home movies
saw too many movies this weekend. i will make a little outline and fill it in:
hijos de la guerra - children of the war, a latino film festival entry about the big salvadoran gang ms-13. it covered the history of it from the '80s to today and had great, terrirying footage of riots inside prisons and massacres in the streets and gang jump-ins, but about 85% of it went unidentified and really lost impact that way for me. as many of the voiceovers were unidentified as well and it just lent this air of vagueness and inaccuracy that was kinda irresponsible considering that the filmmaker was trying to fight a myth about these guys and the fact that they're blamed for all of central america's ills as of late. you fight myths best with accuracy and some real reporting. central america was a mess before the gangs came about. instead of ms-13, perhaps he should have considered doing what the beginning of the film promised, dealing with how governments, the us and those of central america really created this monster. he has access to the gang members but doesn't really dig into how corrupt the governments are. there is a discussion of the war in the 80s that's not that satisfying and the mention that politicians in CA use the promise to wipe maras out for votes but don't get into that the maras probably do some jobs for the government/military/police and/or probably fight the gov/mil/pol for shit like drug trafficking routes and profits. the film does go into the idea that the mara is not nearly as organized as it's described but doesn't frame itself that way overall. you do get the sense of them as a menace and you never ever want to visit this part of the world ever in your life, which most people can avoid, but i can't so i want to know how to deal with this in some realistic way. the friend i went to see it with thought it needed a real narrator to bring it together, like some michael moore. we did appreciate the footage especially the sight of deported criminals, dudes in shackles crossing the tarmacs in the us and the third world, good visuals for a broad story that's been in the news for years. but maybe a movie about the really organized gangs should be considered, these governments of the americas.
nanny mcphee - saw this getting ready to go hang with my niece for the weekend. boy does she need a nanny mcphee like a muthafucker. was feeling that emma thompson wrote the thing and it was her baby. did not know that. the wedding dress made of snow at the end was fabulous but i am disappointed by the idea that only the powers of a magic witch could correct the buck wild children.
zodiac - my father and i watched this into the wee hours of sunday morning. it was hella long but there were many reasons to keep watching, a scary, fame-hungry killer, a complex plot, and a few meng sangwiches i was putting together in my head there, jake gyllenhall and robert downey, and, don't really think he was that hot but i was liking his commitment to his work in the movie there, so mark ruffalo and jake gyllenhall were making a good sangwich too. basically you could add jake to many sangwiches and they would probably work, he has been sangwich-worthy since brokeback. anyway, the movie, it is a mystery and all and i don't always understand those and this one is particularly labyrinthine (i think that is a word), but even when i was lost i was enjoying it and truly frightened often. one scene in particular scared the hell out of me but then confused the hell out of me cuz they dropped some of the plot as well as some characters after it. i had to get on imdb and ask some people on the board about it and there was agreement on this confusion. it made me feel good to know that i had understood this genre, with which i often have a hard time, enough to know that it was wrong somehow, that there was a hole where i thought there was a hole. my father dug the scary confusion too and that along with my mother being back from honduras and taking care of him the only way he prefers patched up our relationship a little, which has been shaky cuz i can't be the nursemaid he married.
little miss sunshine - saw the last half of it the other day on hbo and all of it tonight. the last half alone won me over. this is one of those films i resist cuz of hype and see secretly at home many months after its cultural peak. i was such a big fat sucker for it, a privately in-my-own-home laughing/crying/clapping talking-to-the-screen sucker. i mean it's about american failure, my secret favorite subject, one i can barely write about but this writer gets it on the money, the actors get it, the directors, excellent. even the frickin yellow van they're driving in, gets it, it's a character and a half. i called my mother around the time it started to check in on her cuz she had dropped me off uptown and drove back home and i could hear the movie on the other side of the line. i had it on and hers was echoing steve carrell and greg kinnear. i was all "are you watching that? watch it, it's fabulous" and i talked to my brother and told him to watch it too, that it was all about our family, who i like to call the potentials. i was trying to figure out what character i was and it took about two seconds. i was the gay suicidal ph.d. of course. i could be the little girl too though, especially her concern with being a loser and i wished i had a fabulous heroin-addicted grandpa who knew just what to say to her cuz he's got all the perspective in the world being old AND on drugs. but i let the little girl be my niece and the grandpa be my father cuz they where the exact same striped pajamas and v-neck hanes t-shirt, not cuz my father is so positively affected by the prescription drugs he takes. he is negatively affected in that he lives in delusions such as me being a "good" daughter and hopping to his every command and still believing i might join the military or move back home or some such nonsense. so glad ma is back to take care of that monster she made. i am just monster jr., she knows that. finally hanging with him for a civil minute, my father would call me by my mom's name, vilma, the same way my ma calls me my father's name, mando. they are each other's conversation partners but i also like to think that perhaps i am enough of both of them that they call me by each other's names. i am vilmando.
