This is another favorite of mine which I decided was time to revisit.  More beautiful cinematography is hard to find.  I could watch this movie over and over again with no sound and still enjoy the breathtaking camera work. 

Of course, with the sound on, its even better - telling the story of a Japanese-American accused of murdering a fellow fisherman - a white man and a childhood friend of the accused - in a small town in the Pacific Northwest shortly after World War II.  It touches on forbidden love, accutely unjust predjudice, and a newspaperman's journey to resolving his conflict between these two themes.  Ethan Hawke as the newspaperman, and Max Von Sydow as the defense attorney turn in great performances, but so does just about everyone else in the film. 

It took a while to get into this movie.  It starts fairly slow and at first its a bit confusing trying to figure out who the various characters are and the relationships between them.  The opening scene totally baffled me until I got to the end of the movie.  Some better editing probably could have cleared this up and shortened the movie by a fair amount. 

That being said, I cannot overstate how great this movie is.  The basic story is a fairly simple tale of two men vying for the prize of one woman, murder, revenge, and truth.  The authenticity of the story shines through and the - at first disconcerting - digital video cinematography reinforces this.

At 161 minutes, this is not a movie for the impatient, but in the end I'm glad I stuck it out.

You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here, you're beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal! You do! Why, whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion!

This is one of my favorites, and its been a few years since I'd seen it.  I figured it was time to see it again.  Howard Beale, an aging news anchorman for a third rate network, having been told he is going to be replaced decides to do something his co-workers see as crazy.  As Beale puts it: "Yesterday I announced on this program that I was going to commit public suicide. Admittedly an act of madness. Well, I'll tell you what happened: I just ran out of bullshit." 

Beale becomes a "counter-culture" prophet, sold by the network, and molded by its corporate interests.  The story continues to tell the - by now familiar - tale of the inherent conflicts of interest in Big Media.  Except this movie was made in 1976 and the stories told in a way few others have.  If you haven't seen it, you need to.

That rarest of rare things - a truly engaging Nicolas Cage film.  I've never been much impressed by Nicolas Cage (née Coppola, which may explain some of his acclaim), and in fact usually have a fairly hostile reaction to his roles.  Outside of Raising Arizona, I'm not sure anything he's done has been deserving of the raves normally tossed his way.  And that's why I haven't seen this movie until now.  However, just having watched it, I'm giving it up for Mr. Cage.  Maybe he's just extremely good at playing self-destructive drunks, but honestly who cares.  He's great in this movie, and so is Elisabeth Shue.  The soundtrack is unbelievably good, with Sting providing the vocals over a selection of jazz standards, including a transcendent "My One And Only Love".  If you haven't seen this movie, give Nicolas a chance.  It's worth the time.

A powerful story of a flawed preacher who searches for redemption in a small town in Louisiana.  Masterful performance by Robert Duvall as the preacher.  Forget the token Billy-Bob Thornton appearence, which doesn't seem to amount to a whole lot - Duvall carries this movie with his sheer charisma.  Recommended.

It took me two tries to get through this movie.  The first 20-30 minutes are incredibly slow and my initial impression was that Bjork had made a horrible mistake in trying to act.

Thankfully, I gave the movie a second chance a day later, starting from the point where I'd given up and thank god I did.  What starts off as a very slow, shaky (literally) film turns into an entertaining story of a young Czech woman in rural America (Minnesota maybe?) who is going blind, and escapes the difficulties of day-to-day life through musical daydreams, which are stunning in the same way Bjork's videos make an impression.  Then the movie makes a turn and twists its way to a terribly sad ending that, I'll admit, made me a bit weepy. 

A hard movie to get through, but in the end quite rewarding.  If nothing else, fast-forwarding to the musical scenes (helpfully italicized in the scene selections menu) will give you a good dose of Bjork and the amazingly-revolutionary 100-camera cinematography (if you're a techie type be sure to check out the extra documentary on this) of Bobby Mueller (whose work I've enjoyed in "Ghost Dog" and I look forward to in the soon-to-arrive-from-Netflix "24 Hour Party People")

It's a travesty that this film isn't available on DVD yet, but Spielberg likes to play games with his good films, something he learned from his buddy Lucas.  In any case, thanks to Jeff's Used LD/DVD Finder, I managed to find a used copy of the out-of-print laserdisc on Ebay.  It arrived, and it's taken a while to get the guts up to watch it.  I'm quite happy with the purchase, but the discs need a cleaning, since there are a few scenes that get stuck on repeat thanks to some fingerprints. 

This is a hard film to watch - very hard, but extremely important.  In any case, I'm not sure there's anything I can say about the movie other than, if you haven't seen it yet, you need to.  It is unquestionably one of the most powerful movies of the last 20 years.

If you aren't a fan of films like Howards End and Remains of the Day, you won't like this film.  If however, you do appreciate the aforementioned, you'll find Gosford Park quite entertaining.  For the genre, it's just about slapstick comedy.  But by any yardstick, its sense of humor is readily apparent.  Combine this with a good, twisty whodunit and you end up with a more sophisticated Clue that's highly entertaining. 

Horrible, terrible, ghastly.  Makes "Dude, Where's My Car" look like "Citizen Kane."  I made it through 15 minutes before throwing up my hands in disgust and pushing eject angrily. 

Not sure why I expected anything different.  Cameron Diaz and Christina Applegate should have made it tolerable, but didn't.  Thats how bad it was.

STAY AWAY!

Repeat after me: No two hours is ever wasted when a wet Kirsten Dunst is involved (even with the silly looking red hair).  That's always been my subliminal mantra, but never has it stood more true than with this movie, which by and large could have been an enourmous waste of time.

That being said, this movie was not as horrible as I was expecting.  It was pretty predictable Hollywood action formula but a few things stood out.

1. The performances of Willem Dafoe as the Green Goblin and J.K Simmons (aka Vern Schillinger from HBO's Oz) as JJ Jameson were great. 
2. I'm aware there was some re-editing involved in order to remove some featured World Trade Center shots in the movie, but I wonder what else was added/removed.  There's some interesting sequences that I'm curious to know if they were added later.  Specifically some of the comments of the crowd on the Brooklyn Bridge, but also a few other items which I'd be interested to learn the provenance of.  I don't suppose there's anyway to find out.  Note that this does not make the movie any more interesting, but I'm the curious type.

I've reworked my "Recent Listening/Watching" section because it was kind of boring.  The entries on the sidebar now lead to some thoughts about albums and such.  Sometimes they'll be blank, but they'll always at least include a link to somewhere for more information, and will usually include at the very least some useless blathering.

One of the first DVD's I bought (along with The Fifth Element) way back when, this is a funny yet grim film-noir by Oliver Stone about bad luck getting worse and sick twists.  Great cast (Sean Penn, Jon Voight, Billy Bob Thornton, Joaquim Phoenix, Claire Danes, Jennifer Lopez, and many others) and an awesome score by Ennio Morricone, a favorite of mine.

I wasn't impressed.  A few funny gag's, and some continuing jokes from the previous movies, but it really dragged and was really reaching for laughs.  Stick with the first one.