WAS1 Productions

06/26/03

I checked out Bend it like Beckam tonight. I’d heard about it from a couple of people and it sounded like a good story, which it was. It’s about a teenage Indian girl in England, who’s obsessed with soccer/footbal (David Beckam is her idol, which gives the title of the movie.)

The plot concerns her playing soccer, joining the local girls team, behind her parents’ back, and how she’s caught between the outside world and their traditional family values. They want her to be a good Indian girl, to learn how to cook and to get engaged, and she just wants to play soccer.

The story was all about culture clash, but also about parents trying to reconcile differences with their children. That was also shown with an English girl she befriends, and how her parents don’t quite get her either.

The story was well balanced between drama and comedy, and the lighthearted moments complemented the serious parts well. There were also a lot of fun characters in the film, and it was just entertaining seeing them interact. I was reminded of My Big Fat Greek Wedding and also The Wedding Banquet in parts of the film. Also, it was neat hearing everyone talk with English accentsm having just been over there a few weeks ago. All in all the movie was quite cute and sweet.

Originally Written 10/07/03

I saw Confessions of a Dangerous Mind tonight, the surreal bio-pic based on Chuck Baris’ auto-biography. The story was damn near impossible to believe, but that’s beyond the point, true or not it made for an interesting tale.

I liked the juxtaposition of smaltzy, TV kitsch and the gritty underworld of the CIA. Chuck’s character was both amusing and tragic, and creepy too. I also appreciated the slightly non-linear narrative and surreal imagery of it. If you like offbeat films, it’s worth checking out as a rental.

Originally Written 03/28/04

I went to see the remake of Dawn of the Dead. The film was quite good. It updated Romero’s work, but stayed true to a lot of the source material, from what I could remember from it. The feel of the movie was also reminiscent to the recent film 28 Days Later. Romero’s zombies were slow and rambling. They were much easier to get away from but had some pathos to them. These new breed of zombies are much meaner, faster and more scary. A couple of scenes made you realize they were lost souls as well though.

What makes a zombie film interesting for me is not just the horror and the gore though. It’s a perfect setting to show how people handle the end of the world. It gives the filmmaker a chance to bring together a small group of people who are a microcosm of society. Yes the characters tend to be archetypes, but it still gives a chance for some interesting interaction.

This film was solid on that front. It’s not high drama, but it was still interesting and gave the writer a chance to deal with things like racism, classism, people fighting for control of the group, etc. The story was simple, but it kept my attention. There were some clever bits of dark humor too.

There were some failings with the film, like how the credits were amped up with MTV quick cuts that threatened to give you a seizure and how it seemed like there were two or three sets of credits at the end because they kept on showing more of the ending. However, they did choose some great music, like Johnny Cash’s recent song, “When the Man Comes Around” using Revelations imagery, and “People Who Have Died” by the Jim Carol band. Anyway, for fans of the genre, I’d say it’s definitely worth checking out.

Originally Written 03/28/04

Welcome to Collinwood was an interesting little caper movie. It wasn’t really a gritty drama and though it had a couple of dark-comedy moments that wasn’t what it was going for. It was more just a straight-forward story of a bunch of small-time crooks trying to pull off a job of a lifetime that just happened to fall into their hands.

The film wasn’t perfect, but it was nice in how it was kind of understated. It was also very much a character movie and it was fun watching the ensemble of interesting and imperfect people try and pull things off. It had some good actors in it too, like William H. Macey, who I always like and George Clooney. The whole cast was good.

Another neat thing about the film, which was set in a suburb of Cleveland, was the jargon. The characters kept on using slang terms for various things in the crime business and the way the dialog was written was clever in how you could guess the meaning of the word, without having to have it explained.

For example, one character who was facing a prison sentence asks his girlfriend to find him a Melinski, which turned out to be person who will claim responsibility for a crime and do the time, in exchange for money. One of the features on the disc was a list of the words and where they came from, usually from the person who originally came up with the idea.

Originally Written 12/29/04

House of Flying Daggers was pretty good. It reminded me some of Hero in a few ways. Like Hero, the story was interesting but kind of just okay, until the third act, where things fell into place and you could see all the layers to it. That really impressed me, and the ending was very emotionally brutal, but compelling.

The choreography, cinemaphotgraphy and settings were all superb. The fight scenes were impressive too, though the special effects of the weapons flying around were a little more obvious here, if that’s the right term to use. I though the effects were a little more organic in Hero.

The sound was also amped up as well. That made sense since one of the characters was a blind martial-artist, who used sound to pinpoint things. However, that made the fight scenes a little aggitating for me, since I don’t like loud noise.

Overall I liked Hero a bit more, though it’s hard to compare the two films. I did enjoy Flying Daggers, and the points I mentioned against it were small compared to the positives about the movie. I was glad to have gotten a chance to see it in the theaters.