spurlock, of Super Size Me fame, gets someone to experience something they generalize oppose for 30 days and films the results. Last night, a gun-toting, border-patrolling Minuteman moved in with a large family of illegal immigrants living below the poverty in LA. It was really good. If the other documentaries in the season are as good then it will give Lost a run for its money as the best current TV show.

The Minuteman's argument for his position was that it's the law of the land and as such it's his duty to go and patrol the border. Certainly laws should be respected, but they are a means and not an end. Moreover, the laws and policies are not always right, so his argument is not convincing - he needs to read Martin Luther King's Letter From Birmingham Jail to get some perspective.

Personally, I don't think the problem will be "sovled" until the root causes are addressed. i.e. Use a little "supply-side economics" and try to address Central America's vast poverty and poor economies. (Also, the American government's indifference to prosecuting employers who hire illegal immigrants also means that that there is a demand to match the supply of illegal labour - I read somewhere a few month ago that only a couple such indictments are handed down per year). Patrolling the border is necessary, but isn't going to stop people from trying to enter the US. i.e. If you are so poor you can't survive and support your family are you any worse off if you get caught at the border and deported? Not really. But there is always a non-zero chance you'll get through and end-up better off. So your expected returns are always positive, regardless of how well the border is patrolled. [It's simple statistics: Pr(Caught) * Punishment + Pr(Not-Caught) * Reward = 0.99 * 0 + 0.01 * 1 = 0.01 > 0].

After watching 30 Days, I watched Life and Debt, which was also good. It's a documentary about how the IMF and World Bank screwed Jamaica.

An Inconvenient Truth

Last night I went to see An Inconvenient Truth with Dave and Caroline. I thought it was well done and informative. I would recommend seeing it.

An Inconvenient Truth

The documentary An Inconvenient Truth comes out in a couple weeks. I want to go see it. It's about lectures Al Gore has given about climate change and the enviornment. The BBC has a short article about it: Politician Gore appears at Cannes.

Disappointing Movies

I haven't had much luck picking movies the past couple weeks. Everything I've seen has been disappointing.

When I saw a preview for Coffee and Cigarettes at Princess Cinema a couple years ago, it looked novel and full of potential . But it was just a bunch of vacuous and dull vignettes. Nothing in it was compelling. Normally if a movie is bad, I'll still watch it. I thought about turning it off, but instead caught up on my e-mail while it ran to completion.

Uncovered: The War on Iraq wasn't bad. But, nothing in it was new or enlightening and, like most other people, I have fatigue from listen to same Iraq stories over and over. Also, I thought their presentation on certain things could have been a lot stronger. i.e. They showed the clip of the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency stating the Niger uranium documents were "not authentic", but did not mention the date, even though the timeline is very compelling. It was February 2003. One month before the war started and one month after President Bush referenced these documents in his State of the Union address. It was also the same month that the US and UK failed to convince the rest of the Security Council and the World to go to war. It should be clear why the rest of the World was skeptical and it is an obvious demonstration of how the US government and US media mislead the US public prior to the war. But the documentary didn't bring this up.

Domino should have been good - part action, part biography; Keira Knightley is hot. But the story was clearly all made up and it really covered only a couple days. So none of the biographical aspects were there. And making up things like "Hollywood Hostages" and sticking in some 90210 characters is strange and subpar for a B-movie. It's more like C- or D-movie. Also, I am not really a fan of Tony Scott's style, which didn't help. (Aside: I liked Man on Fire. I'll credit Denzel Washington and not Tony Scott for that though).

I wouldn't describe myself as a "fan" of Nicolas Cage, but he makes his characters interesting and I generally like dramas, so I had great expectations for The Weather Man. The story was novel and a little dark. Nicolas Cage made his character compelling and I liked the Michael Caine character. But the pace of the movie was too slow. Hence, it was only a "3 star" movie, when I had been expecting "4 stars".

The Thin Red Line had great cinematography and decent acting. But there was no context, no plot, and a lot of characters, who never really interacted with each other. Plus it was really long. So I couldn't really get "into" it.

Good Night, and Good Luck is next in my Netflix queue. I have great expectations.

