This week was an odd week. I can promise there to be a decline in my viewing numbers for the next couple weeks as I’ve picked up my copy of Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, and unless someone out there is willing to let me call it the next 40+ hour Studio Ghibli movie that I’m watching, this week of movie watching will be a wash. Regardless, here’s what this last week had to offer me:
FLIRTING WITH DISASTER (1996)
Here’s David O. Russell, before he did I Heart Huckabees, The Fighter, Silver Linings Plabook or Three Kings. Here he makes an odd little comedy about a man searching for his biological parents so as to get a better understanding of who he is as a new father. The film starts out seeking this deep seated truth but ended up become a disposable comedy with some great performances and a lot of throw away jokes. A good watch, but nothing that’ll hit your favourite bar anything soon.
THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE (1976)
More Cassavetes where he looks at gambling and murder. Read my full review here.
RIO BRAVO (1959)
John Wayne shows up as the sherrif of a small town trying to keep a guilty man in jail waiting on the Marshalls to show up and take him away for trial before his henchmen, and rich brother, can spring him out. A fun western film. Is it life changing? I’m still not sure.
THE IMPOSSIBLE (2012)
I was warned. Sadly even when I was warned I decided to give this movie a look see only to discover exactly what I was warned about. The film’s a complete and utter mess. Where it’s visuals are made it’s subject is handled so poorly that all one can come out of the theatre thinking is if it was really only white people who were affected by this horrendous natural disaster. The score i used to completely manipulate the film’s audience into welling up with tears on queue and it’s just a sad thing to witness how ham fisted the film feels.
REWATCHED
With hopes of podcasting this film (and you can hear that episode tomorrow morning) I revisted Zero Dark Thirty. The film worked even better for me on second viewing, now in a theatre, and I’m still surprised that Bigelow was able to make a topic that I’ve been very open about how much I disapprove of (over at Navigating the Newsroom) into a movie I love this much.
Allowing myself a little breather from all the new movies that I’m trying to process I enjoyed taking a look back at Pulp Fiction, the untarnished movie that I am yet to hear any negative discussions on that Tarantino has made. I still love it too much.
My count for the year of 2013 is updated to 19 First time watches (2 from 2013); 10 Rewatches; 29 Total Films