October's DVD Reviews,
Part II
Quick reviews from my Netflix queue and/or
the library.
Ghost in the
Shell: Solid State Society, 2006
A much more sophisticated plot
than anything you'd find in American animation, but I'm always disappointed
this show didn't live up to the quality of the movies. They set that
bar so high, you'd need cybernetic enhancements to hurdle it.
Year of the Dog, 2007
A quirky film about quirky people
you probably see every day... just not on film. I liked it on the
basis of that, even though it was short on material.
Children of Men, 2006
It suffers from a lack of ideas
about where to go with the plot (warning: the ending is a let-down), but
if you go in knowing it's more a portrait than a story, I think you'll
appreciate one of the most amazing and thought-provoking pieces of cinema
produced in the last few years.
Bobby, 2007
Pretty decent movie from that
Estevez kid, believe it or not. It isn't great, but it's pretty good
in most spots.
12 Monkeys, 1998
Bruce Willis + Terry Gilliam +
Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden by any other name = Awesome.
Alias, Season 4, Discs 5&6
This show has a bad habit of building
up for a long time and resolving things too quickly to be satisfying, sort
of like what I'd be like in bed with Jennifer Garner.
Jason of Star Command: Disc 2,
1979
It's incredibly dumb, but I love
watching what they were able to accomplish with minimal special effects
technology and a correspondingly primitive budget.
Monk: Season 5: Disc 3, 2005
Pretty much every episode is the
same except the details of that week's case, and yet I somehow still enjoy
it for reasons secondary to all the detective work anyway.
Sketches of Frank Gehry, 2005
Documentary about an architect
who makes things you can't believe people paid to have built. He
definitely thinks outside the box though, which is more interesting than
his designs themselves.
PICKS OF THE LITTER: Hands down,
Children
of Men is the best-directed movie I've seen in the last few months.
And 12 Monkeys is definitely worth a first (and a second) look if
you haven't traveled back in time to that one yet.
Copyright 2007
Ale[x]plorer.