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.

Let My People Go!

Let My People Go! is a really weird French farce. I don't regret seeing it, but I wouldn't exactly recommend it, either. It has its funny moments, but the main character can be tough to watch.

This looked interesting from the trailer, and at least the person whose IMDb review was on top liked it, so that was enough for me. I liked the idea of Finland and France and a Jewish family and it all seemed very confusing and bizarre, and it was. Bizarre anyway, not so much confusing. It was tough to get a handle on the context. All the houses in Finland were so bright; was it exaggerated to make a point, or is that just normal? Everything in Ruben's house was so old. Was that supposed to say something about his parents, or is that just how it is in France?

I'm glad they didn't do the whole movie in Finnish; I didn't like that very much. I didn't like the French much better. It was kind of distracting because I kept getting caught up on words I could recognize. One time I even figured out a whole sentence. I think it was "how are things with Teemu." Not exactly a monumental achievement, but still.

In Time

In Time's concept and world are cool, but they're wasted on a lackluster plot and Justin Timberlake's bad acting.

I was interested in this movie when it came out, and I remembered it had gotten semi-favorable buzz. I couldn't think of anything else I wanted to see this weekend. I think it would've been a better movie without Justin Timberlake. I looked over Ebert's review after I watched it, and he thought Justin was great, but I'm not with him on that. His acting was terrible; it pulled me out of the movie practically every time he said something.

It's totally engaging just because of the concept, but plot is a letdown. They could've done a lot more with it. It was cool seeing people like Pete from Mad Men, Cillian Murphy, and Matt Bomer. They all really helped carry the movie. There shouldn't have been so many "time" puns. It got ridiculous.

In the House

In the House was appropriately tense, and it had some interesting moments, but it all fell apart at the end and rendered the entire movie pointless.

It's been five months since I saw a movie I disliked as much as In the House, so I guess that's a good thing. I was interested in it based on the trailer, and I forgot to check and see if it was any good or not before I decided to watch it, but I probably would've watched it even if I had done my research. It's tough to watch movies in a foreign language. You have to read the whole time, and you miss out on getting to watch what's going on. French is cool, though. I didn't used to like it, but it's starting to grow on me.

World War Z

The zombies in World War Z are effectively disturbing, but there's really no reason to watch it.

World War Z is another movie that I didn't want to see. The little ant-people in the trailer didn't make it look interesting, and neither did anything else. Roeper said it was "entertaining as hell," though, so I figured I might as well see what it was all about. It turns out my initial reaction was accurate. There isn't really any reason to see this movie, unless you just have an interest in watching Brad Pitt fight zombies.

Brad does a fine job with the character, but it's still not very believable. The guy is just too perfect. He's always calm, always joking; it doesn't work. The zombies were effectively creepy. Even if the CG did look bizarre, it was still scary seeing a crowd of zombies coming at you like that, and the speed with which they were able to turn an entire city was impressive.

The Berlin File

 If you know Korean, you should definitely watch The Berlin File. Otherwise, it's probably going to be confusing. I didn't know what was going on at least half the time, but there was some cool action/spy stuff, and the plot reveal was satisfying. 

I was interested in The Berlin File after I saw the trailer for it, but Roeper never reviewed it, so I had to rely on IMDb. It was rated 6.6, so that was inconclusive, but the top reviewer liked it, so that was good enough for me. It turned out to be insanely confusing. I think you have to watch it twice if you don't speak Korean. They showed text with people's names/professions when we first saw them at the beginning, but it didn't help at all; there wasn't time to commit any part of that to memory, and then I spent the entire rest of the movie just trying to figure out who was who/what was going on.

That made it more satisfying when it was all revealed at the end, though. Every bit of information I managed to figure out was a triumph. It didn't help that there were North Koreans and South Koreans that were all Korean. At least Myeong-soo Dong was wearing a hat for a while so I could get a handle on who he was.

The Heat

There were a couple scenes in The Heat that weren't funny, and Sandra Bullock's face is a disaster, but Melissa McCarthy carried the movie and kept me laughing entire way through. 

I thought the trailer for The Heat was funny enough, but I figured the movie would be pretty dopey, and I wasn't interested in seeing it. Everybody seemed to like it after it came out, though, and Roeper gave it a good review, so I didn't want to miss out. I'm definitely glad I saw it. It was just as funny as the trailer, and unlike so many movies, it didn't have all the good jokes in the trailer. There were tons of good jokes for the whole movie, not just the three or four you see in the trailer. And the director says in the commentary that he likes to put alternate stuff in the trailer so there's new stuff to see when you watch the movie, so there you go.

The first thing I noticed in the movie was that Sandra Bullock looks terrible. It's like she went to her plastic surgeon and said "give me the Michael Jackson." I'm so glad I didn't see this in the theater. It would've been like Sylvester Stallone in The Expendables all over again. Blech. I can kind of relate to Ashburn, though.