Saturday, April 29, 2006

Three movies I saw this week

3 Women:
A couple of weeks ago I gave a backhanded compliment to the movie Persona. But it really deserves better than that. Cause I can't stop thinking about it, that's how I know it was a good movie. What did Checkov say? About two kinds of good movies? The first you keep crowing about but forget before you've made toast, but there's the kind of movie that seems strange but it lodges with you and for weeks you can't stop thinking about it.
3 women is basically Persona in the California desert with Sissy Spacek and Shelly Duvall. It's directed and written by Robert Altman. I didn't really get it, but I really enjoyed it and it made me enjoy Persona even more.
I'm glad Altman keeps using Shelly Duvall. She's great.

Silent Hill:
The trailer was so creepy but the film is as boring as watching someone else play a video game. I wasn't scared and I wasn't involved. About an hour into it, I got up to use the restroom. While washing my hands I realized that I didn't care if I saw the outcome, as a matter of fact, I'd paid my money so I was free to watch it or not watch it. So I went home.
Apparently there was some freaky stuff that I missed. And a reviewer that I really respect liked the movie, so maybe I should have stayed.

Shopgirl:
There are some nice sweet moments. It's a good low key movie. But it feels slight. Perhaps when I was single it might have seemed more profound.
And I cringe whenever a character in a movie changes because the person he has a crush on tells him to. I don't know why I cringe at that. Probably something that happened in my early adolescence.
Actually I know why I cringe at that. Nothing bugs me more than someone who can't get over loving somebody that just doesn't love them back. I'm all for that. Just don't expect the 'change' to alter the other person's feelings.
But in romantic movies it's all about changing so the other person will love him. Or doing something crazy like singing in a restuarant or over a loud speaker. As Vern pointed out, that never works. That is the kind of things stalkers do. Not normal people.
There is a bit of a David Mamet vibe to the film. Also I was happy to see Rebecca Pidgeon. I really like her and wish she was in more movies than just Mamet ones. (And I wish she was in the Mamet movies that don't have her.)

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Silent Hill!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is how I feel about the movie. I don't know if you have ever noticed how if you put one exclamation point at the end of a sentence it makes it seem big, if you put three it seems huge, but if you put any more after it it just looks rediculous. Well, this is Silent Hill. It started out kind of cool with good art direction and cinematography and the initial "horror" scene was kind of cool when the sirens went off and all that. But then the movie just got grosser and grosser and then just got repitious. It was very much like the video game which I found was equally disturbing. The advantage of the video game was that it was more interactive. This movie was not. I did not care if she found her daughter, in fact I thought her daughter was creepy and it would be better to leave her. Anyway, it wasn't very good.

7:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I hated Shopgirl. I can't think of anything about the movie that I liked. Steve Martin was entirely miss cast. He was the only character I cared about and I think he was the character that I wasn't supposed to care about. It tried to be witty but the jokes were cliche and forced. Hated It!

7:08 AM  
Blogger Bryan Summers said...

Although I kind of like Shopgirl, I can totally understand why you hate it. You're right about the comedy being forced. And I think the movie is not nearly as wise as it's trying to be, but there are a couple of moments that I loved - The heroine saying, "So I can hurt now or hurt later?" and the awkwardness of Steve Martin and Clair Danes first date.
Overall for me it was a so-so film that I will forget about soon, until I see it on UPN late at night in ten years or something.
Sort of like From the Hip.

12:51 AM  

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