hijos de la guerra - children of the war, a latino film festival entry about the big salvadoran gang ms-13. it covered the history of it from the '80s to today and had great, terrirying footage of riots inside prisons and massacres in the streets and gang jump-ins, but about 85% of it went unidentified and really lost impact that way for me. as many of the voiceovers were unidentified as well and it just lent this air of vagueness and inaccuracy that was kinda irresponsible considering that the filmmaker was trying to fight a myth about these guys and the fact that they're blamed for all of central america's ills as of late. you fight myths best with accuracy and some real reporting. central america was a mess before the gangs came about. instead of ms-13, perhaps he should have considered doing what the beginning of the film promised, dealing with how governments, the us and those of central america really created this monster. he has access to the gang members but doesn't really dig into how corrupt the governments are. there is a discussion of the war in the 80s that's not that satisfying and the mention that politicians in CA use the promise to wipe maras out for votes but don't get into that the maras probably do some jobs for the government/military/police and/or probably fight the gov/mil/pol for shit like drug trafficking routes and profits. the film does go into the idea that the mara is not nearly as organized as it's described but doesn't frame itself that way overall. you do get the sense of them as a menace and you never ever want to visit this part of the world ever in your life, which most people can avoid, but i can't so i want to know how to deal with this in some realistic way. the friend i went to see it with thought it needed a real narrator to bring it together, like some michael moore. we did appreciate the footage especially the sight of deported criminals, dudes in shackles crossing the tarmacs in the us and the third world, good visuals for a broad story that's been in the news for years. but maybe a movie about the really organized gangs should be considered, these governments of the americas.
nanny mcphee - saw this getting ready to go hang with my niece for the weekend. boy does she need a nanny mcphee like a muthafucker. was feeling that emma thompson wrote the thing and it was her baby. did not know that. the wedding dress made of snow at the end was fabulous but i am disappointed by the idea that only the powers of a magic witch could correct the buck wild children.
zodiac - my father and i watched this into the wee hours of sunday morning. it was hella long but there were many reasons to keep watching, a scary, fame-hungry killer, a complex plot, and a few meng sangwiches i was putting together in my head there, jake gyllenhall and robert downey, and, don't really think he was that hot but i was liking his commitment to his work in the movie there, so mark ruffalo and jake gyllenhall were making a good sangwich too. basically you could add jake to many sangwiches and they would probably work, he has been sangwich-worthy since brokeback. anyway, the movie, it is a mystery and all and i don't always understand those and this one is particularly labyrinthine (i think that is a word), but even when i was lost i was enjoying it and truly frightened often. one scene in particular scared the hell out of me but then confused the hell out of me cuz they dropped some of the plot as well as some characters after it. i had to get on imdb and ask some people on the board about it and there was agreement on this confusion. it made me feel good to know that i had understood this genre, with which i often have a hard time, enough to know that it was wrong somehow, that there was a hole where i thought there was a hole. my father dug the scary confusion too and that along with my mother being back from honduras and taking care of him the only way he prefers patched up our relationship a little, which has been shaky cuz i can't be the nursemaid he married.
little miss sunshine - saw the last half of it the other day on hbo and all of it tonight. the last half alone won me over. this is one of those films i resist cuz of hype and see secretly at home many months after its cultural peak. i was such a big fat sucker for it, a privately in-my-own-home laughing/crying/clapping talking-to-the-screen sucker. i mean it's about american failure, my secret favorite subject, one i can barely write about but this writer gets it on the money, the actors get it, the directors, excellent. even the frickin yellow van they're driving in, gets it, it's a character and a half. i called my mother around the time it started to check in on her cuz she had dropped me off uptown and drove back home and i could hear the movie on the other side of the line. i had it on and hers was echoing steve carrell and greg kinnear. i was all "are you watching that? watch it, it's fabulous" and i talked to my brother and told him to watch it too, that it was all about our family, who i like to call the potentials. i was trying to figure out what character i was and it took about two seconds. i was the gay suicidal ph.d. of course. i could be the little girl too though, especially her concern with being a loser and i wished i had a fabulous heroin-addicted grandpa who knew just what to say to her cuz he's got all the perspective in the world being old AND on drugs. but i let the little girl be my niece and the grandpa be my father cuz they where the exact same striped pajamas and v-neck hanes t-shirt, not cuz my father is so positively affected by the prescription drugs he takes. he is negatively affected in that he lives in delusions such as me being a "good" daughter and hopping to his every command and still believing i might join the military or move back home or some such nonsense. so glad ma is back to take care of that monster she made. i am just monster jr., she knows that. finally hanging with him for a civil minute, my father would call me by my mom's name, vilma, the same way my ma calls me my father's name, mando. they are each other's conversation partners but i also like to think that perhaps i am enough of both of them that they call me by each other's names. i am vilmando.
Labels: hijos de la guerra, little miss sunshine, nanny mcphee, zodiac
posted by nightbreaker at
12:57 AM
1 Comments:
Hil-arious. Love the "meng sangwich," though Ruffalo, my bro says, looks like a "douche bag". I stopped thinking of him in deli ways after that. On the movies, hmmm, food for thought. Have to watch more. I like the way you connect the dots between the films and you--that's what art's all about. Reminder: watch "Nine Queens," which nails theft from ground up. Glad you're flowing online.
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