Letters from the Underground

Vantage Point

Even though I'm a staunch agnostic, I've made Sunday my day of rest, in honor of my body being old and me generally being on my feet a lot between Thursday and Saturday.  I've been starting my mornings with a jaunt to the local Whole Foods to get a morning roll and a little bit of a walk to get the blood flowing through my legs.  Other than that, I've been trying to catch up on my movie viewing.  The good thing about taking a long hiatus from seeing movies, is that you've got a nice line-up of films waiting to be seen.  Juno and Atonement didn't disappoint, but I'd missed the local showings of No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood, so pickings were slim this last weekend.  The best of a bad bunch seemed to be Vantage Point. (Spoilers after the jump.)

Kill Bill Vol II

Someone told me that if I didn't like Kill Bill Vol 1 because of the violence, I would love Vol 2 because it was so dialogue heavy.

Good theory, but they forgot to mention just one point. The dialogue was horribly paced. I understand that it was that way for a reason, as an homage to the old kung fu movies, but at the end of two hours, the joke has gotten old. After 4 hours, if you include the first movie, it's gotten really old. I'm not as much in the "Tarantino is a God of Dialogue" camp as most people, but this was really bad. There were a couple of witty parts that made me laugh. There was a whole lot of dialogue that made me miss The Musketeer.

I think I may just have to come to the conclusion that I don't really enjoy Tarantino movies. Which is too bad, because a lot of really smart people do, and I feel like I'm missing something. However, after the LOTR craze, that's something that I'm getting used to.

Zombies and Memory Blanks

So, last week in a fit of movie watching I saw both Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Dawn of the Dead. Strangely enough, I liked both movies. Not strangely enough, it was for completely different reasons(that sentence doesn't really work if you take it out of context. Or maybe it doesn't work even in context.)

I liked Sunshine for a couple of reasons. Mainly, the dialogue between Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet was, in my humble opinion, some of the best couple dialogue I've seen. I could actually believe that these were two people who had been together for a while. With that as a basis, it kind of let me buy into the desperation that Carrey goes through to keep his memories of her. That and I really liked the ending.

Dawn was, again in my humble opinion, about the best you can do with the Zombies taking over the earth movie. The characters aren't total imbeciles, and there were enough interesting little things done with the concept to keep your interest. Though when I see these movies, the gamer in me cries out for different action plans. What's up with this running stuff? You have an uncreative, not very agile opponent with no long range capability. You should be able to figure out a way to kill off enough of the local zombies to give yourself some breathing room. Or maybe not. I guess they were in Milwaukee County, and that would mean millions of Zombies, because you know those Chicago zombies are looking for any excuse to move north.

So, if you're bored, I can reccomend either movie with little reservation. Sunshine is a lot more contemplative, while Dawn is much more sit back and enjoy the ride, but then again, the ending of Dawn is kind of lame(those who know me will know what I'm talking about.)