Netflix: 9|11

2007-07-07T23:49:53Z

I was truly astonished by this documentary. It has the only footage I have seen of the inside of the World Trade Center on 9/11/01. My wife absolutely refused to watch it, so I watched while she wasn't home. But I am so glad I saw it. It is the only human story of 9/11 I have seen that was actually filmed on that day. There's plenty of footage out there of the plane impacts, people running in fear, etc. - but there is nothing else out there that really tells the story like this movie does. It doesn't have anything truly shocking, so I don't think it is really dangerous to watch...but it is profound and it will stir up memories you may have thought were long forgotten. Seriously, I do recommend this film.

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Netflix: Grandma's Boy

2007-06-08T02:04:18Z

Grandma's Boy (Unrated Edition)

A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, was talking this movie up like crazy. He said we'd love it, it was about video games and pot smoking - okay, he said this to our social circle in general, who is into that kind of thing, which we are not so much, but we are familiar with it.

So we heard this movie was so awesome and of course we got it from Netflix, in fact I bumped it to the top. And damn, were we disappointed. It just didn't cut the mustard at all. The only redeeming part of the movie was the chief nerd with his robot voice and neurotic twitches. The star and his buddies and his granny were all just awful. I really honestly did not like it. The plot was okay, I guess, but the acting and directing were just BAD.

So yeah, I can't recommend this to anybody, sorry. If I keep at least one of you away from it, it will have been worth watching it.

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Pirates of the Caribbean 3

2007-05-30T20:30:35Z

Pirates of the Caribbean 3

We saw Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End the other day with my in-laws. I was honestly not impressed. Some of the special effects were great - my favorite was Davy Jones's tentacles turning into his beard - but some were really awful - I hated the multiple Jacks in the first scene you saw him. The lighting was terribly mismatched anytime there were multiple Jacks on the screen, so it looked like bad special effects rather than blending together as if they were really all in the same scene.

The plot was awfully long and rambling - I didn't check the time during the movie but I was thinking "man, is this ever going to end?" I thought for sure it must be about two hours because that's how long most movies are, but it turned out to be three hours - no wonder it felt so interminable!

I didn't even really like Johnny Depp's performance in this movie. I think he lost the magic that he had in the first movie. On the other hand, Orlando Bloom was pretty wooden in the first movie, but in this one he was great. I do hope this is the last sequel though - it got so much hype and then turned out kind of blah, so they really should give it up after this.

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Breasts: A Documentary

2007-05-10T17:26:05Z

Breasts - A Documentary

This documentary was a lot better than I was expecting. I wanted it to be really good, but I was expecting it would be very lame. Instead, I was treated to a very good movie. The women featured in Breasts are of all different shapes and sizes, and many of them appear topless. This movie is just about breasts, and you will hear the views of the women you are looking at. The mother-daughter pair sitting together topless was kind of unnerving, mainly because I couldn't picture myself doing that!

Unfortunately, most of the women in this movie aren't happy with their breasts - even the ones who went beyond what nature gave them. The transwoman is happy with hers, and the woman with tiny breasts likes hers, but nobody else really loves their breasts. I think mine are a nice feature of my body, I would say I love them.

I enjoyed this movie enough that I promptly ordered the male version, which is about - well, you can figure it out! It should be in the mailbox when I get home tonight.

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Netflix: Last King of Scotland

2007-04-25T01:08:08Z

The Last King of Scotland

I had been wanting to see Last King of Scotland for a while, in fact ever since it was in theaters and I didn't get to see it then. We wanted to see it with some friends and we never got all our schedules together, so we just missed it completely. Then I had to wait for it to come out on DVD, and right when it was about to I bumped it to the top of my Netflix queue and I had it in hand within a day of the DVD release.

I was not disappointed when I watched it. Forest Whitaker won a ton of awards for it, and they were well-deserved. I was kind of surprised that there was very little mention made of the atrocities committed by Idi Amin, instead it was about Amin's insanity - not how he acted out his madness. And it's hard to think that one could ever empathize with a murderous dictator, but Forest Whitaker really makes the character someone you want to see succeed.

We know how it ends, of course - the story of Idi Amin can't end happily. But the movie is nowhere near as much of a downer as I was expecting, and I definitely liked it.

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Paris is Burning

2007-04-06T14:13:11Z

Paris Is Burning

My sister-in-law also subscribes to Netflix, and she gave me a DVD the other day. It was Paris is Burning - she said she had to watch it for a course she's taking, but it's about drag queens so she thought I might like it.

It was great. For all of my involvement in the gay community and leather pageantry, and even with my awareness of drag queen competitions, I had no idea that Harlem in the late 1980s was a hotspot for performance art and drag shows like those shown in the movie. I also didn't know that these balls were vogue-ing long before Madonna - well, at least a little bit, since the documentary was already in production when her song came out.

Ultimately, though, Paris is Burning is a tragic story. The participants find great joy in the balls, but the viewer is frequently reminded that this is often their only joy, as many of them are poor and lower-class, and some experience discrimination for being gay or transgender. And although I didn't realize it while watching the movie, most of the stars have died since the film was made - several from AIDS-related causes - and one who is still alive is living with AIDS herself. This movie is educational and fascinating, but it makes me sad to realize that the world it depicts has been morphed beyond recognition or even left behind completely.

