| Displaying Movies Seen In The Past Week Chonologically | ||
| Date Viewed | Movie | Director | Notes |
| 04.26.24 | Dune | Denis Villeneuve | I watched this again because I'm about to watch Dune Part Two and I want to give it the best possible chance. I would've watched them back to back but they're too damn long so instead I'll be watching the next one tomorrow night. As such, I imagine most of my thoughts about this viewing will be in the next note, but I'll just say that now, knowing that Part Two exists, hearing that it's good, and seeing news that there will be a third movie making this the first in a trilogy, I'm a little more lenient toward it being incomplete on its own. Yes, it's all setup if you look at it from a story perspective, but there's other stuff to like once you accept that. For one, I spotted a shot where Duncan Idaho flies his ornithopter down a street in Arrakeen during his escape, giving me a glimpse that it is indeed a place where people live instead of some random greebly miniature diorama like I thought last time. I do still wish we got more time with the Atreides folks pre-battle, and I also still feel like all the supporting cast get like 2 scenes which is nuts considering the runtime of the movie. I probably could've done with 5 less minutes of visions and more Harkonnens or Thufir or Gurney or a shot of spacer's guild's navigators instead of dudes in red-tinted helmets. I did enjoy some of the other costumes more this time though... and found the score just a tiny bit more tolerable (still didn't love the vocals especially when they're saying things like "bene gesserit" like wtf are they singing about? are they trying to explain the scene I'm watching or what? I'd actually prefer the nondescript messiah-yowl to the weird words with proper nouns thrown in to distract me. I guess now that I'm writing it out the score DID still bug me. ha! I do feel like I generally enjoyed it more than the first viewing though, and if I had more hours before sunrise I'd try to watch the next one now but I guess I should go to bed instead. |
| 04.20.24 | X: The Unheard Music | W.T. Morgan | This is a documentary about the LA punk band X. It's very good. A lot of times when I watch some of these documentaries about a specific band or subject or whatever, there's more or less a template that people follow. When they're just ok they feel a lot like the Laurent Bouzereau special features on the old Universal DVDs. Informative sure, but it's some talking heads intercut with some archival footage or stills or whatever; they run through the movie (or career or whatever) and then it's done. On one hand you can't really complain because you got what you were supposed to get out of the thing, but on the other hand it's not memorable, nothing elevates the form... it's basically an easier version of reading the wiki page. Then there's documentaries where filmmakers got lucky. they met incredible characters like Grey Gardens or had incredible access like Paradise Lost or spent a crazy amount of time like Hoop Dreams. These movies you watch not so much because you're initially interested in the subject matter but more because the movie itself is good so you learn what you're gonna learn as a byproduct of watching the good movie. And then there's a third kinda doc which takes the subject matter and makes a movie in the style of that subject. The Kid Stays in the Picture, narrated by the subject himself, basically an autobiography. Get Back, spending over 7 hours as a fly on the wall as The Beatles record an album. The Act of Killing, watching these guys that conducted genocide re-enact their actions. F for Fake, Orson Welles telling you stories about magicians while doing magic tricks with film itself. This is in that third category. It's about the band X, has some live footage that they shot in 81, but they took so long to make the movie that you also get them signing to a major label, finding success, touring, and the movie comes out months before the guitarist leaves. So some songs are performed live, some songs are in music video format, some songs are over photo montages or cinematic sequences. There's a character in the film portraying the subject of one song... cut with old news archival footage, old commercials, miniature model photography, rough animation, and interview footage of the band. It's all a big messy hodgepodge of punk DIY style that vibes off the scene very well and keeps the movie rolling and interesting as you listen to a bunch of X songs. All in that 80s LA vein. I liked it quite a bit. |
| 04.20.24 | The Runnin' Kind | Max Tash | This late 80s comedy is about a boring kid who goes to LA and gets wrapped up into the world of punk rock. I watched it because it's mentioned in the book I'm reading as being shot in an infamous punk apartment called Disgraceland and has footage of bands like tsol and the screaming sirens as well as starring and co-written by Pleasant Gehman. As it happens so often in these cases, the movie is not good but I guess worth tracking down if you're weird like me and want to see the interiors of some of these 80s LA punk clubs and settings. This is like a prime example of why Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly wrote Destroy All Movies!!!. I think the same happened in the new york scene but I feel like part of what made LA's punk scene more visible is that there were filmmakers there. On top of docs like Decline, Spheeris also made Suburbia and Dudes. Lee Ving was in a handful of movies, John Doe was in a handful of movies, stuff like this somehow got made. And thanks to youtube, it's available to watch (albeit in artifact-y 480p form but still). And I did think there was one good scene. In the third act, after the main character returns home with his punk rock hairdo wearing a cowboy hat and talks to his mom, she tells him that his dad is in his study and will be happy to see him. Cut to the study where the dad silently looks at him (the story is framed around dad having a lawfirm that he expects his son to inherit but the son blows off a summer internship to go to LA after going to a local punk club). After a moment, the dad says "take that hat off." The son does. The dad sees the haircut, very still, no reaction. He then says "hat back on." That wasn't bad! The rest of it... eh, let's not dwell on it. |
