What movies have you seen recently?

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The Age of Adeline

I saw this in the theater when it was originally released. I bought the disc and watched it again two nights ago. Films like this fall into a category that I always seem to like, films like Time Traveler's Wife, Meet Joe Black, AI, About Time, and Love Actually.

Beetlejuice

Coming to America.

The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc

Meet the parents.

True Grit (1969)

The Associate 1996

M. Night Shayamalon's The Visit

In a nutshell, two children travel to their grandparent's farm. The grandparents and their daughter (mother of the the children) have not seen each other in fifteen years. This is the first time the grandparents have seen their grandchildren. The granddaughter is a budding film maker, and desires to make a documentary, hopefully to help her mother and the grandparents heal old wounds. Ha!

The pacing of this movie is really interesting. It reminds me of the opening of Rachmaninoff's The Isle of the Dead, a tone poem based on a series of paintings by Arnold Bröcklin. I'm sure everyone is familiar with both the music and the painting. (That's self-sarcasm at my selecting a metaphoric reference that is not universal, therefore useless as a means of expression.) There was also a movie staring Boris Karloff. It starts out quiet, in small waves, and it builds, and builds to a climax. The film (The Visit) does this with bits of weirdness and tension, and then it is diffused, often by humor. Up and down the wave. Then the tension stops being diffused, and it just starts to get bad. Then just as it gets bad, and the children in the film realize the situation is bad, those heavy waves becomes a tsunami of bad.

Seriously, that is what I came away with. I am fascinated how M. Night unfolds a story. I had difficult time connecting at first, but I stuck with it and enjoyed the movie. It was nice. I would post a trailer for the film, but I found the expectations set up by the trailer to be distracting from the actual content and context of the movie.

So instead...
The Isle of the Dead, painting by Arnold Bröcklin, music by Sergei Rachmaninov.

Damn. I had been told by several people that this was one of the best direct-to-video films ever made, and they weren't lying. It puts a lot of modern theatrical action films to shame.

The Age of Adaline

A ageless young woman, born at the turn of the 20th century, meets a man who complicates the life of solitude she has settled into.

Sleepy Hollow

Top Secret , by the same guys that made Airplane. My friends wanted to watch it so I watched it with them. It was pretty funny.

Sweet Jesus, he did it again. I agree with the Village Voice when they say John Hyams is the best action director working today. Just stunningly good stuff.