Halloween: H20

A few years ago I set out to see every single Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th film. I failed, but I got to the near-end of most of the series, so, when I saw HALLOWEEN: H20 newly added to Netflix Instant Watch, I thought, what the hell, I might as well continue through the series. Mind, not all of the Halloween films are bad, and a few of them have odd flairs to them which are appealing, but, in HALLOWEEN: H20, I found only a single redeeming quality, and that was that Jamie Lee Curtis drives the same car as I do in the film. Curtis reprises her role as Laurie Strode, the terrorized sister of stoic, masked killer Michael Myers. It's twenty years later, and she's now the head of a boarding school, living under a different name after faking her own death a few years after the original film's events. Michael Myers has just killed the nurse to the only doctor who ever took him seriously, and died obsessing over Michael: Sam Loomis. Along with Loomis' nurse, Myers also felled a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and that's a good laugh to be had. Now, inexplicably staged, Myers has decided that after his twenty year stint as an unseen masked behemoth parading about the countryside having never been seen or killed anyone, his vacation is over, and it's time to go kill that meddlesome (? why ?) sister of his. The supposedly unstoppable Myers has apparently been halted for a good twenty years, but now he's back dammit, and ready to fuck with anyone who gets in his way. Stealing a car (he can drive!?) Myers takes the information collected after killing Loomis' nurse to find his sister (he can read?!). Meanwhile, a good first forty minutes of the film are spent hashing out the bitchfight between headmistress Laurie and her son, John (Josh Hartnett). He's had to deal with his mom's incessant twitchiness all his life, for she still lives in fear. He thinks she's an idiot for it, and, based on what he knows, he's right, and when Myers finally does show up, I don't know what I was being convinced of: that the twitchiness was justified? Myers kills a couple of John's friends, and there's some idiotic interplay between Laurie and Michael, and she goes badass on us and takes up an axe that she briskly loses as she becomes determined to kill her brother and rid herself of fear. That's a decent premise, but one that comes late in the film and is weakly upheld by Laurie's ineptitude and Michael's superhuman powers of catholic-resurrection. The film ends in an abrupt ugliness, and I determined to not see HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION.

★ out of Five

Oz: Season 2

Continues the strengths of the first season.
Four Stars out of Five

Out of Sight

Directed by Steven Soderbergh, star studded, and consisting of outstanding cinematography, OUT OF SIGHT is a hell of a lot of fun. Based off of the Elmore Leonard novel, OUT OF SIGHT is at first glance the story of a cop-criminal relationship. The characters in the film are well aware of this fact, and that makes the film all the better. George Clooney stars as Jack Foley. He's a career bank robber, been in and out of prison, and has a way with words that gets most people to do whatever he wants. Soderbergh puts us in the middle of Foley's life, and the film concerns itself with what happened before, and what's happening. Foley has a number of criminal friends, all entertaining characters, especially Ving Rames as Foley's partner, but when he breaks out of prison, he stumbles across the beautiful, hard-ass U.S. Marshall, Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez in a very good performance). Karen follows Foley around the country as he plans one last big heist, but this is an unconventional tale that takes us through the conventions and then shows us how it can do them differently. The filmmaking is smart and the images are excellent, Clooney is great, and Lopez surprises us. OUT OF SIGHT is a great movie, it's entertaining and a lot of fun.
Out of Sight: ★★★★

Pleasantville

Making various references to cultural events and injustices, PLEASANTVILLE is a quasi-allegory that fails on that level but succeeds on another. The film tells of a brother and sister played by Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon who, in the late 90's, encounter a tv repairman who sends them into a 50's tv show called "Pleasantville". The brother, who takes the place of the son 'Bud' in the show had been quite knowledgable about the show thinks about how this world should not change, but the rebellious sister immediately starts acting the way she did in the 90's in the 50's tv show where nobody knows what sex is, the basketball team always wins, and everyone is in black and white. As the world changes because of the brother and sister's presence, things gradually turn to color, people begin to realize they have personal choice, and the people still in black and white cling to their old way of life. This refusal by some of the townspeople is used as an allegory for various cultural events and injustices (as mentioned earlier). In one courtroom scene, the people who have turned to color are even forced to sit in the balcony. This is where the film seems strange, as the situation presented in the film seems to unique and specific to be used as some grand statement on injustice. Rather, they stand in their own right as interesting musings and possibilities within the original storyline.
Pleasantville: ★★★

