I haven't wanted to just post quick, brief reviews on this blog, but then, busy with school and life, i've not put up a longer post in two months. I really meant to write a long review of the documentary Marwencol (4/29), if for no other reason than to get a few more people to have even heard of it--it's about a guy who deals with mental disability by building and maintaining a Barbie-scale World War II-era village in his backyard and photographing it. Source Code (4/2) and The Beaver (5/5) each had me interested in writing a blog entry about opening titles--the former's titles reminded me of north by northwest, the latter's had an interesting take on one of its themes (everyone's lives being interconnected) in the opening titles. I could have written an entry about unnecessary 3D (using Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides (5/22) and Thor (5/7)) or good use of 3D (using Kung Fu Panda 2 (5/28) and Cars 2 (today)). I could have compared Bridesmaids (5/24) and The Hangover Part II (6/10), or explained how X-Men First Class (6/5) tried to be a few too many things at once but still was pretty entertaining (and Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy were great). I could have written about a couple small movies I rather enjoyed--Everything Must Go (5/13) and Beginners (6/5). I could have finally put together a review of the various Jean-Claude Van Damme films I've watched in the last few months--I believe I've mentioned watching these to possibly do an interpretation of a bit from JCVD next fall in a speech competition, and in the past two months (when I've gotten past a lot of his obvious ones already) I've watched The Hard Corps (4/26), Lionheart (5/10) Universal Soldier The Return (5/12) (since watching JCVD (1/2), I've already watched several other Van Damme movies: The Order (3/11), Maximum Risk (3/13), Universal Soldier (3/16), Second in Command (3/21), Replicant (3/24), Nowhere to Run (4/1), Knock Off (4/2), and The Quest (4/8)). I watched Downfall (5/21) again for History class, so I could have quite easily pasted that review here. I certainly could have written a review of The Tree of Life (5/29)...
Actually, I will comment a bit on The Tree of Life before I go today. Though some people were put off by the birth-of-the-universe sequence, I thought it was amazing and could have actually been longer (and maybe should have been, if only to get to primates before jumping back to the main storyline). The main storyline, the acting, and Malick's direction especially were all great. I did think the afterlife sequence was a bit lacking (and like the afterlife ending in Lost, a bit arbitrary in its representations of the characters and their interactions). But, like Malick's earlier films, this one is very watchable.
Also, the negative Cars 2 reviews are wrong. The film is a good spy movie, a good action piece, and a surprisingly fitting sequel to the original Cars... of course, many say that was the worst of Pixar's films. Then again, being the worst of a group of films as great as Pixar's have been--that's hardly an insult.
And, I will try to keep up this blog more over the summer, like I had it going as the Oscars approached.
