Stranger Than Fiction

My low expectations really helped in my enjoyment of this film.

Emma Thompson was great.

Will Ferrell is a funny man.

The story is good, if not original, and there were some truly hilarious moments, but still I was underwhelmed.

Volver

Pedro Almodóvar is so good at what he does. I love a director whose films you can spot a mile away. Almodóvar stories are rich and multi-layered. His characters are so completely enjoyable. Penelope Cruz was fantastic. I found out Volver means "to return" before I saw it and I liked to look at all the characters "returning" in their own ways.

Fast Food Nation

Richard Linklater, who, in my opinion, has a career which spans highs and lows not usually achieved by one director, has missed the mark. The book Fast Food Nation is a book. The story doesn't hold up to screenplay, with its strained dialog and characters who come off as stereotypes in their effort to represent wider swatches of society. It's trite. It tries too hard. The message of this move can be boiled down into 7 words: Don't eat at McDonalds, it hurts everyone. There, now you don't need to see it.

Iraq in Fragments

It's hard not to try to draw parallels between this and the other Iraq documentary that we saw earlier this year, but they don't actually have much in common. This one follows the war from three very different perspectives, all Iraqi, and all devastated in different ways by the state of their country at our hands.

The cinematography is simply stunning. Almost as stunning as what we have done to the people of Iraq in the name of Spreading Freedom.

Again, I must say that the people who need to see this movie won't.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

This film is pretty much the same as the previous one. Except not complicated, not challenging, not grim (...well, maybe a little. The fuckin' frat boys were as grim as America gets.) and it has Sacha Baron Cohen naked.

The biggest difference is that I hurt myself laughing while watching Borat. Literally. I actually hurt when it was over.

I love Borat.

Babel

One complaint I heard about this movie before I saw it is that it is "too complicated." I guess it's all about how hard you are comfortable working for your movie enjoyment. I like to be challenged. I want my brain working and my thoughts provoked. I rarely go to the movies for escapism, in fact, I think I need to see movies to reaffirm that I am part of humanity. This movie is great example of this mechanism.

I only found this movie complicated on the surface and once you get underneath to the general gist of the connections between the story lines, you are sucked into what happens in each corner of the world. We are reminded of our humanity and preciousness (and universality) of life.

A few scenes stick out for me, but the brothers laughing on the cliffs and leaning into the blowing wind stayed with me for days.

I wasn't floored by this film, but in all the best ways it was a very grim, very difficult, complex reminder of the whole of joy and tragedy that we all as humans experience in life.

I really loved 21 Grams and Amores Perros and this was great too, so Alejandro González Iñárritu is moving up my directors list.

Tideland

Terry Gilliam is my hero.

The movie starts with a plea from the director to let go a little bit and find our inner child. He looked through the lens of childhood to make this amazing film and we should look through a similar lens to watch and enjoy it.

So many things are right about this movie. We have Jeff Bridges (The Dude!!), who is PERFECT. We have freaky characters (especially Dell, played by uber-tall Janet McTeer) and we have a dream-like photography, bizarro (even gruesome) situations and an innocent, sing-song skipping toward death down the rabbit hole feel that makes all the horror and uncomfortableness seem like, well, childsplay.