Control Room

I watched the documentary Control Room tonight. It's about Al Jazeera. Specifically, it takes place during the Iraq War (March - May 2003) and is a collection of interviews with employees of Al Jazeera as well as other pressand US military media relations officers in Qatar. The interviews are interleaved with relevant video clips from Al Jazeera (and related news footage).

It had a less context than I expected, since it was focused solely on those few weeks. Also, it was a little more "raw" than I expected. There is no narrator tying the segements together or asking questions and the "interviews" seemed ad hoc - people talking during a smoke break or while they were driving somewhere. I liked the candid feel that came from the footage that was shot while the events where in progress though.

Overall, it definitely illustrated the different perspective that the Al Jazeera journalists (and, by extension, their audience) have. Perhaps one of the more striking perspectives was the contrasting views of integrity of the US government about Al Jazeera and vice versa. Near the middle of the film, there is a clip of Donald Rumsfeld criticizing Al Jazeera. Rumsfeld says that Al Jazeera gathers children and tells them to go and play in a bomb crater, so Al Jazeera can film it - giving the impression that the US is bombing civilians. (And a germane news clip follows). Near the end of the film, one of the Al Jazeera journalists says that the US military setup the scene were Iraqis parade around the square in Baghdad while the statue of Saddam is toppled. He says that he used to live in Iraqi and the "Iraqis" in the square don't really looks like Iraqis, they don't speak like Iraqis, etc. In his view, if the scene was genuine then there would be more people in the square and their ages, genders, etc. would be more diverse (than the handful of young males that were present). The two positions could not be more ironic. I suppose that divergence of opinions helps to explain the current state of the World.

If you're into the whole documentary thing or media/politics than it's worth a view. (On the other hand, if you're not into that then you'd probably find it a little boring).

V For Vendetta

I watched V For Vendetta tonight at Cinerama. I liked it. (Enough to palliate the Wachowski brother's faux pas with the sequels to the Matrix).

It's kind of hard to describe though. In the near future, Britain is ruled by a totalitarian dictatorship. V is a masked figure, working to overthrow the government. The story is told from the perspective of Evey (Natalie Portman), who becomes entangled in V's plot.

New Movies

Aside from Munich, I haven't been to a movie theatre in a while. There are few interesting-sounding movies coming out soon though: V for Vendetta, Thank You for Smoking, Tsotsi, Night Watch.

Netflix

CNN has an interesting article, Netflix's best customers penalized which states that Netflix uses a "throttling" scheme so that customers who rent movies at a high-frequency (e.g. 18 per month) get slower service and they are less likely to receive popular movies. This is done because each movie costs Netflix money (e.g. 78 cents in postage), but the customer pays a flat monthly rate for "unlimited" movies. As a matter of principle this sounds wrong, so I can see why people are upset. Personally, I've never had any issues with Netflix and think they are one of the best things since sliced bread.

I watched Matchstick Men last night. It's a drama starring Nicholas Cage as an obsessive-compulsive con artist who finds out that he has a teenage daughter that he's never met. It was pretty good and is the kind of movie that I like, but I also felt that the movie was a little slow to develop (especially at the start). Hence, I'll judge it at 3 stars.

Craziness & Irony

Crazy things pop into your mind when the fire alarm goes off. I'm chilling in my apartment watching Revenge of the Sith. It's the middle of the duel between Mace Windu and Chancellor Palpatine when suddenly a loud screech begins coming from my bedroom to retreive my pager. Who the f**k is paging me at this hour? I'm not on-call. And I starting walking to my bedroom. Wait. I turned off my pager earlier, so this wouldn't happen, what the hell is making that noise? ... Crap. That's the fire alarm (again). So I start to leave my apartment. Why is the fire alarm going off in my bedroom? So I turned back my bedroom. No fire. (I have no idea why I thought it was necessary to check). And I grabbed my keys and leave.

The people in my apartment go to be early or something. It was only 10.45 pm and a bunch of them were in their pajamas. Which sucks for them, 'cause it was nice today, but it got cold fast this evening.

