3 posts tagged “movies”

Oh, Netflix. You're still pretty awesome but some things are putting our relationship on shaky ground.

They give several hours of viewing movies online, even with my little $5 a month account. Great, right? No, you have to have Windows Vista and Internet Explorer to use it. Whopee doo.

And now I noticed that they are daring to predict what rating I would give a movie. It's a little funny actually. National Treasure: Customer Average=3.8 Our best guess for Tamara=3.0. In other words, most of our customers liked this crap but we're guessing you won't be so big on it. Not so far off but I would rate it a 2. Lost in Translation: Customer Average=3.3 Our best guess for Tamara=3.6. Not like I can even give a portion of a star, even so that movie is definitely a four star. Like you know, Netflix. I wonder what kind of crazy algorithm they use to come up with this stuff?

Can ingenuity, a startling case of inefficient efficiency, and staunch discipline manufacture our own destruction? The hallmarks of our culture, of what makes us American, are these traits so dangerous? Sure, there are jabs at other cultures in Dr. Strangelove but ultimately it's the cowboy that goes down with the bomb.

I think I could write an essay dissecting this movie but I'll spare the blog-space. Man, Stanley Kubrick. I feel another director-themed movie marathon coming on. I signed up with a cheap-o two-a-month plan with netflix so it might be a slow-moving marathon.

Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Two-Disc Special Edition)

I'm in the final stretch of my Terry Gilliam marathon! Three more to go! (Or four, depending on how I feel about watching Brothers Grimm again)

I started with:

Time Bandits

Oh, Time Bandits! You know, it's that one with the troupe of midget (little people? What's the proper word these days?) thieves with the little boy. They go through time and meet Napoleon and Robin Hood. I love the Robin Hood part. "But then, they haven't got two pennies to rub together. Because they're poor!" Classic, very Monty Python-esque. The little boy actor is kind of annoying. Not such a charming little fella. I love Randall though, and the Evil Genius guy.





Then on to:

Brazil

I've never come across this movie before but I've heard that it's pretty classic Terry Gilliam, so expectations were high. It's interesting but not my new favorite. The guy who plays the Frenchy bad guy in Adventures of Baron Munchausen and also Keira Knightly's dad in Pirates of the Caribbean is the lead. Even though he's great, I found it kind of hard to buy him as this head-in-the-clouds innocent. But Gilliam here creates an interesting vision of the future. Mona from Who's the Boss plays the main guy's mother and she's obsessed with plastic surgery and wining and dining with high society. Robert DeNiro is excellent, of course, as a mysterious heat engineer/terrorist who is working against this highly controlled/bureaucratic society. The ending's a little sad, but not surprising given what is to come in the Terry Gilliam repertoire.


With much glee:

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

I've owned this movie for a long time and I think it will remain one of my favorites. Baron Munchausen is such a fantastic character, a gallant, red-haired, Don Juan-y kind of guy. And he's got his band of misfit/superheroes: the fastest man alive, the strongest man alive, a guy who can see really far, and a guy who can hear really far. On his journeys he meets Robin Williams as the man on the moon and Uma Thurman as Venus. All the while cheating death time and time again. Now that I've read Don Quixote I can definitely see shades of it in this. Seeing that Terry Gilliam later tried to adapt the story to film (unsuccessfully, too bad) I'm sure he was influenced by that book.




And finally, at least, so far:

The Fisher King

I was certain upon finishing this that it was not written by Terry Gilliam and I'm right. It's a different film for him. It doesn't have the heavy fantasy element, for one. It's kind of great that searching for the holy grail is a theme though. Like, shout out to my peeps! But it's not a minor theme, in fact it's very integral to the story. I found Robin Williams kind of cute in this flick. He hammed it up just where he needed to and not beyond and wore the twinkly, contemplative look just where he needed to. Jeff Bridges makes me think of the DJ guy in Northern Exposure in this one. They do kind of look alike. Oh, and Tom Waits plays a beggar!