i still contend that the first half of Akira is great but I've never liked the second half much... too much yelling of names.
This post is gonna be several mini-reviews for a bunch of movies I saw recently that I liked. i recommend each one if/when you can see them.
Domino Tony Scott continues to explore his shotgun-blast style of coverage, going just as crazy now as Oliver Stone went when he did NBK and JFK and Nixon. So don't expect shots to last any longer than 5 seconds... but if you go for that particular style of storytelling, this is a really really fun movie. Hot Chicks, Guns, and mescalin... what more do you really need?
Wolf Creek This is an Australian horror film that's about a group of kids that... you know... get terrorized. What's great about this movie though is that it manages to avoid a good 90% of the cliches and pitfalls that are now racing through your head. Who knows, maybe it's because it's Australian, but it never devolves into the current hollywood cookie cutter of what horror films are like nowadays. I was reminded more of films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and especially The Hills Have Eyes for it's pacing and character. Really good film.
Strings This is a marionette epic... I think it's Dutch or Norwegian or something... somewhere up there but I managed to see a French print with an english audio track. From what I understand though, it's out on DVD and rentable. What makes this film so cool, and believe me it's REALLY cool, is that the marionettes have a complete mythology and belief system around their strings, tying them directly to their mortality. The film explores this concept as a worldview while simultaneously following this huge storyline with opposing armies at war and political strife and all kinds of stuff. There are these beautiful shots up at the sky, above the trees and everything, where you can see thousands and thousands of strings going down to control each marionette. You see how they die, how they are born, how they get hurt and heal, how they live in this world where they fully acknowledge their dependence on these strings but at the same time act with complete free will. It's a really wild ride and well worth seeing.
Feast The project greenlight movie... It's good fun for a midnight movie or a drunken movie or something like that. Don't expect shakespeare or anything, but if you let yourself open up to it and just enjoy it for what it is, it's a pretty fun time.
Zathura Favreau's new one from the same guy who wrote Jumanji and The Polar Express. It's certainly kind of like Jumanji in that there's a boardgame involved and kids play it and get into magical danger, but the tone of the movie, the theme of the movie and most importantly the quality of the movie are all much different (in most cases better). The two kids do an absolutely excellent job, especially the younger one, and the whole space/50s sci-fi theme to it works really well. Kids probably already want to check it out but it's still enjoyable for people like me (27).
P.S. I don't think anyone read them when i was at QT6 but just in case some of you did, I'm currently in the midst of something called FantasticFest that's going on here in Austin. It's basically a 4-day film festival showing only horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and post-apocalyptic films. These recommendations are basically what I saw during this first day (I saw Domino last Sunday). These mini-reviews came out of entries I made to my movie journal, so if you're at all interested in more details or more films in this vein then you can check them out by hittting up
THIS PAGE throughout the weekend.