mini-reviews

Because free cinema passes are love.

Madagascar 2 – There was a point in my movie-watching life when I got absolutely sick of this movie’s trailer. We like to move it, move it. Enough, already. It cracked me up the first time (“I love you, Gloria!”), but once is sufficient, as I very soon found out.

Now I’m so glad that that was the only version I was able to see, because everything else came as a (pleasant) surprise.

Favorite bits:

Mob Penguin to Chess-Playing Monkeys: Hey, higher mammals! We could use your frontal cortexes and opposable thumbs.

Mob Penguin to Chess-Playing Monkeys, who just formed a Union and is demanding Maternity Leave: (peeks beneath table) But you’re a man.

Julien (voiced by Sacha Baron Cohen) acting out what will happen once they’ve given a sacrifice to the Water Gods:

(Julien as Water God): Oh, that is a nice sacrifice.

(Julien as, uh, Waiter): Would you like to have another sacrifice?

(Water God): No, I’ve had enough for one day.

(Waiter): Oh, I insist. You take another one.

(Water God, angry now): I said, no more!

(Waiter): But look at you, you’re so thin!

…

I know, the script is insane. Watch it.

(Transcripts are from memory.)

Passengers – I hate the movie poster: the one with Anne Hathaway looking ominous, with an ominous-looking plane behind her. Oh, and the plane had a skull-face on it. Very ominous. Ominous, indeed. It’s a fucking mess. I mean, the poster, not the movie. The movie’s okay. I think. It’s one of those movies where once you find out the twist everything else that came before just seems silly. I won’t even say it keeps you guessing. Unless of course you’re a person who likes guessing movie endings, then it will keep you guessing. Me, I just sat there, waiting for The Twist. Then, when it came, wondered if I liked the Mitch Albom turn of events. I’m still wondering.

See: if the movie’s (local) marketers aimed to attract people who’d watch the film based on the movie poster alone, then they’d just attracted the wrong audience.

Zodiac- There was a sale, so I bought a (VCD) copy. Didn’t know the movie was long; I was actually surprised to find that there were 3 VCDs when I opened the package.

This is a good film. Much has been said about it, so that’s all I’m going to say. (Why the hell didn’t I see this film when it first came out?)

The film opens with a murder in 1968, and ends in 1991. It took twenty-odd years to pin down (sort of) Zodiac, who killed people in the San Francisco Bay area because – I’m not very sure about the because. Because he felt like it? Because it was fun? Because he was insane? The fact that the film is based on true events, and the fact that so many lives (not only the victims’ or their families’) have been ruined by the case (still open in one or two areas, according to the film’s postscript) makes the film all the more awful, all the more important.

Watch it. I have a feeling I’m going to watch it again.