Saw some interesting movies recently.
1st up was a long overdue rewatching of the Godfather trilogy. Wow, so many years since I'd seen these it was like watching them fresh. The first two do indeed go quite well together, part two being both a prequel and a sequel, a stylistic method still rare even to this day and most likely why people were happy with the two parts representing the trilogy.
After watching part 3 I was slightly at a loss as to why the movie was hated on so much. I was tempted to start a thread asking why. However, there's lots of opinions already on the web as to why this is the case and after taking in those opinions I could see why. It's kind of an ok average movie in abstraction, but a bit of a stretch in aspect of being a sequel. Weirdly for me, I actually had more 'issues' watching part 2, though I can't remember what those were now. All in all it's a good day spent watching them all IMO.
Then I saw one of Oliver Stone's earliest beloved creations Salvador about the troubles in El Slavador in the late 70s early 80s starring James Woods and James Bulushi. It starts off fairly crappy, like a poor Cheech and Chong movie but gradually escalates into a monumental human tragedy. Wood's performance in particular is mesmerising. It's one of those movies that makes you understand why the Oscars are given to certain movies while others are just popcorn.
Unfortunately for this movie, it was released the same year as another Oliver Stone classic, Platoon and it was Platoon that gobbled up all the Oscars that year leaving the, IMO, superior Salvador somewhat in the shadows of popular movie history recognition. I remember seeing Platoon at the time and not being really taken by it, most of it feeling forced and designed for Oscars rather than clutching at reality. Salvador comes across as a better movie to me because it really does feel genuine, even when it's obviously making purely for the movie statements. I've never been a great fan of Stone, his statements always feeling too ham-fisted, but this movie is now in my personal list of classics.
Last night I saw The Mission, another Oscar gobbler from the 80s, and, boy, this was a great movie. The entire premise was too much of a borefest concept for me to see at the time, it's not by any means a child's movie, but now that adulthood has finally set in it's easy to see why this movie is so great. Top billing goes to Robert De Niro, but he's actually about the third character of importance after the amazing performances of Jeremy Irons and Ray McAnally, two Catholics in emotional and philosophical turmoil over the affairs of indigenous South American tribesmen facing the horrors of Spanish and Portuguese expansion.
On top of the quality script, performances, subject matter and setting there's even a top-of-class musical score by Ennio Morricone - what more could you ask for. Like Salvador, this movie feels real, ball-breakingly real and there's only one scene in the entire movie which feels like a movie contrivance. I've read some negativity about the movie, criticising it's racial premise that the Catholics are somehow providing perfect beauty and that the movie is just Catholic propaganda. From this perspective it's true, we don't see any negative aspects of Jesuit involvement in SA and it could come across as a whiteman knows best movie, but this belies the universal human aspects of the story. Like Salvador ths movie is just about human beings having their humanity challenged by humans without humanity, and in that respect the fact that it's Catholics instead of the crew of the Enterprise makes no difference in my books.
So a whole batch of They Don't Make 'Em Like That Anymore movies (though they probably do, we just missed the hype under the weight of normal hype) that are all right up there as masterpieces of the format that you'd do a lot worse than taking the time to watch.
I also just saw Cosmopolis. This is a weird one, not for the easily angered. It's directed by David Cronenberg and stars Twighlight's Robert Pattinson, now there's a mix to throw the hate crowd into a pool of confused mush. Well, to be honest, the movie is a confused mush anyway. It's actually supposed to be a confused mush, that's it's whole point. It's kind of like a cross between the third Matrix movie (the talking aspect, not the action aspect) and a David Lynch movie with sprinklings of a Terry Gilliam movie. Think Matrix conversations, Brazil's characters and Blue Velvet's abstract extremity.
A Billionaire whizz kid goes on a road movie through the traffic jams of a large city inside a state of the art limousine, the people and events he encounters being a confusing plot of sub-reality and fantasy guided by a sense of modern normality. I'll be honest, I didn't understand half of what was happening, but I'll also be honest and say that, for the most part, I didn't entirely care what was happening. It's one of those movies of the type I used to watch after 10pm while getting myself in the mood for sleep or possibly slightly stoned as a teenager and just enjoy the pleasures of riding the atmosphere of a weird movie, probably attaching my own meaning to the presented abstractions alongside taking in tidbits of the movie's more obvious messages. One of those movies that's more atmosphere than coherence. Worth a view if you like the bizzare as it's beautifully shot and put together, totally avoid if you can't bare not understanding what's going on.
