SimpleWeblog

Movie Review: Bend it Like Beckham (Chadha)

Sometimes you go into a movie in such a good emotional state that it would be pretty difficult for the movie to seem too bad. What is even more difficult is for the movie to be good enough to actually make you even happier - and this movie might be able to do that.

It is a pretty simple premise - daughter of strict Sikh parents wants to play football (or "soccer") but her parents forbid her. She sneaks out, and wackiness ensues. What makes this movie even better than it should be, though, is the loving portrayal of almost all the characters. The strict mother is a little one-note, but the other characters all seem to have pretty believable personalities. All of the actors are likeable, so it is really easy to want them to succeed.

Movies like this can also have a difficulty with the plot - you know it has to have a happy ending, so how do you make the ending be surprising in a believable way? This does a fine job with it - staying true to the characters, making some difficult decisions, having some things work out like you want them to. And it avoided a cliched last minute penalty kick to decide the game, which I definitely appreciated.

Overall, thoroughly enjoyable, funny, warm, and entertaining movie.

Pause

Apparently I am going through my semi-annual weblog break.

Not sure if it is over, but I have a desire to put up something on here as some kind of marker of what is going on.

I'm being faced with some major life choices and it isn't easy to figure out how to get everything to come out the way I want it. I am not the kind of person who thinks things will just work out on their own - it usually requires time and effort to get to that point where everything is where it should be and things just work.

I don't think I have a particularly large or complicated set of goals for what I want out of life, but I have gotten pretty comfortable where I am and it can be scary to step away from things you are comfortable with. But maybe you will be getting closer to something even more comfortable and it will all seem worthwhile.

So we'll see what opportunities come up, what compromises will be made, and what adventures will happen. Things may never be perfect, but I think they can be quite enjoyable for a long time...

I already feel lucky that I have someone who can help me through all this by being both challenging and comforting, as necessary. Quite a rare combination, as far as I can tell...

Movie Review: No Maps for These Territories (Neale)

This movie is simply an interview with William Gibson, one of my favorite authors, while he is sitting in the backseat of the car. Apparently they thought this might be too boring, so they intercut lots of visual images and included a few people reading from his works (Bono is a William Gibson fan?) and talking about him. I thought this was overdone most of the time - he had enough interesting things to say that you didn't need to rely on the gimmicks.

But I appreciated getting to hear him talk about some interesting topics, especially his view of how media has changed our entire culture. Even something as simple as audio recording - it wasn't that long ago that no one had heard recorded music. Now we think nothing of being able to hear dead people speaking.

Of course, not everything in the conversation is profound, so the movie will probably feel a little long. Maybe this wasn't the best format for conveying these ideas, but it was an interesting peek inside an author's head. It is interesting to see that a really good writer's everyday speech is not always particularly articulate, although every once in a while he will use a turn of phrase that reminds you, oh yeah, he really can string words together nicely.

Movie Review: X2: X-Men United (Singer)

You may have noticed that I am a bit of a comic geek. As such, I am required to see these movies, even if I haven't read any X-Men comics since I was in grade school. (Sure, I tried reading some more recently... ugh...) I enjoyed the first movie, and it actually helped spark my return to reading comics, but my expectations for this one weren't particularly high. This one started getting into characters I didn't know (Deathstrike) and looked like it had too many people in it to really be interesting. It did a good job of keeping things moving (except for a couple of slow spots towards the end) so you wouldn't really notice the complete pointlessness of having all the characters. It also had some clever scenes, especially involving Magneto's escape from prison and getting to see a little more of Mystique in action. The central premise, though, of the conflicting philosophies of Xavier and Magneto never really played out, and Xavier's use of mind control really undercut the credibility of his argument for me. Of course, I have a hard time getting over the terrible "evolution" speeches at the beginning and end of the movie. Hopefully some writers will gain a basic understanding of biology before they try writing the next movie. I do have to give these writers credit, though, for limiting Cyclops's role. Overall, you could do worse for an action movie, but I still think this concept could have been used for even more.

Movie Review: Matrix Reloaded (Wachowski)

Overall, it was a lot like the first one - some entertaining fights, some interesting questions, but not as good as everyone thinks. And this one ends right in the middle of the plot, so you don't get any sense of resolution.

Actually, the effects on this one were less impressive than I remember the first, since they tried to do a little more this time (Zion, the new "bullet time" effects) that didn't quite work for me. And while they did answer one big issue I had with the first movie, I still came away finding the overall premise completely implausible. The robots won't need the humans! The end. I guess that wouldn't make for much of a movie, would it? Unless the next one has quite a shocking ending... I won't hold my breath, though.

Movie Review: Throne of Blood (Kurosawa)

I knew two things about this going in - plot based on MacBeth, finale involving huge numbers of arrows. The plot certainly reminded me that I don't remember much of what happened in MacBeth, but the end certainly did not disappoint. Toshiro Mifune is awesome to watch - even just his eyes are incredible displays of emotion. And Isuzu Yamada was fantastically creepy as his wife, stirring up all sorts of trouble. Of course, that shaved eyebrow with drawn in dots on the forehead look is always creepy to me since it looks like bruises to me. The movie overall, however, was a little disappointing. One of Kurosawa's earlier films it doesn't have the epic scale of some of his other movies, and the themes of this one seem simplistic. Although, looking at his filmography, it is amazing to me this was made after Rashomon and Seven Samurai. You know Washizu is doing the wrong thing and will pay for it all along, so the tension doesn't really build. But it was enjoyable, and certainly a nice change of pace for IFC's Samurai Saturday.