MetaChat - A weekend of cheerful movies!

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05 March 2007

A weekend of cheerful movies! Saw "Zodiac" on Saturday night, and "Children of Men" last night. Both of them excellent, but I do increasingly understand the impulse to flee to a secret cabin in the woods.

post by: scody at: 14:35 | 27 comments

I'm torn about the Zodiac movie. I've always been fascinated with the case, but I really fucking hate Robert Downey Jr.

posted by jonmc 05 March | 14:36

Really? I love him, personally, but if you don't like him, he'll drive you nuts in this -- he's hyper-Downey. But if you're interested in the case, you might want to give it a shot anyway -- the movie's great, very Lumet-esque in that gritty, '70s cinema way.

posted by scody 05 March | 14:50

So Zodiac's worth seeing? I was thinking about seeing it this weekend, but I wasn't up for 2 hours and 40 minutes of serial-killer movie. There isn't much else showing here though.

posted by mullacc 05 March | 14:50

I was working through a Criterion Collection back log for some of this weekend:

Seijun Suzuki's Youth of the Beast: technically interesting if not totally engaging Yakuza flick. Some fun over the top performances.

Antonioni's L'Eclisse: I love L'Avventura but took forever to get around to watching this one. Soo good. very alienated and slow and hypnotic. Had lots of those lovely shots of huge deep focus landscapes and cityscapes with a few tiny little people in them or even none at all...

(Ironically, I totally missed the real eclipse.)

posted by Lentrohamsanin 05 March | 14:55

I liked Zodiac. I thought that although long, the time was used well. And the movie is less about the serial killer than on the cops in different jurisdictions and the press.

I grew up in Northern California and remember hearing about the Zodiac killer on the news, but I was too young to make much sense of it.

I thought Downy Jr. turned in a great performance in this.

posted by birdherder 05 March | 14:58

I watched Repo Man like 3 times. Go figure. And then Requiem for a Dream, which is so damn depressing I can't stand it. I'm going to go home and watch Lair of the White Worm and I don't care if my whole household makes fun of it, which they totally will, since they started to last night before they made me turn it off. Either that or Yojimbo; we're on another Kurosawa kick around the house; Seven Samurai was last Thursday night.

posted by mygothlaundry 05 March | 15:01

Really? I love him, personally,

[rant]

Yup, loathe him to the bone, for reason that heve less to do with his acting than with Downey himself. He's the epitome of what drives me nuts, a smug little yuppie who can't keep his nose out of a bag of blow even after repeated attempts at helping him, who then whines about being sent to jail. And after proving himself such a moral exemplar, he loves to tell the world what they should think about major issues. Give me a break.

[/rant]

posted by jonmc 05 March | 15:04

Oh man, mgl now I have to go out and find Lair of the White Worm. It's been years since I saw it.

posted by arse_hat 05 March | 15:05

I kinda like Downey. He's a would-be Gaston Modot.

posted by Hugh Janus 05 March | 15:10

(re: Downey) Ah! I just meant I loved him as an actor; after all these years in L.A., I think I've just become immune to smug yuppies who can't keep their noses out of blow... the whole city's lousy with 'em.

If you want to get me on a rant about actors I hate personally, though, someone just say the words "Tom Cruise." I can get myself worked up so fast that my head will often start spinning around in as little as 30 seconds.

And yeah, "Zodiac" is long, but the time is definitely well-spent as the investigations drag on for years. It's miles away from Fincher's grand guignol schtik in "Seven" (which is one of those movies I liked at the time, then gradually began to despise the more I thought about it), and much more compelling and chilling (to me) as a result.

posted by scody 05 March | 15:14

I loved Lair of the White Worm! Year and years, yep. Cool find.

posted by rainbaby 05 March | 15:18

Cruise is a nutcake, but he earns a few points for his good performance as one of my heroes.

posted by jonmc 05 March | 15:21

I couldn't remember the name of the woman in Lair of the White Worm I thought was so hot (Amanda Donohoe), so I looked it up and was shocked to see that Hugh Grant is in it! I don't remember that at all. (Then again, I think it was one of those movies we put on when we were very, very high.)

