Monday, November 01, 2004

Slacker / Van Helsing

I got a chance to watch a couple of movies this weekend and figured here would be a good start for a series of movie reviews. I watch movies a bit and have had this idea running around my head for a awhile. I check out aintitcoolnews.com a bit and I am certainly not that sort of movie fan. I don't get excited about everything I see, gosh that Harry dude lists his video picks and it looks like every movie coming out. I rarely find more than a couple of DVD's a season. I guess I'm not a person who loves movies but rather a person who loves the movies I love.

Anyway I rented Van Hellsing and Slacker from the video store. Neither was a purchase nor do i feel a need to run out and buy either.

Lets start with Van Hellsing, I hated this fucking piece of crap. It was one of those non movies that Will Smith constantly comes out with. You know you see it and you don't really remember it 10 minutes later so you can watch it over and over. These turds usually have a bunch of goofy scenes and subplots that lead no where. I think this is to confuse your brain into instantly forgetting the film. Here the plot was sort of lame and then there was a useless thing about Van Hellsing being the arch angel Gabriel, WTF! The effects were terrible and just looked shitty. Mr. Hyde looked like a DIC cartoon.., Yeah like "you cant stop the littles cuz the littles don't stop"! Bomble from Rudolphs shiny new year looked better. What the hell David Wenham was doing in this after Lord of the Rings is beyond me. Stay the hell away from this!

Slacker was better but not great. I think there was a time in my life that I would have loved slacker and if those events had played out I would still like this movie. But my friends that remind me of characters in the movie have moved on. Im left somewhat nostalgic but mostly sad for the people in the film. It could be that I saw it at 30, but really I think its where I live. Idle youth just doesn't work here in the silicon valley where you have to work 60 hours a week to make rent. Anyway the film not having a plot wasn't to much of a problem for me, though i could see it being for other people. It sort of drifts from character to character moving exponentially into the cosmos and perhaps back in time. I say back in time because the last scene seemed like a 60's era home movie. I liked the parts that seemed more staged and had some comedy like the old lady getting hit or I should have stay at the bus station bit. As it moved I either saw something of my own pretensions in the peoples speeches or saw people that I recognized and didn't like. Their is a fellow who convinces some girls to go to a show with him claiming he has passes but actually didn't; he bugged the hell out of me. Maybe that's from my metal days, straight forward task execution mindedness. The guy seems too manipulative to me. I can see how people have liked the film though. I'm living in the reality where I rented Hal Hartleys Trust maybe elsewhere this is a universe where i rented Slacker and am waiting to buy Before Sunrise on DVD.

Until Later

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1 comment:

Stargazre said...

Van Helsing was, as most movies are, too pretentious. They simply crammed a lot of special effects done the throat of the audience. I was choking on too many graphics, and special effects. And, it's not as if I can't chug ideas or images. Fill my stein full of interesting ideas and images, and I will drink wisdom with you all night. Fill it full of pretentious images, and I can't stand the taste. I guess it's a lot like drinking cheap tequilla and a shot of 1800 tequilla. But, anyway, it was one of those movies that left me not caring about any action or character. I left the theatre, yes I actually paid to see this movie, feeling like I wasted 2 hours of my life. I sat through the entire movie thinking to myself, "I would change this" and "I would change that." If I'm doing that during a movie, then that movie sucks. After all, I tried thinking about how I would change 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as it turns out, that movie is perfect. Remove 1 image, and that enitre movie would collapse unto itself, remove one sound, and the entire structure would fracture. Add any element at all, and disaster. Prefection is tough to achieve, but Kubrick was certainly hitting on all cylinders during that film. Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Kurosawa, the filmmaker-poets, the grandmasters of filmmaking.

Movies that I've seen recently. "Badlands" Terrence Malick's first film. I was watching it with my wife, who is not familiar with film in the way that I am. I told her that this film is the first by the same guy who directed "The Thin Red Line(2000)." She said "Oh, I can see that. It's got the same kind of feel to it." So, it was his first film, but still captured a kind of meditative/poetic kind of feel.