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Netflix: JFK

2007-04-03T18:24:22Z

This is copied from my regular journal; it's not so much a review of the movie as it is writing down thoughts provoked by the movie.

I watched JFK this past weekend because I've been reading about it for a long time, off and on. I think the reason the investigation continues is not because people can't move on from JFK's death - it is more about the government itself, not just one man.

People need to know whether their government was right or wrong in its analysis. If it is wrong, was that due to carelessness? Was that carelessness simply sloppy investigation, or did they unwittingly overlook evidence because they wanted to have an answer? Or was the report deliberately falsified? If so, was it because the government wanted to placate the public, or because there was a deliberate intentional coverup? What was being covered up? Could the deliberate falsification be due to the government knowing its investigation was careless and wanting to seem competent despite some evidence simply being lost? Or was it a deliberate falsification to cover up a true conspiracy? Who was involved in the conspiracy, and how far did it go?

Although "Mr. X" in Oliver Stone's movie JFK says the important question is not who or how, but why, I disagree with this. The American public has moved on from Vietnam, Cuba, etc. Although "why" would be nice to know, it doesn't have any bearing on modern politics. That's all history now. But knowing who did it would let the public trust its government, or find fault with it and change it. The continued importance of the JFK assassination investigation is not even about the killing itself: the reason we need to know who killed Kennedy is because we need to know if the Warren Report, a government-generated document, was true or false. That information is why thousands of people spend hours upon hours researching this.

Unfortunately, I don't think we will ever know the truth. Virtually all of the records are already available; the remainder will be opened over the next 10 years. (Yes, there's a line in that link about some records possibly remaining sealed forever, I did see that.) But really...we already know pretty much everything there is to know. If there is a massive conspiracy and coverup, we will never know that...what would anybody who is still holding onto the secrets want to divulge them for at this point? It's a painful part of American history, and we can talk about it till the sun goes supernova, but I just don't think what really happened will ever be revealed.

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Netflix: Open Water

2007-03-26T22:00:09Z

Open Water

This movie is the worst movie I remember having seen, ever. I fell asleep during Kill Bill: Volume I and Anastasia, but those were not as bad as Open Water. In fact, the previous "worst movie I've ever seen," which was Bring It On 3: All or Nothing, was not even this bad.

Open Water is based on a true story, that of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who went on a scuba trip along the Great Barrier Reef and were left behind by the dive boat because a crew member took a faulty head count. Beyond that, the movie is fiction, of course, because we have no idea what happened to the Lonergans - we only know that some of their equipment washed up on beaches after they disappeared.

Open Water is not a horror movie. It is not a psychological drama. It is not about interpersonal relations. It is utterly boring, the acting is wooden, the whole thing is just terrible. Two people trapped in the middle of the ocean could be a really interesting movie, but Open Water is not that movie. The main characters are whiny and annoying and the actors deliver the lines like they're reading the phone book. For some reason there is a sequel being made...I can't imagine how bad that is going to be!

After we watched Open Water, my wife insisted that I had to let her watch something good for the rest of the night. But what turned out to be on TV? Bring It On 3 just happened to be on! So I made her watch that too, and we just had an evening of really bad movies.

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Netflix: Ice Castles

2007-03-21T16:27:44Z

Ice Castles

Okay, it is completely my fault that I watched this. The description was too good to pass up:

Considered too old for a professional ice-skating career, 16-year-old Alexis (Lynn-Holly Johnson) nonetheless triumphs to become a champion. Tragically, she falls and suffers a brain injury that leaves her nearly blind. With the help of her father (Tom Skeritt) and her boyfriend, Nick (Robby Benson), Alexis attempts, against all odds, to again become a top-ranked skater in director Donald Wry's Oscar-nominated romantic drama.

The only good thing about this movie was Lynn-Holly Johnson. Seriously. Colleen Dewhurst and Tom Skeritt were at their usual worst, and Robby Benson's character just made me want to barf. But Lynn-Holly Johnson, who is apparently a professional ice skater, is also a pretty darn fine actress. Her blindness was believable - how often does that happen?!

The story itself, frankly, sucked. If I had a dollar for every hokey minute in that movie, I'd be buying a new iPod Shuffle. It just wasn't enjoyable...a sense of glurge permeated the whole thing. (Which, again, was quite apparent in the description.)

Oh, there was one other good thing - all the funny 70's hairstyles on all the girl skaters. Ha!

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Catwoman

2007-03-18T00:56:53Z

Catwoman

I caught Halle Berry's Catwoman at a friend's house. We had just finished watching something else and this was coming up next. We decided we would give it a few minutes, and if it sucked, we would change the channel.

Little did we realize that it would be so bad we'd end up watching the whole thing!

Seriously, this movie was just amazingly bad. Halle Berry's acting has never been more fake, I've never seen her perform so badly. This is not even the same actress that we know from X-Men, Gothika, or just about anything else she's done. It's just THAT BAD.

And the movie itself has virtually no plot. I remember glancing at the clock while we were watching, and I was amazed that we were 90 minutes into the film and it hadn't started yet! It doesn't get much worse than Catwoman. When it was in theaters I really wanted to see it but I am SO glad I didn't pay money for this.

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