I've never seen a Rocky movie. I've never seen Castaway, or The Terminal, The Aviator, a Batman movie without Christian Bale in it, and I've never seen a James Bond movie. I am in no way, shape or form a "movie guy." But, since most of my friend are, I've been asking around and trying to decide on what constitutes "the essentials of cinema" so that, having conquered this list, I can at least consider myself reasonably cultured. The following is a short review (hopefully the first of many) of one such recommended flick:
REQUIEM FOR A DREAM - BoyScout's pick
Like any dealer, pimp or low-life Requiem for a Dream lured me in with false promises. "Drugs are cool," it said. People who do drugs make out with Jennifer Connelly and have funny and hip friends like Marlon Wayans. So, like any impressionable youth looking to make a little extra cash while building my streetcred, I decided to supress any aversion I had to the disturbing old woman that seemed to take up way too much of Jennifer Connelly's screen time, and ignore the awkward angles and unbearably low-lighting that dominated the first 45 minutes of the movie, and do what the cool kids were all doing - or so BoyScout said.
In the end Requiem for a Dream was one sweet song (that, until Wikipeida corrected me, I was pretty sure Mozart wrote), and one hour of Jennifer Connelly doing things that earned this movie its R-rating away from being a compulsory movie watched in 10th grade Health where everything that possibly can go wrong when you do drugs/have sex/don't stretch before working out does. Seriously, I already knew drugs were bad. Why did I need to watch several actors destroy their scripted lives over it?
Overall I give Requiem for a Dream a C+. Just like that time The Exorcist pointed out to me (with superb acting and directing, mind you) that Satan was scary, I absolutely did not need Requiem to show me in graphic detail how cocaine would destroy everything I loved.
On a lighter note.
Or, if your taste in music is slightly better.
Yes, those are the real artists performing those songs and no, it is not gibberish. It's simlish. The language invented for The Sims line of video games (from the people who brought you SimCity: that game you felt compelled to play in 4th grade because it was slightly better than Oregon Trail, but never really understood).
2 comments:
wow dad. ok first of all, i didn't say that you needed to see the movie to know that drugs were bad.
second of all... actually there isn't a second of all. i just wanted to tell you that i knew drugs were bad and i knew you knew drugs were bad.
the end.
Ha! I know. The song was great though, and the movie has definitely been stuck in my head since I saw it, so in that way it was a really effective movie, if not one that I would choose myself.
You are welcome to submit another pick.
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