The Life of Brian

How on Earth could I have lived almost 38 years without ever seeing “The Life of Brian” to the end? It is a movie in its own category, even within the Monty Python group; friends had been telling me I had to watch it for a long, long time.

Now that I am through it, I have to admire the incredible finesse with which the MP crew packs a short amount of time. It is bound to be the highest concentration of satiric jokes on DVD. Some of the skits they came up with are so amazingly to the point, you can’t really laugh because there is too much depth.

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

Ok, so I am not the movie buff. When choosing between the original and the remake, I tend to prefer the remake, in the hope that thirty years of time have improved the storytelling. At least, thirty years are enough to change our attitudes about timing, script, and nudity a little.

So I chose the remake of “The Manchurian Candidate”. I loved thinking of Meryl Streep in the role of a domineering and successful mother and senator. And you can’t beat Denzel Washington in the role of the good-but-doomed-to-fail character.

Wilde (1997)

I shuddered at the thought of having to watch a movie about Oscar Wilde. I knew him as the nemesis of my youth: my high school teacher made us memorize all of “The Canterville Ghost”. I still remember the opening page to this day.

Then of course I always appreciated the wit that suffuses his writing. He succeeds in being superficial, deep, amusing, and cynical all in one sentence. What do you do with quips like: “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance?”

Mostly Martha (‘Bella Martha', 2002)

Look at you – so you watch German movies in the original, and they are no better than in the English version. Isn’t that really sad, though?

Mostly Martha is about a German chef that inherits a child from her deceased sister. The story revolves around this burgeoning relationship and mostly deals with the conflicts engendered by the conflict between child rearing and a full time job at odd hours.

Shrek 2 (2004)

Ok, that was not fair!

I was expecting something in the lines of Shrek – a cutesy animated movie with a lot of good humor and some great voice acting along the way. I was expecting Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, and Eddie Murphy. Sorta hoping it wouldn’t degrade from what it had been.

Whaddayaknow? Instead of doing the obvious, the troupe bested itself! That’s not fair! I was dazzled by a host of new brand name actors throwing themselves in a very recognizable manner into the mix. I saw a much more adult brand of humor with references strewn in left and right, and all of a sudden Shrek 2 was not a children’s movie any more at all.

The Magdalene Sisters (2002)

In beautiful Catholic Ireland, women with illegitimate children are coerced into concentration camps run by monastic orders (of nuns). The children, actually, are taken away and given up for adoption, while the women are interned, locked up, and forgotten. They will be coerced to work in a commercial laundry facility all day to atone for their sins. There is no term limit, they will spend their whole life in the camp if nobody remembers them and gets them out.

As Good as it Gets (1997)

I mean, do you realize this movie got both Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress in 1997? I mean, what kind of horrible year that must have been for Hollywood?

Jack Nicholson plays an obsessive-compulsive writer (who oddly barely ever writes) that becomes a grouchy hermit. As such, the role seems to have been written for Mr. Nicholson, who has a history of playing slightly crazy, solitary characters. Helen Hunt, who in turn has a history of playing the romantic interest of much older and much uglier guys, plays a waitress who has trouble making ends meet. The third one in the party is Greg Kinnear, the gay painter next door.

Naked Lunch (1991)

Amazing when you watch two movies one shortly after the other, and although they really have nothing similar about them, they have an odd link that bridges the gap, maybe just for you.

That’s what happened with me in the case of {moscontentlink:The Texas Chainsaw Massacre%} and Naked Lunch. In the former, the 1960es came to life. Astrology, psychedely, mushrooms, drugs, love (not much rock’n’roll, though) all conspired into forcing the protagonists into fright. But thirty years later, the recurring admonitions from parents and adults not to use drugs just don’t come as frequent, and the movie feels lame because you just can’t feel why everyone is so afraid.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

So I thought I was going to get a classic of the genre, and got ready for a night of gore and terror, afraid I might not sleep. The first twenty minutes alone, though, made it clear this was one of those movies that terrifies only the culture that begat them. Thirty years later, we are terrified of terrorists, maybe of AIDS, but psychedelic terror just doesn’t cut it any more.

The City of Lost Children (1995)

I really wasn’t expecting much from this movie. I had rented it from Netflix because of an affinity hint, but I had gotten some really bad movies that way. This one sounded a little too childish to entrance me, and I was not really too fond of the idea of putting it into the DVD player. Bad reaction!

It turns out that ‘The City of Lost Children’ plays in the same category as ‘The Fifth Element’: movies of creativity, fantasy, and fancy in which the childlike nature of the players is just a device to enrapture the viewers.