Last time I commented about the firefighters. This time, the police officers caught my eye. There were four of them loitering around the apartment's entrance before the firetrucks even arrived. [Aside: I thought the Starbucks downstairs was closed at this time of night]. Everyone else was loitering around the entrance too. After a few minutes (and the firetrucks had arrived), the police decided they should actually do something besides chat to each other, so one of them told another one to shoo everyone away from the entrance. After (jaywalking) to the other side of the street with everyone else, I sat and watch the police officers loiter around the entrance still. Which was kind of ironic. :-)

Best Movies of 2005

I figure that I watched about 80 movies in 2005, mostly from Netflix, but some I saw either in the theatre, on TV, or from DVDs that I bought or borrowed. Here are the best (and worst) movies that I watched in 2005. [All links below go to IMDB].

The Best Movie was The Count of Monte Cristo. An adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' novel, it's athriller/action/drama movie. A good story, good acting, good cinematography and sets/costumes. (It takes place in Napoleanic France). Amélie, Good Will Hunting, and A Beautiful Mind were also great movies.

The Best Dramas were Good Will Hunting and A Beautiful Mind. Both are about mathematicans. In Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon plays a troubled young man who lives in Boston. He's working as a janitor at MIT and is "discovered" as a math prodigy by a professor there. A Beautiful Mind is a biography of John Nash, a mathematican who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994, but the story focuses on his struggle with schizophrenia. (Although, the film has been criticized for inaccuracies and omissions). Both films are deserved winners of Academy Awards. A notable mention goes out Clint Eastwood's critically-acclaimed Million Dollar Baby.

The Best Thriller was The Village. M. Night Shyamalan rocks. I can't wait for his next movie. His cinematography and sets are awesome and his stories are gold. Denzel Washington's John Q and The Manchurian Candidate were also good. Collateral, starring Jamie Foxx as a taxi driver, who picks up an assassin played by Tom Cruise, was also entertaining.

The Best Foreign Film was Amélie. It's a French film by director Jean-Pierre Jeunet which stars Audrey Tautou. The film is a comedy/drama. The story is very good and I love the cinematography/sets. The Brazilian-film City of God about an aspiring photographer who lives in a gang-infested slum of Rio de Janiero was solid.

The Best Comedy I watched was The Whole Nine Yards. Matthew Perry plays a dentist who gets caught up with a hit man played by Bruce Willis. The characters are good, the story keeps your attention, and it was funny. [Sadly, its sequel, The Whole Ten Yards is just plain bad. They must have had a different writer or something]. Notable mentions go out to Ben Stiller's Meet the Fockers and Meet the Parents.

The Best Documentary was Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. It's a critical examination of the Fox News TV channel. i.e. Fox News claims to be "Fair and Balanced", but in reality it is a right-wing tabloid with little substance or informative value.

The Best Science Fiction film was Revenge of the Sith. I thought the final installment of Star Wars had good pace, a decent story, and it exceeded my expectations. [To be fair I am a sucker for Star Wars though]. A notable mention goes out to I, Robot where cop Will Smith chases a robot he suspects of murder in a futurist Chicago. [It also stars Bridget Moynahan, who is hot].

The Best Action Movie was The Last Samurai. Set in circa 1870 Japan, US Civil War veteran Tom Cruise goes to Japan to train and modernize their army, but is captured by rebel samurai. It is, perhaps, a bit too much of drama to be considered an "action" movie, but I don't think I saw any "pure" action movies this year that were great. (All the good action movies I saw could arguably belong to the sci-fi, drama, or thriller genres).

The Best Crime Film was The Untouchables. Kevin Coster plays Eliot Ness as he battles Al Capone (Robert De Niro) in Chicago during Prohibition. Sean Connery earned an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. A notable mention goes out to The Usual Suspects, which has a great story about what happens after five criminals are brought together.

The Best Superhero Film was Batman Begins. Fantastic Four was also entertaining (but lacking in substance).

The Best 'Family' Movie was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

The Best Unoriginal Movie was National Treasure. Nicolas Cage is treasure hunter in a hokey, but entertaining story. (It's unoriginal because it's a cross between Indiana Jones/Lara Croft and the Da Vinci Code). After The Sunset was also a decent movie (but reminiscent of The Thomas Crown Affair and Ocean's Eleven).

The Best 'B' Movie' was The Day After Tomorrow. Global warming causes the ice caps to melt. Hence, the ocean's currents radically change (no longer warming the nothern hemisphere) and an instant ice age ensures. Dennis Quaid must rescue his son, who is trapped in a frozen New York City.

Some movies that exceeded my expectations were The Fifth Element, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, and Phone Booth. None of them is great and perhaps neither good, but they were decent.

