Silver Case

“The Good Shepherd” is an amazingly constipated movie. Laborious and slow, filled with bad acting and bad crutches. I was actually astonished how much I ended up disliking it.

Set in 1940’s-50’s-60’s Washington espionage world, it just sucked. All the europeans were foppish homosexuals or traitors. Matt Damon is supposed to be grim, paranoid, and dedicated, but he simply acts with such a rigor [as in mortis, not discipline] that he reminded me more of Keanu Reeves, the world’s worst actor. Angeline Jolie, who absolutely screams SEX, is a horrible actress. That would still be ok in this movie, if she had a lot of sex scenes or long shower sequences, but no, this movie is Eisenhower America, so feast your eyes on her Eisenower hairstyles, Eisenhower dresses, and Eisenhower attitudes towards anal sex, heroin, and bisexuality. When Alec Baldwin did one of the better acting jobs in the movie, you know it’s trouble.

This made me nervous to watch Breach. Thankfully before I turned that on, I decided to clean my room, so I went looking for espionage-oriented podcasts to listen to while I tidied. [basically making piles of shit to take back downstairs and stick in large plastic crates]. I found this very interesting, very scathing review of Breach by the Counter-Intelligence Centre. It is well worth listening to, as the guy being interviewed, a former FBI Counterintelligence expert has real bona fides.

I like movies set in the sixties and seventies… Done well, the era gives them an instant cool-factor regardless of how bad the movie might otherwise be (Bullitt, for example). They also tend to have good soundtracks (Blow), and soundtracks are half the battle in making a compelling trailer. So I was pleased to see a new trailer this week, set in 1970’s San Francisco about the Zodiac killer. Of all the trailers I saw today, this is the one I’d be mostly likely to drag myself to a theatre to see, but even then, only a 65% chance I think.

Another movie that I’d at least try to see on an airplane flight is Pierce Brosnan try to macho-up a bit after everyone who saw the latest James Bond actor realized what a metrosexual pussy Brosnan’s version was. So he grew (glued?) a big, raggedy beard and is playing cowboy in Seraphim Falls which I think will end up being pretty formulaic. The very first scene of the trailer is the “The man who gets Bond lives” style.

Looking like a bad blend of Rear Window, Red Dawn, and any stupid Slasher-movie, I’ll be giving Retardia a miss. Since it’s targetted at the 15-19 crowd, I’m sure I won’t be missed anyway.

Unfortunately this ends my movie trailer review. What’s worse is that I think I have exhausted the pipeline of upcoming movies. Fact of the matter is, there probably isn’t a whole lot to watch during the next three to six months. I picked out perhaps six movies of a seventy that might have looked interesting. uh oh.

If I re-wrote my movie trailer review post, I would stick Babel in a different category: “Movies I’d start to watch on a plane then get bored with and fall asleep.”

This is another movie, like Syriana, with  lots of style, great cinematography, and a whiff of gravitas, but beyond the movie trailer just becomes a long, tedious ramble.  The plot connections between Tokyo (great apartment), Morocco (beautiful desert), and Tijuana (toilet) felt more like a Deux Ex Machina than a serious story.

The saving grace (or final indignity) was that Ling and I watched the show from ‘Gold Class’ — which means $30 tickets to sit on, essentially, a very comfortable Lazy Boy recliner with the other movie patrons far enough away not to be bothersome.

I spent a chunk of the afternoon cramming the katakana using the fantastic kana recognition tool at japanesepod101. After 250 flashcards I’d reward myself with a movie trailer preview. I’ve tested perhaps two thousand kana today and gone through all the trailers left on the Apple website that I thought might be interesting.

Ones I’d want to pay money for this weekend if they were showing.

• The Good Shepherd Starring Robert DeNiro, that’s an immediately good draw. Fictional movie about setting up the CIA in the early 1950’s. Apparently the main character (played by Matt Damon [teeth gritted]) is partially based on James Jesus Angleton. Now the strange thing about that is that James Jesus Angleton was as weird as they got, so I can’t really see how his essence would mix with that of any other character. But whatever, it looks good, it’s set in an unusual time, and Robert DeNiro is running out of years to play cool bad-asses.
• Well, actually, Babel IS showing here and I have already booked tickets for it tonight in Gold Class at VivioCity.
• Ooh, and here is a smart February 16 release for Breach, a (I am surely heavily) fictionalized story about super-traitor Robert Hanssen. I think there is a lot more gunplay and a lot less perversion than reality, but it looks like a pretty good movie. And Chris Cooper looks a lot like the real Robert Hanssen.

Ones that I’d technically pay money for, but it’s unlikely I’ll actually bother to go see, and will end up watching on a plane. Or not.

• Rescue Dawn theoretically might be ok, but I bet it’s formulaic. How many of these movies have you already seen?
• The Lookout might be ok, might be tedious. Hard to guess. The premise at least sounds unique.
• Ohhhh maybe if I was in a brainless mood and Ling and I wanted to watch a show, and nothing else was available, I’d watch the Silver Surfer, but I’ve never been a huge comic book fan, neither tentacle porn nor underwear perverts do much for me.

Something if I see on a plane, I might watch.

• 300. Apparently based on a graphic novel or myth or something. Looked potentially too stylish.
• I have my doubts about this one. May refer to it as The Shitter after watching.
• I’m not exagerating: I’ve never seen any of the Rocky movies.

T.T. Total Turds

• Live Free or Die Hard? How about Bite Me, Bruce Willis.

Movies I’d only watch with my mom and sisters.

• Bride To Terabitha
• Factory Girl
• The Last Mimzy