Love is all Around

Chips and salsa is a breakfast food right?

Movie Review #3
LOVE ACTUALLY - Karen's pick

If you have ever liked any movie with any British actor, chances are you'll put up with 2 and 1/4 hours of Love Actually.

This movie has, I think, eight different story lines each composed of a love-agon between a love-triangle and a love-dodecahedron. It has Qui-Gon Ginn, Elizabeth Swann, Professor Snape, Mr. Darcy, that one guy from Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy and even Mr. Bean. Plus cameos by Claudia Schiffer and that guy who did the voice of Sebastian in The Twelfth Night episode of "Shakespeare: The Animated Series."

Do you know how hotdogs are made? How the butcher just saves the scraps and leavings from dozens of legitimate cuts of meat and then at the end of the day puts them all through the grinder and sells them as though pork liver and chicken fat were meant to be together? Well, it seems like that's what happened with Love Actually. They took the scraps from a dozen different movies, put them together without any care towards a common and cohesive theme, spiced it with stars galore and it sold like franks at a ballpark.

Some people try to stay away from romantic comedies. Those people are usually in loveless relationships or have been single for so long that they have to do their best to forget that Hugh Grant exists at all. Not me. I'm a big fan, and despite its ignorance of all conventions of cinema and standards of quality film, I liked Love Actually. From the "All You Need Is Love" cover in one (of eight) of the opening scenes to the cheesy conclusions of each and every unconnected storyline. It... wasn't bad.

While I would have rather watched a movie about how Hugh Grant is the prime minister of England and how he falls in love with a page, or a movie about how Liam Neeson has to help his step-son hold onto the hope of finding love in the wake of his own wife's death, or even one about how Collin Firth falls for his Portugese cleaning lady despite the fact that neither of them speaks the other's native language. Love Actually was all of these and none of these and if it hadn't pulled the wool over my eyes with a great soundtrack and Hugh Grant's devilishly good looks, I probably wouldn't have made it through.

Overall Grant, Firth, Neeson, Thompson, Knightly, Nighy, Rickman and Linney earn an A-, B+, B, B, C-, B, B+ and D, respectively.

Who Needs Sleep?

It's Saturday again and that, combined with the fact that it's over 100 degrees outside here in sunny Colorado Springs, has forced us to stay cool indoors. So, while supping on some tasty enchiladas (courtesy of Jose) we decided that it was time to indulge Brad's summer-long pestering and watch:

Movie Review #2
THE MACHINIST - Brad's pick

To begin with I love the fact that one of the first results for a Google Images search for The Machinist was this sweet poster - auf Deutsch. The tagline, if you can't read it, is "Wie kannst Du aus einem Alptraum aufwachen, wenn Du gar nicht schlafst?" which basically means "How can you wake up from a nightmare, when you aren't even asleep?"

One great thing about The Machinist, I realize as I write this, is the fact that there is very little I can say about the plot and moral tensions of the movie without spoiling the ending. It wasn't a psychological thriller, it wasn't a murder mystery, it was simply a unique and rich human experience. To say that it "kept me guessing" would be to give myself too much credit. I never had a clue as to where this movie would end up, though perhaps I would have had I been more versed in Dostoevsky or Nine Inch Nails.

Christian Bale's character is Trevor Reznik, an insomniac who hasn't slept in a year and ends up in the middle of what he perceives to be a vengeful conspiracy against his own sanity. The movie begins in media res and returns to it's opening just before the final scenes. The Machinist deals with sin and humanity on par with The Lives of Others and pound for pound Christian Bale plays one of the most convincing roles I've ever seen, though that's not saying much since he only weighed 120lbs. The 60 lbs he lost for the role he gained back, plus an additional 40 to play the role of Batman a year later.

The Machinist is definitely a movie meant to grow by evangelism: after seeing it once, you're ready to grab an infidel friend and watch it again. Despite the first half hour of the movie during which there was little to keep the viewer going (that is, besides the ghastly, gaunt, ungainly figure of CB), The Machinist was a quality film with a significant message, a B+ overall.

Split Screen Sadness

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).