javathehutt Reviews

Idiocracy (2006)

Suhrvivul uv the fiddist

[9/10 · 2 September 2006]

(Since at this point there has been no publicity for this movie, about anything I say is a spoiler, so read at your own risk.)

Wow! I haven't laughed this hard all the way through a movie in a long time. As of right now (Sept 1), I have seen absolutely no publicity for this movie, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. Mike Judge did not disappoint me.

This movie was intelligently stupid. If you liked Team America, you should enjoy this as well. I think that Mike Judge lovers from Beavis to Office Space will also enjoy this movie. Be prepared for quite a bit of language, but understand that it is making fun of gratuitous profanity.

For one thing, it is perhaps the most witty forecast for the future I think I've seen. In a democracy, majority rules. The problem with that is that if the majority is a bunch of imbeciles, they are going to make imbecilic decisions. The prologue to the movie had me rolling. It compares the mentality of the intelligentsia vis a vis the mentality of the... er... trailer trash in regards to producing offspring. The white collar couple is very "careful" about having a kid, so careful they don't end up having a kid at all. On the other hand, the trailer trash basically cannot hiccup without producing a kid. It was a hilarious intro to the movie that really set the stage for the rest of the movie as a hysterical event.

The humor on the surface level may appear extremely low-brow, but what makes it so funny is that it is actually making fun of the abyss to which our humor can drop.

I was impressed with the acting. The tendency, it seems, is to over-act when your "playing dumb" in a movie, but the actors in this movie did a fantastic job of not over-acting their dumbness. Was particularly impressed with Dax Shepard, who could have very easily been not as funny as he was.

I remember the ending seemed kind of weak, but it may have just been because I was tired of seeing Luke Wilson (not my favorite). Definitely worth seeing!

Omagh (2004 TV Movie)

The Screen Becomes a Window

[9/10 · 30 January 2006]

I do not believe I have ever seen a movie that more truthfully and compellingly captures tragedy than Pete Travis's Omagh.

Omagh tells the story of the 1998 Real IRA bombing that killed 29 people in the city of Omagh, Northern Ireland, and the aftermath that followed. Yet what endears me to this film is that this could have been any town, any family, any tragedy. The film is completely without frills. It is one of the few films I've seen that does not romanticize death and tragedy. It has no towering musical score telling your emotions where to go (there is no score at all, actually), no dramatic final words, no sanguine epitaphs. Instead, Travis shows us what the camera usually leaves out -- the dirty dishes after the funeral party has left your house, the ubiquitous reporters asking for pictures of the deceased, the kind but nuisance of a neighbor offering help when you just want to be left alone.

The technical aspects of the film were all very well done, as were the actors' performances. Everything about the film makes you feel as though you are looking through a window into what really happened at Omagh, rather than watching an screen adaptation of the events. Omagh is well worth a see.

The New World (2005)

More like watching a poem than a movie

[10/10 · 30 January 2006]

If you're looking for your typical Colin Farrell action movie, you'll definitely want to pass on this. If you like movies to be spoon-fed to you in bite-size plot points, you'll want to pass. Malicks New World is more like watching a poem than a movie.

The New World traces the virgin paths of emotion and contemplation traveled by these characters inwardly as they encounter cultures and peoples of which they could not have conceived until now. I found a bittersweet melancholy in the way the inner journeys of Pocohantas (Q'Orianka Kilcher), Smith (Colin Farrell), and Rolfe (Christian Bale) reflect the outward struggle between the Europeans and this new world they have encountered.

The movie was filmed to capture emotion and spirit, thus leaving the audience dizzy with the amour and confusion the characters experience together. The chemistry between the characters was gripping, and the romance elegantly and tastefully captured both visually and audibly in the ballet of prayers they whisper.

I highly recommend The New World to anyone who enjoys artistic films. I only hope that we don't have to wait another eight years for another film from Malick.

Half Light (2006)

Is "Cliche" too cliché to say?

[4/10 · 27 January 2006]

I think that many people today equate a good movie with a movie that totally deceives you until the very end where the truth is revealed and you're left in awe of how clever the filmmakers were. I think we have Shyamalan to thank for this. And so now we have a bunch of people out there that come up with this great idea for a movie, but that's it. Yet people don't seem to care because they are just interested in being duped and surprised.

The difference is this: Shyamalan carefully crafted ALL aspects of his movies, not just the "big idea." What we see today -- in movies like this -- is an interesting "big idea", but other the other aspects of the film are not very well done. But when we judge a movie, we need to look at it for what it is, every single part of it, not just how much it surprises us.

Half-light has a beautiful soundtrack, and the scenery was spectacular as well. However, it just seemed like one cliché after another. All throughout the movie (but especially in the beginning) there was just one conversation after another that was obviously setup to establish ideas, setting, character, time lapse, etc. They spent all their time trying to creatively deceive us, and hardly any time creatively establishing these elements of the story. I also found the characters uninteresting and flat; not that the acting was bad (it wasn't great) but the characters were not developed. But that's just my two cents.