Category: Culture

4 bare­bones movie reviews:

Le Pacte des Loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf)

This French film is often com­pared to Crouch­ing Tiger, Hid­den Drag­on and it is sim­i­lar inso­far as the fight sequences are well chore­o­graphed by Tak-ngai Yeung and shot in the Hong Kong style. It was also flam­boy­ant­ly edit­ed by anoth­er Asian, David Wu. But, as I said, it is a French film and takes place in France. The plot is a bit crinkly and a bit thread­bare in spots, as it appears the direc­tor had too many direc­tions he want­ed to go in and could­n’t decide to nar­row it down enough. Cheva­lier Gr goire de Fron­sac, the king’s nat­u­ral­ist, and his native Amer­i­can blood broth­er Mani are called in to the French coun­try­side to inves­ti­gate the mys­te­ri­ous maul­ings of women and chil­dren by a beast. Of course, the Lords and Church offi­cials do not lis­ten to him or the sur­viv­ing vic­tims and insist it is just a wit­tle bit­ty wolfikins. Pol­i­tics, reli­gion, and a bor­del­lo wench named Sylvia all have a hand in the pot and Fron­sac’s goose just might be cooked.

The Tao of Steve

Not near­ly as high in pro­duc­tion val­ues as Le Pacte, but this film isn’t con­cerned with look as much as its moral. Dex is a fatass no-account man’s man who knocks off a bong of pot every morn­ing instead of drink­ing cof­fee. despite his obe­si­ty and gen­er­al unap­peal­ing nature, he gets absolute­ly any woman he wants. his rules are the Tao of Steve:

1. Be Desire­less
2. Be Excel­lent
3. Begone

He does­n’t have a prob­lem with this life until he meets Syd and is smit­ten. Lit­tle does he know of the past between them. Will she domes­ti­cate this boor­ish loutish oafish man? I sup­pose I had no need to say it four times.

Donnie Darko

This is a damn good movie. A tor­ment­ed high school boy named Don­nie Darko hal­lu­ci­nates a giant deathshead hare who tells him to do things and pre­dicts the end of the world to occur right before Hal­loween. Every­one treats Don­nie like a rabid ani­mal, even to some extent his girl­friend. I think she gets off on the fact that he is a nut­ball. This treat­ment only increas­es his alien­ation. He learns about Time Trav­el from Grand­moth­er Death, uncov­ers a child pornog­ra­phy ring led by a moti­va­tion­al speak­er, and isn’t very com­mit­ted to Sparkle Motion. But hey, its all in a days work when you’re await­ing the end of your world.

Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run)

Ger­man pop-cul­ture post­mod­ernist MTV music video. Lola has 20 min­utes to get $100,000 or else his boyfriend gets killed. Now, I saw the dubbed ver­sion of this, which does not add to my movie expe­ri­ence. It is like a unsuc­cess­ful pro­to­type of the TV show 24. I think it tries to make a state­ment about how lit­tle instances of con­tact can deter­mine future events. Caramelized chaos the­o­ry. and Lola sor­ta has this super scream­ing pow­er. Need­less to say it runs through 3 dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the 20 minute peri­od end­ing with the oblig­a­tory hap­py clo­sure. It is post­mod­ernism with­out a project, Lola is ren­nt in two. God that was a hor­ri­ble pun.