Shallow Grave

I watched a British film in 1994, Shallow Grave.
The director is Danny Boyle, who also directed Trainspotting.

This is about friendship, but it's not so simple.
I think friendship is very emotional relationship, therefore once the relationship gets wrong, it's just getting worse and worse.
Let's imagine that you go for a trip with a friend of yours and have serious argument. You might forgive him or her if they were not your friend, but sometimes you couldn't do it because they ARE friends.

This film shows the complexity of friendship very clearly. You might feel uncomfortable seeing this film, but it is interesting anyway.

The Royal Tenembaums

I haven't updated it for a long time. I'd like to start it again to improve my English writing.

I watched “The Royal Tenenbaums”. I watched it before, so it is actually the second time. To be honest, I almost forgot what I felt when I saw it at the first time. I felt it much better this time. I might have become more mature to be able to understand what the good point of the film is. The loneliness of Royal was the key point for me. He tried to be funny, positive and humorous, but he’s lost his family and there must have been loneliness. This film seems to be about compensation and forgiveness.

Ghost World

Funny and cynical.
The psychology of teenagers must be like that.
Scarlett Johansson is now a big star, but in the film she was still a cute girl.

The story itself seems to be simple, but actually it should be deep.
I felt I wish I could go back to days of teenager. They are free but don’t know where to go. At that time, it was just frustrated, but now I think it was a precious time.

Life and Lyrics

It's a British film about its young culture.
The story was not so bad, and personally the exciting scene was the rap battle.
Actually their English during the battle was very fast, so I couldn’t understand most of them, but the atmosphere was interesting.
It reminded me of “call” battles in Japan.
“Call” has a special meaning in Japan. Sometimes, especially among young people like university students, people sing for forcing someone to drink alcohol, above all it’s a bottoms’ up, it was no so cool like the rap battle though (but too funny!!!).

X-files coming back!!

I went to see “X-files I want to believe”.
Several days have already passed, so the cinema was not busy.
Before I went there, I looked up the website for the preparation, and I was surprised when I found the first season was 1993!! It’s 15 years ago!!

The story is not bad, and Scully is not young but still cute, but I didn’t know she already quit FBI…

I saw an ad of a sequel of “The Terminator”… It’s already typical but I think Hollywood should be too defensive… but actually I’m looking forward to the sequel of Star Trek.

Short Film Night

A friend of mine asked me to go to short films’ event together, so I went to Brick Lane.
The place was a bar named “1001”. The atmosphere was really good, a bit dark, and there were a lot of good furniture. The friend bought chips and it was really cheap, one portion was really huge, but just 1.5 pounds.

The films themselves were also very interesting. They were from all over the world form Russia to Korea.

Audition

This Japanese film is really scary!!!
It might be the most horrible film I have ever seen.
It’s really difficult to see the scene of the punishment…but it is very interesting, I can't recommend it to people who don't want horrible films though.

Robin Hood (TV)(2006)

I watched BBC’s TV series “Robin Hood”.
I like the character of Much, who is a right-hand man of Robin Hood, and the relationship among Robin, Marian and Guy.

the attitude of Robin about love is very indirect, so sometimes it was very frustrating in a good meaning…

the website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/robinhood/

Spirit Trap (2005)

I watched Spirit Trap, because I saw Billie Piper playing in Dr. Who.

According to Wikipedia, it got “generally poor reviews”.
The reason might have been that the characters were too typical, especially the bad guy character, but I felt that the psychology of people who felt guilt about a death of a person who is very close to them is very interesting. It is very difficult to understand it, because sometimes they seem to blame themselves too much.
I think it’s kind of a dilemma.
If you don’t blame yourself and feel nothing when someone die, you should feel you are cold and merciless…

The web site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_Trap
Billie Piper:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Piper

Enchanted (2007)

Before, I liked complicated movies, but recently my taste has changed.
Now, movies which are easy and clear to understand are also my cup of tea.
“Enchanted” is one of such kind of films.
I think it is very difficult to convey some messages to viewers even if the message is very tiny, but easy movies resolve the problem in a way. It might be not a perfect solution, but I recon it is sometimes very powerful.

We can’t be always cold and realistic, nor romantic and optimistic, and we should be well-balanced between them.
Usually, I laugh at the naiveness of romantic stories, but I found myself attracted with it.

The website:
http://adisney.go.com/disneyvideos/liveaction/enchanted/

Amy Adams
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Adams

The Mist

It is an interesting horror film.
The original story is a book written by Stephen King.

A village is fulfilled by mist, and something is in it.

In the beginning, I thought it was a usual grade-B film, but it includes themes of religion and weakness of people who face extraordinary horror.

I think the monster must be hidden for stimulating our imagination. Sometimes imagination exceeds computer graphics!!!

Enron

One day, the large company that no one expected to vanish is suddenly bankrupted.
Enron trouble was a big scandal in world economy.
In Japan, the similar affair had happened few years before, so personally it was not so shocking, but I was interested in the background.

What kind of ambitions did the CEOs have? Why can’t they avoid a such kind of terrible situations despite some of the most smartest guys, at least some people believed if it is not true, joining the company?
This movie gives some clues for such kinds of questions.

My most interested point is conversations of Enron’s trader over the phone!!! They sound ridiculous, but quite real.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

This film is an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's novel.
It is about drag junkies.This film is an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's novel.
It is about drag junkies.
I have a trouble in understanding English, so maybe I couldn’t understand every interesting point of this work.
It reminded me of some similar movies, such as “Trainspoitng”, “Naked Lunch”, and “Requiem for Dream”.
It’s a kind of mixed one with “Trainspting” and “Naked Lunch”.
It’s not so stylish as “Trainspoting”, but more philosophical like “Naked Lunch”.

The acting performance of Johnny Depp is miracle!! I can’t believe he is same person who acted Gilbert Grape in “What's Eating Gilbert Grape".

Final Fantasy (2001)

I watched “Final Fantasy”.
The original idea is from a quite popular video game.
It was one of “box office bomb”, but personally I thought it was not bad work.
The CG quality is quite high, and the story is not so bad.
3D animation CG technology is now very popular, but it might have be generalized to pay money for CG animation works yet 7 years ago.

The story is interesting, but not easy to understand, and the ending is not happy. They might have been factors of the failure.
The director, Hironobu Sakaguchi, has a characteristic opinion about death, and it influences strongly this work.
I understood the massage of this film as the following:
Death of people who you love is a kind of losing, but it is not everything. It has other aspects and sometimes we need understand it as a positive thing.

Hitch

In Guam, I watched "Ghost rider" and the heroine, Eva Mendes, is too hot, so I rented the DVD in which Eva Mendes is also the heroine, in Japan.
I think the movie makes you think which is more important in Love, passion or strategy.



The official site is very interesting.
It shows the love thory that is used in the movie.