"Bon apetit. It's French..."

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
Peter Greenaway, 1989

Words escape me.
The most challenging, difficult and ultimately disturbing film I've seen.

Goes without saying I liked it.

Slumdog Millionaire

yay.

Sliding Doors

eh.

"The ball is round, a game lasts 90 minutes, everything else is pure theory."

Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run)
Tom Tykwer, 1998

This film came to me extremely hyped. A contemporary international film class of mine raved about it. Friends of mine raved about it. It resulted in the Napoleon Dynamite effect for me-- it took a pretty good film I would have otherwise enjoyed and built it up so much I left feeling disappointed.

I knew before I sat down the story would come in three iterations and I knew how they would end. There were some happy surprises along the way and although I was unimpressed throughout the first go around, I liked the movie more as it went on.

However, when all was said and done, I wasn't blown away as others assured I would be.

Kinda Dug It.

"And What is it What Goes on in this Post Modern Gas Chamber?"

Naked
Mike Leigh, 1993

Amazing. Full of gems:
Louise: How did you get here?
Johnny: Well, basically, there was this little dot, right? And the dot went bang and the bang expanded. Energy formed into matter, matter cooled, matter lived, the amoeba to fish, to fish to fowl, to fowl to frog, to frog to mammal, the mammal to monkey, to monkey to man, amo amas amat, quid pro quo, memento mori, ad infinitum, sprinkle on a little bit of grated cheese and leave under the grill till Doomsday.

Brian: What are you doing here?
Johnny: Well, I was standing over *there*, but that didn't seem to be working out for me, so I moved over here, but this one isn't much better.

"Was I bored? No, I wasn't fuckin' bored. I'm never bored. That's the trouble with everybody - you're all so bored. You've had nature explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the living body explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the universe explained to you and you're bored with it, so now you want cheap thrills and, like, plenty of them, and it doesn't matter how tawdry or vacuous they are as long as it's new as long as it's new as long as it flashes and fuckin' bleeps in forty fuckin' different colors. So whatever else you can say about me, I'm not fuckin' bored. "

I love the way Johnny travels through London, plays everyone he meets for fools and challenges perceptions of reality everyone takes for granted. Although two on screen rapes seem a bit much, and this is truly a dark and twisted film, I really really enjoyed it.

REALLY dug it.

"Can You Dig It?!"

The Warriors
Walter Hill, 1959

I played the video game back when it came out in 2005 and it was awesome. Unfortunately, the movie didn't live up to the greatness of the game. It's sad times when a video game adaptation outshines the source film.

The film was based off a comic book, so I understand what the director was going for. However, I found the acting to be sterile and awkward, the story unengaging and monotonous and the characters unsympathetic. The only good scene in the movie came near the end once the Warriors got back to Coney. The Rogues leader sits in his car, clanking beer bottles together and chants, "Warriors. Come out and play," over and over. It was pretty eery, but unfortunately the rest of the movie fell short of the mark.

Wasn't Feeling It.

Image Courtesy of gothamist.com.

"I've got three dead bodies on a sidewalk off Venice boulevard, Justine, I'm sorry if the goddamn chicken got... overcooked."

Heat
Michael Mann, 1995

This one pulls you in right away and you don't want to stop watching until all 12 hours of the film are finished. Five minutes in and Boondock Saints was completely ruined for me. As it turns out, Agent Smecker in Boondock Saints is nothing but a poorly realized facsimile of Vincent Hanna.

Anyway. Heat was Awesome.

Really Dug It.

Image Courtesy of kotaku.com.