The Most Disappiointing movie I saw was Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I learned that all Spielberg movies are not masterpieces. (A.I. Artificial Intelligence also sucked). Spiderman 2 also sucked horrendously. I expect sequels to have the same characters and similar stories as their predecessors, but this was crappier remake of Spiderman. I don't think they bothered to come up with a script, they just made a couple changes Spiderman's story. Braveheart (too long and too over-the-top) and The Terminator (too lacking in story, characters, and quality of cinematography) also were disappointing.

The Worst Movie was Daredevil. This was a difficult choice since, in addition to the above disappointing movies, Alexander, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Elektra, and The Truman Show lacked any redeeming qualities and were among the movies I saw in 2005 that warranted a single-star.

A few other good movies I saw that aren't mentioned above include Catch Me If You Can, Chocolat, Garden State, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Terminal.

Narnia

I saw The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe last night with Nabeel and a couple of his friends. I was disappointed. The characters were shallow. The story was shallow and predictable. The whole movie was style over substance and it's style wasn't even that original. (Granted, the animated animals were impressive).

Seattle's public transit is also disappointing. I had to wait 30 minutes for a bus home and it was the last bus ever going that way. (I was going from downtown proper to the edge of downtown were I live at 12.40 am. So I think it reasonable to expect some bus service). Sometimes I think Seattle has got to have one of the lamest nightlifes around for a major city.

More Movies

I liked Collateral. Jamie Foxx is a LA taxi driver who has the misfortune of picking up an assassin, Tom Cruise, for a fare. It had a good story, good pace, and interesting characters. Four stars.

In The Recruit, Colin Farrell is recruited into the CIA by Al Pacino. The story is a little weak and Hollywoodified, but the characters are okay and the thriller has enough action and twists-and-turns in the plot to keep you entertained. So I'll be generous and say four stars too.

Monster's Ball is the kind of movie that makes the Oscars confusing. Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Barry put on good performances and I like the implemention (e.g. cinematography), but the story is just plain boring. Hence, only one star.

Disc one from season one of Lost is suppose to arrive from Netflix today. I've never watched a TV show on DVD before(*) and a lot of things have been said about Lost. Hopefully it is as good as they say.

(*) Slight lie: I watched three Seinfeld episodes last year.

The Truman Show

Last night I watched The Truman Show (while doing some baking and cleaning). I was quite disappointed. I like movies that have solid characters that you can relate to (in some dimension) as well as compelling story. The Truman Story lacked both.

I've always disliked Jim Carrey. His acting is exaggerated and his characters are over-the-top simpletons, which utilize base humour. I was under the impression that he had received good reviews for his role in The Truman Show and that he portrayed a more serious (i.e. regular, or, perhaps even, dramatic) character. [For example, ...the film really relies on Jim Carrey, and it is his unexpectedly mature performance that elevates it to greatness. [Dan Jardine, Apollo Guide] and If you expect and want to see the hyper-wacky Carrey...you'll hate it... [Judith Egerton, Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)] (both via Rotten Tomatoes). However, his acting was still exaggerated and Truman was a shallow character, which could be describe at best as average, and certainly not great. And I think his going crazy and running off in a fake nuclear disaster and being subdued by men in isolation suits ranks as wacky. Almost all of the other characters were equally disinteresting. In fairness, I suppose that means that the actress playing his wife did an decent job, as she was playing the part of (faux) actress, but that lack of genuineness didn't help to make the movie captivating. The only character of any interesting was the show's director, played by Ed Harris, but his role was relatively minor and near the end of the film.

The story was subpar also and too confusing. It had a few good moments - in theory, the concept was good and, for example, I liked how a mechanical part falls to the street in front of Truman at the start of the movie and then on the way to work he hears about a plane shedding parts on the radio. Later, it is revealed the he really lives inside a giant set. (Implying that the mechanical part was really a light for TV set and weaving different parts of the movie together). But, what of Truman's (supposedly dead) father showing up, disappearing, and then reappearing in a grand introduction that never got past the build-up of seeing him in silhouette. After all that effort to create the portion of the plot about the return of hisfather, the only time the father was on camera was 30 minutes later when he has a one sentence line (and Truman wasn't even in the scene)! If Truman's life is on live TV 24-7, you'd think that his father, who was lost at sea and presumably dead for 20 years, would warrant some interaction with Truman!

