Potter 4

Harry Potter does it again. This one is just as good as the last one. Even though the prizoner of azkaban has bettter direction, goblet of fire makes it up with a great story. This one more that any of the others makes me want to read the books. The down side to this film is that there seems to be so much to deal with that it feels as if you are just hitting the highlights of the story. It really feels abridged. But it is fun and exciting and overall worth checking out, because it will make you smile.

Walk the line

This was an absolutely amazing and fun film. Both performances by Reese Witherspoon and Jauquine Pheonix were the kind of performances that you think to yourself man, they really can act. The music is great. I take back every bad thing I every said about Johnny Cash's music. The one complaint I guess I have is that there is almost too much music in the film and that does not leave as much time as I would have liked for story development. But that really is a minor complaint since they did such a goood job of covvering 40 years of his life. This is something worth going to see.

Welcome to the you fuckin suck

Ok so this is a partial review of jarhead because I lost the enthusiasm and drive to finish it. So here is what I wrote and you can get the jist of how I felt with this film.


So I went to see a midnight showing of Jarhead on opening night. I was interested in seeing what Pat Jackson did with the sound. In any case, I can describe this movie in one word – convoluted.
I went in expecting an anti-war (lets make the marines look as mentally unstable as possible) kind of film. Thankfully this is not exactly what I saw, but the film starts exactly where the film ends with the main character hating the marines without any real resolution other that this character obviously shouldn’t have been a marine.
While this film had great performances from both Jake Gyllinhall and Peter Saarsgard. The motivation of Gyllinhall’s character seems somewhat misguided. It seems that his character joins the marines because of a woman. Once he is in the marines, there is no 1950’s WW2 propaganda glory (the same message of every anti-war film made in the last 40 years). The character seems to not really know why he joins and has no real pride in what he is doing. This comes across as if he has nothing better to do, or as his character says when asked why he joined the marines, “I got lost on my way to college.”
His character develops into an anti-authority wise-ass through out the film, except for the portions during his sniper training and his roll as a sniper in desert storm. The character takes a complete 180-degree turn as a sniper, in these scenes; the character has found a purpose and something that he is good at. He takes pride in the fact that he is a marine sniper. Now the filmmakers could be attempting to show that this as a way to visualize the cliché notion of how the marines break you down, and build you back up as a killing machine.
There are many scenes It failed to make any real point, it settled for happily dancing around the issues it wanted to bring up without committing to a point of view.
This film ultimately fails as a political film, and really is a story of a scared individual who has no idea who he is or what he wants to do, and blames the military for his trouble.

The Horror List

So here is another list, that is a little bit late for Halloween, but I think horror films should be watched year-round anyway. This will just help you take the edge off of the on-coming holiday season. Ok so here is a list (in no particular order) of horror films that no one should die without seeing.

Frankenstein (1939)
The Invisible Man (1940’s)
The Haunting (1950’s)
The Shining
The Thing
John Carpenter’s The Thing
Halloween 1 & 2
In the Mouth of Madness
The Prophecy
The Evil Dead Trilogy
Dead Alive
Bucket of Blood
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Devil’s Advocate
An American Werewolf in London
The Blair Witch Project
The Exorcist
Interview with the vampire
Freaks
Big Trouble in little china
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Dawn of the Dead (1977)

Now I know that this list is fairly John Carpenter heavy - but the fact remains that all of his films mentioned above actually belong on this list. There are a few other directors that I am leaving out but I am trying to keep this list at an appropriate length. Of course leave any comments and or additions.

A First Request

So I was asked by a good friend to compile a list of really great westerns that no one should miss. These films listed below are what I think of when someone mentions westerns. People who say they hate westerns (more than likely) have never seen any of these films.

Please feel free to comment I could miss a few great ones. This is not in any specific order. Can you guess my personal favorite? Its not the first one.

Rio Bravo
A Fistful of Dollars
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
For a Few Dollars More
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Searchers
High Noon
The Magnificent Seven
Once Upon a Time in the West.
The Shootist
Fort Apache
Unforgiven
Tombstone