Movie Time - 2.11

Hey folks, here's a round up of the movies I watched in February.

City of God - This movie reminded me a lot of my childhood growing up in the slums of San Lorenzo, aka the City of Ducks. The movie nicely weaves together the stories of several people coming of age in some pretty bleak conditions. This movie is not a feel good movie in the least, but the characters are so charismatic and alive that you sometimes forget what a craphole situation they’re in. Awesome movie but be warned, this is what I like to call one of them ‘reading movies.’

Timecrimes - Another one of them reading movies, this time from Spain. This one has an interesting time travel concept, where a dude encounters some bad stuff and is given a second chance to make things right by the use of milky time travel tech. I must say that while the concepts of this movie were good (time travel, spying of a woman undressing in the woods, etc.), the execution was iffy at best. I felt like the dude bro was just doing things because that was the way the movie was scripted, either that or he’s really stupid. Oh well, it was worth a shot. I feel like I’ll have a better chance with Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits for some crimes in time. Check back soon; it’s in my queue.

The Game - This was one of my faves but over the past seven or eight years I’ve fallen out of touch with it. The movie is good--a total mindfrack. My biggest qualm with the movie nowadays is the ending: after the unexpected twist ending, Michael Douglas should be pissed off. A lot pissed off. But instead, he’s all like “Oh, whatev’s. Thanks for the B-day gift, Bro Sean Penn.”

Ratatouille - For all my love of Pixar, I had never previously seen this movie. For some reason or another I just never had the opportunity to do so, and the one time I did sit down to watch it I accidentally took an angry nap (you know, the kind of nap where you wake up sweating and really upset). After that, I was in no mood to continue. So a year and a half later, I finally got this on Blu-Ray and gave it a gander. Surprise, surprise, I enjoyed it. Leave it to the good folks at Pixar to make likeable characters of rats and the French. The movie didn’t knock my socks off, but even a middle of the pack Pixar movie is head and shoulders above most other animated crap out there. Did you hear they’re making a Shrek 5? I hope I’m joking.

F for Fake - A 1970’s documentary about some world class fakery, as presented by Orson Wells, who I have to say, is a truly wonderful narrator. Think James Earl Jones mixed with Shatner. The hoaxes presented herein are about a painter who got a bunch of his works into various art museums under the assumption that they were bona fide originals from famous artists. Another was about the Howard Hughes Biography hoax. The main thing I got from this movie is that the so-called experts are actually just “experts.” By using their expertise to define their expertise, it didn’t take much for the wool to be pulled over their eyes.

Exam - I love these kind of movies: eight people in a room given eighty minutes to figure out the answer to a question. Except they don’t know what the question is. The person to answer correctly gets the job (this is in the near future, at some super mega corporation). Similar to The Cube, but not as many elaborate death traps. It’s great to watch people go from cooperation to fisticuffs when put in seemingly impossible situations. I love to watch how humanity crumbles when all bets are off, like after I bust ass in the subway and riots break out. Ha!

Robocop - Balls awesome.

That's all for this month. Thanks y'all.