"Le Piscine"
(StudioCanal, 1969)

"The Seventh Victim"
(RKO, 1943)
A slow-moving Val Lewton horror film, featuring a young Kim Hunter as a girl trying to find her missing sister... Apparently this is a film about Satan worshippers -- I say "apparently" because it was so dull we stopped watching it midway through, so we never got to the devil-related parts. Oh, well. Can't win 'em all.

"Shaun The Sheep - Off The Baa!"
(Hit Entertainment, 2008)
My whole family loves the "Wallace & Grommit" series, and while these Shaun The Sheep episodes have a different tone (there's no dialogue, and thus no verbal humor) they are also a delight. These cartoons are a lot of fun... if you liked "Wallace & Grommit", you'll love these, too. Good for small children, as well.

"Harold And Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay"
(New Line, 2008)
As a middle-aged fart, stoner humor is a little bit lost on me, but this was a pretty fun, funny movie. This sequel shows our two heroes almost all grown-up, entering the post-college working world and about to take one last big vacation -- to Amsterdam, of course. Naturally, Kumar blows it and gets them arrested on the flight over the Atlantic, and since they are non-white, Harold and Kumar get a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay. Their trip to the netherworld of the Bush-eralegal system doesn't last long: after a quick and repulsive scene in a holding cell, they escape with surprising ease, and make it back to the States with the help of some Cuban boat people who just happened to be having a weenie roast outside the prison. While the film probably could have explored the horrors of Guantanamo a little more, it's okay that it didn't -- the movie hums along at a quick pace, and it's funny. Rob Cordry (from Comedy Central's The Daily Show) has a great time as a racist, bullheaded Homeland Security officer, while Neil Patrick Harris is great reprising his role from the first Harold & Kumar film. I hadn't realized that Dubya Bush would play such a large part in the end of the film: how funny to watch this on his last night in office!

"Humboldt County"
(Magnolia Films, 2008)

"Persepolis"
(Sony, 2008)
The film adaptation and the original graphic novel of Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical Persepolis saga seem in many ways to be mutually exclusive: if you see the movie first, you'll probably be satisfied with it, and may find the books to be a mere retread; if you read the books first, however, you may find the film to be lacking, in an odd way, the interactivity and imaginativeness that the comic book medium demands and enables. The film seems strangely flat and literal-minded, while the comics give a stronger flavor of the author's personality and sense of humor. Still, it's a great story either way, giving the world a glimpse into the cultural-social pressure cooker of Iran in the late 1970s to the present day. To many in the West, Iran seems like a closed society, and Ms. Satrapi, a social liberal with affinities for Western pop culture, parts the veil for others to peer inside. The film is curious in that it shows her personal journey out of Islamist Iran more as a narrative of failure and alienation, and dwells on the oppressiveness of the Iranian theocracy without giving as much of a sense of the subtle personal triumphs that individuals can enjoy, despite living in a dictatorship. The film seems joyless, whereas the books had more of a sense of humor and joie de vivre. Also, it's interesting how we're given more of a glimpse of the bawdiness and saltiness of Satrapi's grandmother, material that was more fully explored in the print sequel, Embroideries. Worth checking out, although we liked the books better.

"John Adams"
(HBO, 2008)

"A History Of Violence"
(New Line, 2005)
Viggo Mortensen stars in this crime-action flick about a humble, small-town man who turns out to be a retired mafia hitman in hiding. The script and performance are equally adequate and underwhelming -- this film has a few moments of panache, but mostly I felt myself wondering, what exactly was the point of this? It was okay, not great, though.

"Tropic Thunder"
(Dreamworks, 2008)

Joe Sixpack's Film Blog
Main Film Index