There Will Be Blood (2006) Dir. P.T. Anderson. By far my favorite and best of his work. There is little hint of the overly self-obsessed and extravagant director of Magnolia (my apologies to those who love Magnolia, it does, in fact, suck.). I cannot even begin to discuss my love for the use of sound, silence, drones, nuance, lighting, and every other small piece of cinematic nuance that combine to make one of my favorite films of the last few years. It’s also as good the second time around.
Flash Gordon (1980) Dir. Whofuckingcares. Just got re-released, I’m sure that there’s a significant nostalgia community centered around this film. Word to the wise: It does in fact suck. Some good casting decisions paired with fucking awful casting. Case in point: Flash is played by someone who only physically might resemble a serious Flash casting. The superior choice would have been a good actor, with a forceful delivery. They ended up with an actor who couldn’t toughguy his way out of a fucking paper sack. He’s waaaay too passive for the role, also whomever decided that Flash needed to lose (or almost lose) every conflict needs to be punched. Max von Sydow is an ok Ming, basically, my point is that Flash is a bad actor, almost any masculine actor ever would have been a better choice even if he didn’t nominally meet the physical requirements… blah, could go on forever talking about the faults of this movie. It’s fun to watch, and the Queen songs are awesome, but there’s little else here.
The Black Dahlia (2006) Dir. Brian De Palma. Based on a pretty good book, and a weird crazy case. Somehow manages to miss all of the engaging parts of both the real life case and the novelized account by Ellroy. Makes me wish for De Palma’s great works like Body Double… Ah well, as Argento can no longer make a great film, so has D.P. fallen.
Happiness of the Katakuris. Dir. Miike Takashi. so weird and singular that it’s almost unwatchable. One word: doggerel. It’s no Visitor Q, that’s for certain. Takashi has the unfortunate habit of making the worlds’ weirdest movies. And more often than not making the worlds’ most vapid/poorly paced weirdest movies. It’s worth it if you’re willing to drink the kool-aid. As an accessible film it’s a mess.
The New Flesh: Trashculture for a Trashworld 