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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.