Lets go to the movies.

What does everybody come this blog for? Movie reviews, obviously. I've seen 4 movies in the last 48 hours or so. Some quickie reviews from worst to first, and handy tips for the filmmakers among us:

Vagabond (or Sans Toit Ni Loi): a French film from the mid-1980's about a wandering, free-spirited hippy-type and how she touches the lives of the people she encounters. It made no goddamn sense at all. The narrative flowed, for what it was worth, and the story followed a logical progression, but the hippy character was utterly lifeless - and the premise was that she made a deep and abiding impression upon all of these people she ran into on the road. If you have to tell the audience that a character is making a deep and abiding impression, your film has failed - you actually have make a deep and abiding impression, you self-important Frenchy git. Do not want!

The Golden Compass: the recent fantasy movie from the book by Phillip Pullman. Tepid and forgettable. Decent special effects, wonderful cast, lousy writing. So lousy that any inclination I might have had to read the books was sucked out of me. Something I pointed out to Mona at the time: I am deathly tired of bad guys in movies who know they are bad guys. This is the "Mel Gibson School of Movie Making" that I have railed against in the past (and why Braveheart, which I will not dignify with a link, is the worst movie ever, followed only by Gibson's The Patriot). In all Mel Gibson movies, with the most recent exception of Apocalypto, the bad guys' sole motivation is that they are bad, and, it follows, Bad Guys do Bad Things. The world does not work that way: individuals may be crazy, but groups of people do things as a group for money, power, security, perceived security, food, etc. How much more interesting is it if the evil-churchy-government actually believes it is doing good, rather than sneering, cackling maniacally and rubbing its hands when dispatches its minions? You know, like George Bush actually believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he is doing a good job here in the US? And no pass on this because it is somewhat of a children's movie - children are not stupid. Do not want!

Cloverfield: the recent monster movie, just released on DVD. Very well done. Very thrilling. Great moment during a scary scene when I reached over to pet the cat, who I didn't know was asleep; the cat was dreaming, or something, and completely freaked the fuck out right as some movie critters jumped out of a dark subway. They did a good job of keeping certain monster-movie conventions and pitching others. They did not fill in a lot of details - like the origin of the monster; the main characters knew nothing more than any of us know, or any of us might know if caught in a similar circumstance. That helped make it both scarier and more believable. Want!

Iron Man: Just opened in theaters. Best superhero movie so far, by far, evar. It all clicked: good story, good dialogue, awesome cast, excellent special effects. It is rare that I want to go back and see a movie in the theater a second time, before it leaves for the video store. When a movie has as good a cast as this one, and it comes together this well, I think even more credit should go do the director than usual, for successfully walking the line of moving them toward a specific vision while letting them do their think. Now John Favreau just needs to bring back Dinner for Five. Want!