Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai

Miike's Hara-Kiri is beautifully directed, but it's also depressing, boring in parts, and not terribly original. 

I'm having a problem finding movies I'm interested in. I was watching the trailer for Blitz seeing if I could get into it enough to watch it, and I felt like I wanted to see something with swords. I had Hara-Kiri on my list of movies to watch, so I watched the trailer for that. I wasn't exactly sold, but I decided to go with it anyway. I wanted something with a little substance, even if I was running the risk of being bored.

Apparently, according to IMDb, the original was better. I didn't even know there was an original. I found out about the remake when I was looking through Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's reviews. He liked it, and I've always been interested in Miike's stuff. 13 Assassins was good, although everything before that was pretty crazy. I can't even believe I watched that stuff anymore. Supposedly the original draws you in more, and there's more dialogue between the father and the clan guy.

That would've been good, because my suspicions were right: I got bored, especially in the middle. I really lost interested when they took the focus away from the present-day stuff and started talking about how Hanshirô knew Motome. The cinematography was great, though. I loved the camerawork and the sets. It really was beautifully directed. I don't know why Miike shot it in 3D. That probably didn't add much, although it would've been a good effect with the falling snow. 

I liked the slow, deliberate pacing of the camera and people's movements, and the fact that we saw what happened to Motome and then afterward learned why it happened made it more interesting.

What Dreams May Come

What Dreams May Come was a little heavy-handed, and I don't agree with all the things they changed from the book, but I did like seeing where they were going with it and how they represented things.

What Dreams May Come was on my "to see" list for a while, but then I kind of lost interest in it. My boyfriend had a copy of the book on the bookshelf, so I decided to check it out. It was an interesting book, and that renewed my interest in seeing the movie. I would say about 75% of the stuff in the movie wasn't in the book, and a lot of what was in the book probably got lost in translation if you only saw the movie. I think a lot of the themes were probably only hinted at in the movie; they came through for me since I had read the book, but if I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have seen them so clearly.

Wristcutters: A Love Story

Quirky and cute.