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Deconstructing Harry
I actually liked the narrative form of this movie (flashbacks of narrator's life mixed with flashbacks of narrator's fictional life) but the language in this movie made my dad yell at me for hours about the corruption of the American film industry. My father, well, sucks. The odd thing is he blames Woody Allen for Columbine, and not the excessively violent movies that make up my father's usual movie intake.
Last Supper
Moral of the story - kill them when you get the chance.
Happiness
What a sick, sick movie. This is my kind of comedy.
Princess Mononoke
There is always the breakup movie. This is a weird one to be that one, but what can you do. Fun movie, though.
American Beauty
Wonderfully told. Kevin Spacey is amazing as always.
Fight Club
I know this got mixed reviews, but I had a great time watching it.
American Pie
Pretty hilarious. Especially the what's my name bitch line.
The Blair Witch Project
Not as scary as expected, alas, but still very very good. Well- made, and cheap, even as indie films go. Hurrah for the underdogs of film students! The students were, well, realistically fucked up and frustrated and scared. See it.
Dial M for Murder
My friend Ed said of this "Ya know, if Darth Maul had any fraction of the buildup of the villian in this movie, the Phantom Menace might have been good." Smart villian, smart good guys, generally witty movie.
Klute
Finally saw this! Donald Sutherland, Jane Fonda, neo-film noirish movie about a prostitute and the crazy person after her.
Run Lola Run
Fun like an MTV video. Fills you up about as much too, but hey. It's still a pleasure to watch.
South Park
I found the musical format to be surprisingly enjoyable. The Les Miz take was cute.
Goodfellas
Yet another step in my quest to watch a bunch of movies I never quite got around to watching before. Another fun mob flick.
Austin Powers, the Spy Who Shagged Me
Heh. Pretty funny, plus Scott Evil is amusing.
Maborosi
What a beautiful movie! Ohmygod it was lovely. Yes, very very slow. A young woman recovers over the disappearance of her grandmother and the death of her husband. Not the type of movie I generally watch, but it was by the same director that did After Life, Hirokazu Kore-eda. I must keep my eye out for more of his stuff. Quite beautiful - a series of placid almost-stills, and peaceful quieting background noises. Not lush, just gentle. Amazing usage of light and dark.
The Godfather, Part I
Okay, so I hadn't actually seen this yet. It was good. John and I watched it over Chianti, ragu and perciatelli, and a raspberry custard over chocolate mint biscuit dessert. I acted like my father the whole time and asked, "what's happening next?"
Life is Beautiful
I sure took my time to get around to seeing this. As it happens, I actually only saw it by accident, because a much much worse movie happened to be sold out. Enjoyed the movie, even got a bit sniffly at the end. All in all, the evening worked itself out quite serendipitously.
Irma Vep
Ah. Maggie Cheung is beautiful beautiful beautiful, and the movie recognizes that, self-referentially. Maggie as Maggie in this meta- take on the French film industry, playing a cat-burgler in a silent film remake of an old silent film. Questions of "are we too introverted?" as an industry. Comparisons between French and American and Chinese cinema. And all the background politicing and gossiping of a film set. Fun.

And the last bit, the actual showing of parts of the silent film is gorgeous. Just gorgeous.
Afterlife
This is the best movie I've seen all year. A very very sweet movie about a post-death processing center, where caseworkers ask the dead to pick one happy/meaningful memory that they want to take into the afterlife, and then film it. Goofy premise, but beautifully executed. Documentary style, and very very subdued. The processing center is a run-down office building. No silly special effects. Just ordinary people telling their stories. And finding meaning in everyone's life. And the two old women were just incredibly incredibly cute.
Gods and Monsters
Poignant, but funny.
Open Your Eyes
Ubik-ish Spanish film. Probably better than the other question- reality movies of the year (The Matrix, Existenz, Thirteenth Floor).
Go
Much better than I'd expected (I expected it would suck), but I wouldn't say it was high quality or anything. I still enjoyed it. It reminded me of LockStock, in its non-linear, no-growth, escapist way.
The Opposite of Sex
Generally, pretty good, although the main character was purposefully annoying. The last sequence, which my roommate Anna and I had interpreted completely differently, was well-done, probably *because* we were able to interpret it in such contrasting manners.
Harold and Maude
Thanks.
Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels
No, this was no pulp fiction, but it was an enjoyable time, nevertheless. A sort of fun, escapist film for disillusioned twentysomethings in search of a good time, but without the guilt inspired by watching science fiction.
Rushmore
Ooh! Funny! In a soda-poppy but not too simple way, a la Bottle Rocket. The music is an excellent complement as well. The director seems to have a thing for psychotically earnest characters, and, ya know, I love it.
A Simple Plan
Wish I'd seen it earlier, can't believe it took me so long. Dark humor, grisly murders, the formula that always appeals to me. It was thematically similar to Shallow Grave, which admittedly did it better. Still, there were a great many laugh-out-loud lines in this movie.
Woman in the Dunes
A bit slow, but I expected it to be, since I'd read the book. I was terribly curious how they would film the scenes of the entomologist trapped in a sand pit in an out-of-the-way Japanese village, and am happy to say they did a good job. Sand, rushing like a stream. The costuming of the villagers in a scene at the very end was fascinating - traditional masks mixed with futuristic goggles.
In Dreams
Horror-inspired fantasia. Evil apples. A town covered by a reservoir. Insanity. Of course I liked it. I was originally going to write about how neat it was that a seemingly peaceful thing like the apple was made so sinister, only then I thought, duh, Sleeping Beauty and the Bible did it first.

