11/8/09

My Week In Film (11/2 - 11/8)



(500) Days of Summer (2009)
(Directed by Marc Webb)

All the sensitive boys out there, beware! 'cuz those idealized versions of the girls you like that you carry around in your head will never come to be. They only exist in your head. Yeah, this girl is the one! She likes The Smiths! Come on. Yeah, sure, this is the fantasy of all the roujins out there, but even the roujin knows it's not real, and even if it were kind of real, things like this just don't exist, which is why you can't control none of that shit in the first place. It's kind of way too similar to High Fidelity in a way (at one point, it kind of paraphrases one of the book's key ideas - that pop songs, movies and entertainment had made them anticipate heartbreak or something). Whatever. It's the rollercoaster of love, just done in non-chronological fashion, peppered throughout with Indie 101 references that will get your nipples all hard. The actors are good and it's hard to not be touched by it or relate to it in some way, as I am a sensitive roujin, and Levitt is what I would like to imagine I could someday be (except with all the lessons learned), and this movie only really interested me on this vague level that's sort of separated from the movie but triggered by it and by the images and the performances and the score and all that nonsense, and that's probably something that I value more than any actual qualitative judgment about it, which is good, I guess, because I was prepared to trash the fuck out it and it's better to enjoy something for some strange reasons than not to enjoy it... I think.

★★★




Up (2009)
(Directed by Pete Docter)

A masterpiece and Pixar's best. I don't really know what to say about it other than its emotions are deeper and truer than anything else in Pixar films, outside of, I guess, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. Its sense of adventure and its thematics were extremely appealing to me, and when the film started showing the empty spaces of the house, I fucking teared up. Goddamn, these guys are good.

★★★★

whoa, the first time I haven't watched three movies in a week since I started this blog... Actually, that's not quite true since I did watch E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial in class this week, but I don't count class viewings because they're split in the middle and I don't feel that's fair to the film. I used to think E.T. was the best film of the 80's. I'm not even sure it's the best film of its year now. However, it's still Spielberg's best just cuz of that one shot where Elliott walks outside and there's that one chair there and the shed is all lit up and you can see the fields in the background and it looks like a painting, it's so spooky great.

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Up

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Couldn't agree more on Up.

Anonymous said...

Up is one of the greatest, most emotional animation film I have seen in years.