Movies Watched: Jul 10 – Jul 16, 2016
[Jul 10] “Donnie Darko” (2001)
Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a troubled teenager that starts having visions of a giant bunny rabbit that saves his life and then induces him to commit various crimes. That isn’t a great description of the movie, but I don’t know how to describe it any better, it’s a pretty strange movie. We watched the director’s cut, which adds twenty minutes of footage, and apparently makes an originally ambiguous movie much less ambiguous (it was my first time watching the movie, but Joseph had seen the theatrical cut before.) I’m still not sure what I think of it, it was definitely made very well, and it made me think, but it also made me feel confused and upset once it was over. It’s not a movie that believes in explaining how it works, and I usually have trouble with that, but the fact that it was able to get me to feel so strongly about it means that it actually did a good job of making me care about the characters and invest in the plot. I’m glad I watched it.
[Jul 11] “Tootsie” (1982)
When unemployed actor Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) is unable to get any work, he decides to impersonate a woman and audition for a role in a soap opera. He ends up getting the role, and his experience as a woman ends up changing both his life and the lives of others around him. Tootsie is definitely a comedy, but I appreciated that it had some heart to it. Dustin Hoffman does a fairly convincing job as a woman, he changes his voice and mannerisms quite a bit. The romance was a little bit weird, it’s hard to imagine falling in love with someone who has presented themselves completely differently from who they really are. Also, a lot of the humor comes off as dated, but then, this movie is over 30 years old.
[Jul 12] “The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya” (2010)
The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is a follow up to the anime show The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which we had just finished watching. Kyon wakes up one day to find out that the world around him is entirely different – Haruhi and Koizumi are nowhere to be found, and the alien Miss Nagato and the time traveler Miss Asahina are now completely normal people, and no one remembers the world being any different. Like the other anime based movies I’ve seen, I can’t review this as a standalone movie, but I think it does make an effort to be standalone – it introduces the world of Haruhi pretty well before jumping into the main plot, and it tells a conclusive story without depending on the events of the show (the show doesn’t have much of an overarching plot anyway). I absolutely loved this movie. It was definitely nice to see all my favorite characters again, but I think it would have been a great movie regardless. Being stuck in an alternate universe is a pretty common trope, but that’s a terrifying thought in reality, and the movie does a great job of showing how freaked out Kyon is. There’s a lot of emotional depth and character growth; it’s nice to see Kyon go from his usual passive observer role to having to be the agent of change. Also, the pacing is phenomenal – The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is the second longest animated movie ever made (at almost three hours), but it’s never boring or drawn out. I want more!
[Jul 13] “Breakdown” (1997)
Breakdown is an action movie starring Kurt Russell as a guy whose wife goes missing after his car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. The last time he sees her is when she gets into a truck that has stopped to help them, but when he sees the trucker again, he claims to have no knowledge of his wife and denies even having met him at all. This was a fine movie, I don’t have a lot to say about it. Kurt Russell does a good job of going from a normal somewhat inept guy to trying riskier and riskier things as he gets more desperate. The movie soon dispenses with the fiction that no one knows what’s going on, there isn’t a lot of nuance in the movie, and the bad guys are unambiguously bad.
[Jul 14] “The Darjeeling Limited” (2007)
Three dysfunctional brothers travel across India a year after their father’s funeral in an effort to become closer together. The Darjeeling Limited was the first Wes Anderson movie that I saw, and I saw it before I really understood movies, or his style. I just thought it was weird, so I was looking forward to seeing it again and developing a more nuanced opinion. I still think it is one of his weaker movies – it has characters that you kind of hate, but unlike Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums or The Grand Budapest Hotel, I never really stopped hating them. Maybe it’s because both me and Joseph are only children and don’t understand sibling rivalries as much. Also, I get that the movie is a surreal journey but I didn’t like the portion of the story with the child’s death (other than to see Irrfan Khan), it seemed out of place to use that as just a bonding experience.
[Jul 15] “The Last Emperor” (1987)
The Last Emperor is about the life of Puyi, the last emperor of China, who became emperor when he was two and only ruled for four years before he was overthrown (other than a 12 day reign when he was 11). His life didn’t stop being interesting there, he was later recruited by Japan to be the emperor of its puppet state, Manchukuo until the end of World War II. I didn’t know anything about Puyi or his life, so this was a fascinating watch, and it was also a very good movie – it won the Best Picture Oscar. All the actors portraying Puyi did an excellent job, and the movie is an emotional experience as we watch him go from an innocent child to being spoiled and entitled and then back to being humbled. The movie is (mostly) told through a series of flashbacks from Puyi’s life in rehabilitation for being a war criminal, and the use of different color palettes for different periods of his life adds a subtle atmosphere without being distracting like it was in Traffic. The sets and costumes are beautiful, too.
We watched the theatrical edition, which was nearly three hours long. There’s a longer cut (3 hours and 38 minutes) of the movie that was meant to be aired as a miniseries, I’d like to watch that at some point too.
[Jul 16] “WALL-E” (2008)
WALL-E is a trash compactor robot who is all alone on Earth other than neverending piles of trash and a cockroach. One day, another robot (EVE) lands on the planet and his life changes forever. He ends up going on a journey into space and having a major effect on the fate of humanity. I’d never seen this movie before (other than watching the first twenty minutes on a plane once), and it’s part of our ongoing “watch all the Pixar movies” project. I remember hearing a lot of fuss about how it was a really amazing movie because the main characters had basically no dialogue, and that’s true, but I didn’t notice it (which I guess was the point.) It was a cute movie, EVE especially was a great character. WALL-E was fine too, but he’s just the classic, somewhat bumbling, underdog. My favorite scene was the one where they are cavorting in space, you’ll know which one if you see the movie.
The fate of humanity made me very sad, so I feel like I didn’t enjoy the movie as much as I would have otherwise. Also, the antagonist seemed a little forced.