MicShazam

For the last few days, I've been watching a lot of movies, mainly with the intent of getting rid of some not-so-great stuff on my shelves. Consequently, the following DVD's have now left my film shelves:

Afro Samurai
Style over substance to a worrying degree. Not even good style. It's actually sort of irritating.
Afro Samurai: Resurrection
Same, of course.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
CGI not even close to holding up in 2018. Weak story and art direction to boot. Feels like watching an especially long and tedious computer game cut-scene.
Shoot 'Em Up
Adolescent violence orgy. Done in bad taste, even.
The Huntsman: Winter's War
Dull script and art direction. Such a disappointment after the surprisingly good Snow White and the Huntsman (see above journal entry).
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Ugly color grading and bad action scenes. Story doesn't feel tight.
X-Men: Apocalypse
Same as above, except with slightly better looking images.
To Die For
What happens when you make a shallow and stupid movie about shallow and stupid people? You get a bad movie, of course. No amount of ironic, post-modern sneering will change that. I'm so sick of this sort of approach to art.
Crash
The Paul Haggis film, not the Cronenberg film. Very contrived and sentimental. It doesn't bother making it's characters believeable, even when it attempts to speak to life in post 9/11 America. It's so damn earnest, but it doesn't realize it's also a caricature. Avoid like the plague.
The Animatrix
This Matrix inspired collection of Anime shorts is not quite cutting it. There are 9 short films here and precisely 1.5 of them are any good. Just find the one titled "Beyond" online and leave the rest.
Dead Leaves
Tasteless, adoslescent violence orgy with lots of visual style. Visual style that you don't get to enjoy since the cutting is so damn awful and jacked up on caffeine.
Whiplash
Ridiculous.
Arbitrage
A by the numbers genre film that unfortunately comes off as giving greedy 1%'ers an easy get-out-of-jail free card. Richard Gere's character was feeling soo sowwy about what he did, you see?



I traded the pile of movies above for the following DVD's without putting any money on the table. I had to choose from what was available, so this is the best I could manage. I think it was a decent trade, really:

Jurassic Park
Seen this before, obviously. Saw it again this evening. It's allright. Spielberg's best movie, yet still just ok. I really, really like the first third or so, but all of the action starts wearing thin eventually. Very likeable and fun characters - some even witty. I wish they got to talk to each other more.
Cold Mountain
Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, Renée Zellweger. Don't actually know anything about it but it seemed worth a shot.
Conversations With Other Women
Seems interesting. I don't think it will be a run off the mill romantic comedy.
Cash Back
I'm stuck with this one since it came in the same box as the above. Doesn't seem like anything I'd want to watch, but I might give it 10 minutes and see if it gives me a reason to keep watching.
Revolutionary Road
The book is supposedly very good, so...
Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky
It was a Cannes selection some years back. Seems like it could be interesting.
Cleopatra
The 1999 version with Billy Zane, Leonor Varela and Timothy Dalton. I fear the worst, but I like big epics and they don't grow on the trees. I pretty much feel obliged to watch it.
The Last Emperor
A classic that I've never watched.
The Pianist
Same as above, plus I intend to watch some more Polanski films.
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
I'm not really big on Herzog's movies so far, but he's always interesting. I have no idea what this one is about. Never even knew it existed before I saw it in a pile of movies today.