The Truman Show

The Truman Show is an entertaining and compelling film from Peter Weir, who often makes films about events whose historical accuracies are dubious and thus exaggerated. However, here with a premise that is both original and possibly acts as a commentary succeeds despite such motives that could have gone awfully wrong. For, The Truman Show deals with a man named Truman who has lived within the biggest tv set ever constructed. His entire life is filmed 24 hours a day and for the last thirty years since his birth. All that Truman knows is this encased world that creates an idealistic life that is watched by millions. As Weir cuts between Truman's slow discovery of what he thinks of as a conspiracy, people watch him indifferent to his problems. They seem to care, and some genuinely do, but they are always in question. Consider how terribly bad this film could have gone, becoming an allegory for our own obsession with reality tv, and our numbness towards this. This is not the point of The Truman Show, for the way it is written (by Andrew Niccol, who penned the great sci-fi drama, Gattaca) is one that merely uses such plot points for entertainment instead of condemnation or condescension. At the heart of The Truman Show is the will of Truman to escape what is ideal. Consider, as trite as it is, the story of Adam of Eve, where they eat from the proclaimed tree of knowledge to see what lies outside of idealism. Truman does this as well. Within the Truman show there is an intricate puzzlebox of a plot, accentuated by being filmed almost sarcastically as kitschy scenes must enter to boost the ratings of the show. As Truman, Jim Carrey is pitch perfect, keeping the same amount of innocence and likeablity that is believable in the respective setting. The supporting cast is also good, featuring the underused, but radiant, Natascha McElhone as an activist fighting for Truman's freedom for ignorance, and Ed Harris as the literal eye in the sky. The Truman Show is a triumph both in respects to its popular entertainment value and its intricacies.
The Truman Show: ★★★★

The Big Lebowski

It's kind of against the movie to write a review for it, but here agoes: The Big Lebowski is purely a Coen Brother picture. It's not concerned with story (although there's a lot of it) but concerned with conveying a certain mood. With Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski, that mood is pretty well conveyed. The Dude is a lazy-ass, he walks around in shorts, sandals, pajamas and a bathrobe. He steals milk and loves to bowl. His life is how it is and he likes it. The laziness of The Dude is perfectly done by Jeff Bridges, it's a great character. Everyone else in the movie is great too: the uptight essential-nurse (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), the sexual and probably retarded mexican guy named Jesus (John Turturro), the trophy wife (Tara Reid), the Vietnam vet who tears people's ears off (John Goodman), and "shut the fuck up" Donnie (Steve Buscemi). Everyone here has their own specific lifestyle, and no convoluted noir-like plot is going to fuck that up. To talk any more than I have would be an insult to the movie's lazi-
The Big Lebowski (so yeah, it's fucking hilarious): ★★★★

∏

∏ or Pi is a film about madness, the first from Darren Aronofsky. It's about math, and that seems dull, but this movie is anything but. It's shot in black and white (very high contrast), and appears quite grainy and dreamlike. The main character is not unfamiliar to the movies, he's a brilliant young jew, Max Cohen, who keeps to himself and can tell you in an instant what 6670 times 34 equals. He's had a strange past, he has frequent, painful headaches (as if his head were splitting open) and everyone wants his talent. He's been working on probability and how to predict the stock market. He believes that math is everywhere in life, and most often in patterns, thus there should be an attainable and usable pattern with the stock market. Hasidic Jews are after him so that he can crack the numerical codes within the Torah, Stock Market moguls are after him (if they can discover a way to predict stocks, they'll get rich), but he just wants to crack the code. He goes crazy. From his headaches and obsessing over the specific number 216 (which he thinks is the key to the universe) he starts to see numbers everywhere. This is done is such a hypnotic and convincing way that the film becomes riveting. The film is not about math (although that is also quite interesting) but about the obsession of this antisocial Max Cohen to discover the answer to the universe. The answers are, of course, illusory, and he's doomed from the start. The journey that you go through with the character (excited that he may actually be on to something) is awing.
∏: ★★★

Dark City

Dark City was directed by Alex Proyas (Knowing, The Crow) and in it are Jennifer Connelly (Requiem for a Dream) and Kiefer Sutherland (24). This is a weird movie. It's not different, it's weird. Everyone in the movie seems like their in a daze. They're all hapless but proceeding. It's also strangely beautiful. The story revolves around a city in the middle of nowhere (literally) where it is always night and people change to different people every night at midnight. This is all orchestrated by The Strangers, a race of bald, pale aliens who know the ways of the human mind, and are looking for the soul. Every night the city changes, every night the people do too. And it's wonderful. To watch this movie is to delve into the grungy bits of the mind, evil, and assumptions that are so often made. If it sounds weird, or too weird, it should, and it takes a while for the majesty of the film to seep in, but once it does, it's a glorious thing. The prime question posed by the film is that, if our surroundings and occupations, pasts and futures were all changed, would life as we know it be the same--would we still end up with the people we would with a different house, a different job, a different past? And do all or any of those things matter, really, when we end up at that same place, a shore or a beach, a place we imagined as the end or the beginning, would it really matter at all?
Dark City: ★★★★