Stephen Rea was mildly annoying in it, but that was compensated for by a lovely eye piercing scene.

Now, every time I work on my law clinic project defending a Native American tribe from having their cultural property flooded by a reservoir project, I have recurring images of scenes from In Dreams, especially the submerged town scenes. I'm not sure that's a good thing.
Bottle Rocket
One of Gina and Sean's favorite movies. Funny, in a light kind of way. One can't help but cheer for Dignon's good spirit as he blunders his way through robberies.
The Negotiator
Okay, we rented this. It was a family compromise. My dad likes action movies, my brother likes Samuel L. Jackson, and I like Kevin Spacey. Oh do I like Kevin Spacey. While watching this movie, I realized at least partly why I have this current professor-crush. It's the Kevin Spacey factor. Definite similarities, in the voice, the mannerisms. I am almost tempted to see A Time to Kill (ugh) just to see Kevin Spacey as a prosecutor, to test whether these similarities hold.

I am not sure I would have liked this movie so much had it not been for Kevin Spacey.
Rudy
You laugh, but somehow I got sucked into this story about a short, not-too-smart, not-too-good-at-football kid who eventually, after bugging his way to the top, got to go on the field just one time at Notre Dame. Oh, the power of pure obsession! The part of this morality tale that I liked the most was that its "message" seemed to be that ya know, even if you have a really stupid dream, and even if fate has it that you probably won't get to fulfill that really stupid dream in a particularly meaningful manner, sometimes if you try really hard and obsessively, you can get a lot of secondary benefits as well.

maybe

The Sixth Sense
Okay, but not amazing. Good twist at the end, but also gets a bit sappy alas. Not scary.
Manhunter
Inspired by the many ads for Thomas Harris's _Hannibal_, I rented Manhunter, the movie based on _Black Dragon_, a sort of prequel to _Silence of the Lambs_. Not so good. You could tell it was the 80's. Plus it dragged. There are, nevertheless, some good reasons to see the movie. First, you get to see Hannibal portrayed by someone other than Anthony Hopkins, which is fairly interesting. If he weren't trumped by Hopkins, the actor would probably be characterized as not doing a bad job. But hey. Second, you can compare, well, basically the same story but done by two different directors. Which is always kinda neat, especially in a random serial killer context as opposed to the all-too-familiar directors-doing-Shakespeare comparison.

no

Dogma
No offense roomies, but I've decided to avoid seeing movies with you ever again. My last two horrible movie experiences occured because of you, and one thing I hate hate hate hate is being forced to sit for two hours watching crap. This was one of those times. Dogma is easily the *worst* movie I was exposed to all year. Terrible acting, poor story, and the so-called "sacriligiousness" embodied in the movie was not really very sacriligious. Lame lame lame. I hate Kevin Smith I hate Kevin Smith I hate Kevin Smith.

By the way, the guy in the beginning of the movie who gets clubbed by those punk devil-kids? That's the god that the protagonists spend much of the movie searching for.
Bowfinger
Only mildly funny, and pretty stupid at parts. Argh. I'm not so crazy about mainstream movies.
The Phantom Menace
I went to go see this because my friends went to go see this. Now, before I rant about this, I'd like to put in the following words: YES, I REALLY LIKED THE ORIGINAL STAR WARS. IT WAS A HUGE PART OF MY CHILDHOOD, AND I MADE FAKE PLANET HOTHS IN MY HOUSE, AND I PRETENDED THAT VERY SOON NOW, I WOULD LEAVE THIS PLANET AND BECOME A JEDI KNIGHT. I EVEN WROTE A PAPER ABOUT STAR WARS IN HIGH SCHOOL. I *STILL* LIKE THE ORIGINAL STAR WARS TRILOGY.

All that hasn't changed, despite the negativity of this review. In fact, part of why I didn't like Phantom Menace is based on my enjoyment and admiration of the original Star Wars. It's like the remaking of Psycho - something that didn't need to be done, and something that I somewhat dreaded for fear it would fuck up memories of the original.

Part of what I had once wrote about Star Wars was its relationship to myth - all that Joseph Campbell stuff that I had (and unoriginally so, because many "real" film/cultural critics also observed this) admired in the first film. This didn't have it. In fact, Lucas undercut it with that horrible horrible explanation of "mitochons" as the source of the Force. Why take something spiritual, beautifully- inexplicable, and drop it down to such a mundane level?

And now, I worry that what I'd once thought to be genius on Lucas's part (making a space movie societally relevant by tying it to stories that echo in all cultures) might have only been mere accident. Because this, this was just another space movie with cool special effects. The majesty was destroyed, by a hokie villian, by explanations of the Force. Even though there were plenty of analogous myths to draw from. My friend John came up with Lancelot and Galahad. I'm sure there are many more.

Oh yeah, and jarjarmustdie.com.
Apt Pupil
Heard it was good. It was not. Nazi war criminal as generic boogeyman. Not really particularized at all. Dumb.
Dark City
The fat guy said this was the best film of 1998. It was not. While it had some interesting ideas about memory, and the soul, and had some darkly seductive sets, the movie dragged, and the acting was none-too-good.