And I, too, hate Tom Cruise. Always have. The fact that I have never seen Top Gun is a point of personal pride with me.

posted by jrossi4r 05 March | 15:29

Lair of the White Worm was based on a Bram Stoker story...updated for the 1980's.

I LOVED Children of Men, but I have to wait until next week to see Zodiac to be able to use the discount coupon.

I just finished reading What was She Thinking: Notes on a Scandal--god, I don't want to wind up like that.

My embarrassing celebrity crush was John Travolta when I was 10.

posted by brujita 05 March | 15:40

We saw Zodiac on Friday night. It was good. Very oppressive kind of vibe to it. And I thought Mark Ruffalo put in a great performance.

posted by gaspode 05 March | 16:07

I'd planned to see Zodiac last weekend but then I found out my partner wants to see it, too, and he was out of town on a family thing. So I caught up with a couple of Guy Maddin movies I've been wanting to see: The Saddest Music In The World (which is wonderfully insane and insanely wonderful), and Cowards Bend The Knee, which was also good but a little harder to get into. I think I need to see it again.

posted by BoringPostcards 05 March | 16:18

coincidence!

I've reading up a lot on Zodiac for technical reasons (it was shot 100% digital) just this weekend!!! (I'm also a big Harris Savides fan)

how does the movie look? did you see it at the ArcLight?

posted by matteo 05 March | 16:27

and by the way:

From Paramount's "handbook of production information," director of photography Harris Savides describes in simple tech-speak how the technology used to shoot the vivid, visceral Zodiac works

posted by matteo 05 March | 16:30

Cowards Bend The Knee, which was also good but a little harder to get into. I think I need to see it again.

Maddin's commentary track on Cowards is fascinating if creepily confessional at times. It does illuminate some things, particularly some of the semi-autobiographical bits.

And be sure to see Careful if you haven't already. It's my favorite Maddin/Toles movie.

posted by Lentrohamsanin 05 March | 16:34

matteo -- it looks amazing, one of the best-shot pics I've seen in a long time. Rich color and evocative light/shadow that manages to be both evocative and subtle. I was surprised to find out it was all digital -- it really looks like film to me.

And yep, saw both movies at the Arclight -- it's so funny, I was totally dubious about the Arclight when it first opened ("14 bucks a ticket? RESERVED SEATS? You gotta be kidding me!") and now it's always my first choice. Love the place, especially now that select screenings allow you to take cocktails into the theatre with you!

posted by scody 05 March | 16:55

grr... pls. forgive the use of "evocative" twice in one sentence.

posted by scody 05 March | 16:56

And be sure to see Careful if you haven't already. It's my favorite Maddin/Toles movie.

Oh yeah, that was the first Maddin movie I ever saw. Also one of the first DVDs I ever bought.

I'll be sure to check out the commentary on Cowards soon.

posted by BoringPostcards 05 March | 17:23

scody thanks for the evocative comments

posted by matteo 05 March | 18:42

I really need to go out of my now years-long hermit phase and start being social again. Zodiac looks interesting but I don't like going to the movies alone, it just isn't the same.

posted by weretable and the undead chairs 05 March | 20:10

I think I'll go see zodiac. I don't go to very many movies, basically 1 in the last year and a half. This got a great review from the public radio reviewer out here, and he made it sound interesting. I also grew up in Northern CA about an hour from San Francisco, and had fear of the Zodiac Killer when I was a kid. It was all so very vivid to me then, and I think it would make this an interesting flick. I also have some free movie passes, so I'll go see this. I have no problem eating out or going to see movies alone, though it is more fun with someone else...

posted by eekacat 05 March | 20:54

They charge the inflated price at the Cinerama Dome, but don't provide the same services--grrr.

posted by brujita 06 March | 00:03

Saw Zodiac this weekend.

Quite a good movie, if a bit of a departure for Fincher. In this one, he is very loyal to the truth he has available (take note of exactly how many of the Zodiac killer's crimes are shown in full), while painting a very convincing landscape of life in the very late 60s and early 70s. Even the score is a callback, as it was composed by David Shire. That was a brilliant decision, as Shire provided the ominous (yet minimalist) score to The Conversation, an earlier paranoid thriller from 1974.

posted by grabbingsand 06 March | 13:24

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