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Movies including Brokeback Mountain
Jan. 11th, 2006 10:03 pmThree non-spoilery reviews of winter movies I managed to see:
Chicken Little: This was cute. I enjoyed it. Yes, it had moments where I said, "Joke going on too long, guys, painfully so," and, unfortunately, they used the same climactic "moment of moral resolution" that they used in Finding Nemo--bit of a cop-out, that. I found it wild how they could get some things so very right--the Ugly Duckling character was not a shy pathetic creature, but had fabulous self-esteem and couldn't care less if rude idiots joked about her looks--and then went right back to horrible stereotypes in the same film (grisly runs of fat jokes). Overall it was a fun film with some nifty Rube Goldberg-ian riffs, and Zach Braff can do no wrong.
King Kong: I cannot imagine how a better remake could have been made of this. Peter Jackson truly is amazing; it was the sort of film that had me walking out of it cursing George Lucas all over again. There wasn't one lame line, not one mediocre performance, and I still can't wrap my mind around the CGI performance/creation that was Kong. Fabulous. I wept all through the credits.
Brokeback Mountain: Some of you might remember that this trailer made me whine, "Aww, I don't want to see a film where two guys parted and went off and made themselves and the women who married them miserable; I wouldn't read that in fanfic, so why would I want...?" And people said to me, "Read the short story, just read it." And I read it and wept. Yes, I got it. It was too beautiful and too good to sulk over its being a story seated in painful realism. For those of you who read the story, yes, the film's a beautifully faithful adaptation. It's as chicky a flick as ever chick flicked, so romantic the sexy can barely make it through all that romance. Wept? I bawled. And not just at the end. The environment shots are so gorgeous they make you think this is a film that wants you to get religion, by the end of it (which I found apt). Yes, I adored it. Ang Lee should marry Peter Jackson and they should make mpreg babies that will take over the world with the power of their filmmaking. Okay, I still stand by my original sentiments: I'm ready for a film where there is a male/male romance that is as un-eyebrow raising as cross-race romance has become. Yes, there are films made all the time where a racially mixed couple is shown in either historical or current situations of social intolerance, but we can also watch Tom Cruise romance Thandie Newton in Mission: Impossible 2 and no viewer says a word--or at least, if they do say a word, it's understood that they're racist bigots who should be ashamed of themselves. So, bring me those films. Shoot, bring me the films exactly like Mission: Impossible 2, where the romance is secondary to the action plot and makes viewers mutter that the film would have been better without "all the kissin' bits," not because they were offensive but because they were extraneous. Yeah. Let it get that taken-for-granted.
In the meantime I may actually have to watch the Oscars this year, just to see all the celebration there will be if Brokeback Mountain wins for best pic. Except that if it doesn't, I may have to hurt something.
Chicken Little: This was cute. I enjoyed it. Yes, it had moments where I said, "Joke going on too long, guys, painfully so," and, unfortunately, they used the same climactic "moment of moral resolution" that they used in Finding Nemo--bit of a cop-out, that. I found it wild how they could get some things so very right--the Ugly Duckling character was not a shy pathetic creature, but had fabulous self-esteem and couldn't care less if rude idiots joked about her looks--and then went right back to horrible stereotypes in the same film (grisly runs of fat jokes). Overall it was a fun film with some nifty Rube Goldberg-ian riffs, and Zach Braff can do no wrong.
King Kong: I cannot imagine how a better remake could have been made of this. Peter Jackson truly is amazing; it was the sort of film that had me walking out of it cursing George Lucas all over again. There wasn't one lame line, not one mediocre performance, and I still can't wrap my mind around the CGI performance/creation that was Kong. Fabulous. I wept all through the credits.
Brokeback Mountain: Some of you might remember that this trailer made me whine, "Aww, I don't want to see a film where two guys parted and went off and made themselves and the women who married them miserable; I wouldn't read that in fanfic, so why would I want...?" And people said to me, "Read the short story, just read it." And I read it and wept. Yes, I got it. It was too beautiful and too good to sulk over its being a story seated in painful realism. For those of you who read the story, yes, the film's a beautifully faithful adaptation. It's as chicky a flick as ever chick flicked, so romantic the sexy can barely make it through all that romance. Wept? I bawled. And not just at the end. The environment shots are so gorgeous they make you think this is a film that wants you to get religion, by the end of it (which I found apt). Yes, I adored it. Ang Lee should marry Peter Jackson and they should make mpreg babies that will take over the world with the power of their filmmaking. Okay, I still stand by my original sentiments: I'm ready for a film where there is a male/male romance that is as un-eyebrow raising as cross-race romance has become. Yes, there are films made all the time where a racially mixed couple is shown in either historical or current situations of social intolerance, but we can also watch Tom Cruise romance Thandie Newton in Mission: Impossible 2 and no viewer says a word--or at least, if they do say a word, it's understood that they're racist bigots who should be ashamed of themselves. So, bring me those films. Shoot, bring me the films exactly like Mission: Impossible 2, where the romance is secondary to the action plot and makes viewers mutter that the film would have been better without "all the kissin' bits," not because they were offensive but because they were extraneous. Yeah. Let it get that taken-for-granted.
In the meantime I may actually have to watch the Oscars this year, just to see all the celebration there will be if Brokeback Mountain wins for best pic. Except that if it doesn't, I may have to hurt something.