The movie also didn't even try to be believable. At the end, Truman is onboard a boat when a giant storm (created by the TV studio) hits and washes him overboard. He utterly soaked and floating in the ocean. The (generated) storm ends, calm waters reappear and Truman climbs back on the boat (and then the edge of the TV studio). By all appearances, only a couple minutes have elapsed. So can someone please explain to me why Truman, clad in a sweater, shirt, pants, etc. is bone dry, without a drop of water on him?

Movies

Well, here's my first question. Do you think it's kind of dangerous handing out guns at a bank? Bowling for Columbine is a great movie. If you haven't heard about it you must be living under a stone. I think it was the first documentary that I saw. (Since then I've only seen about a half-dozen documentaries. However, about 15% of my Netflix queue are documentaries). It was on CBC tonight and I watched it again. It was just as thought-provoking and profoundly sad the second time.

Yesterday, I finally got around to watching Braveheart and Mel Gibson as the Scottish renegade William Wallace. I was disappointed. As a movie, it is well-implemented (in terms of cinematography, acting, sets/props, etc.). But, it was insanely long. I was watching it on CBC also, so, including commericals, it was over three and half hours long! That's way longer than my attention span! I also found the story to be too decadent. The story dragged on and on, taking obvious liberties with history, and the characters became over-the-top. If much of the last hour of the movie had been left on the ending room floor, a better story (and movie) would have resulted.

The last two movies I rented from Netflix were both good. Last week I saw Chocolat. Perhaps it can best be described as a "warm and fuzzy" movie. (i.e. What you would call an "exploration of the human condition" in English class). Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche) is an outsider who moves with her daughter to a French village to open a chocolaterie. She then takes it upon herself to try to help the villagers enjoy life. The story and characters make it worth watching, although there are a few minor oddities with both.

The week before, I watched The Untouchables. Kevin Costner is Elliot Ness, fighting prohibition and Al Capone (Robert De Niro) in Chicago with a small squad of cops (including Sean Connery, who earned an Oscar for his role). I really enjoyed it - the story had good pace and a healthy dose of action. The characters were decent too.

Movie Roundup

The past week I've watched at lot of things - a performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (at the Fremont Troll), highlights from the Live 8 concerts, Fourth of July fireworks, and lots of movies. I've been disappointed with a lot of movies that I've seen in the past month or so (e.g. Spiderman 2, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), but everything I watched the past week was good.

Man on Fire stars Denzel Washington as Creasy, a bodyguard in Mexico. I like Denzel Washington; he's a good actor and this movie is no exception. The start of the story is about the evolution of Creasy's character and his relationship with the young girl that he's guarding. While the later part of the movie is the "action" part. Overall I liked the movie, but at nearly two and half hours it couldn't quite keep my attention. So it only gets 3 out of 5 stars.

Somehow I've avoid watching all the Batman movies. Perhaps it's because they have a bad reputation, but I've heard good things about Batman Begins. So I went to see it on Sunday. I'm not quite sure how to describe it while keeping it brief and not giving anything away. So I'll just say go see it because it is good - 4 stars out of 5.

I saw Revenge of the Sith right after it came out. But I love Star Wars, so I went to see it again before it left the theatres. The second time around it was just as good - 5 of 5 stars.

On Wednesday, I went to see an advance screening of the Fantastic Four. (Despite my earlier praise of Batman Begins), I tend not to enjoy superhero movies too much. However, Fantastic Four is entertaining and funny. Perhaps it is a little short and doesn't have a lot of action sequences, but after three long movies, short and sweet is a good thing. So I'll give it 4 stars out of 5.

National Treasure is the most recent Nicholas Cage movie. I think that he is a little like John Travolta in that both of them overact. I can't recall a single John Travolta performance that I liked, but for some reason I seem to enjoy all the Nicholas Cage movies that I see. In National Treasure, Cage plays an adventurer who is looking for a treasure hidden by the Founding Fathers (of the US). I found the movie to be a bit hokey and predictable. (The story probably isn't that original either, e.g. Lara Croft, Indiana Jones, etc.). However, I enjoyed it. So I'll overlook my complaints and give it 4 stars out of 5 also.