Nov 5, 2008 6
French movies are a huge mess.
Disturbia
My first Shia LeBeouf movie. Okay, Sarah Roener’s cute. The movie was unexpectedly horror since it’s a fusion of virtually everything, and probably those DVD shops would have trouble classifying this one as comedy or horror (but of course it’s horror!) I watched this last All Saints’ Day, though watching it during any day wouldn’t really make a difference. I just liked the idea of toying around the neighborhood–spying on them like you’re the god of the suburbia or something.
I watched this at my cousin’s house, at his IPod video (!), which made me crave for one. But let’s just leave it at that.
Charlotte’s Web
I’ll skip this movie. It’s cute, okay?
The Black Box
Sometimes I want to go to France, probably somewhere that’s not as rural as Cherbourg or near the Pyrenees, for chrissake; somewhere civilized, where they have this moviehouse and I’ll watch French movies nonstop, though I doubt if they have English captions or whatever you call it. It’s not a subscript… it’s a line! [Nevermind this word block.]
The Black Box (La Boite Noir–pronounced as luh-bwat-nwar methinks) is a gripping movie. Gripping since, well, I’m on my way watching porn CNN. Anderson Cooper’s voice seems a huge bore-not to mention, political, like it makes me remind of politics so I decided to watch this movie.
Okay, gripping since it thrills you a lot. It grabs your interest since the first scene will surely puzzle you. It’s this guy who’s about to undergo an MRI scan and he was spewing thoughts rapidly–saying silly, disconnected things (RP50, Texas doesn’t exist… among all others) like he was corrupted by some badass… err, French soul.
“La boite! Sylvain Ganem! La Fynoil! Le Texas n’exi..” Whatever, French dude.
Those things were, according to the nurse, the things inside his subconscious. It turns out that his subconscious opened up or something (delirium, I further researched), like something yanked a nail out of his brain due to a car accident near Cherbourg. Then you would know, as you and the protagonist dig deeper in the convolutions of his brain, that the accident in Cherbourg has its own story to tell. And that may lead to those facts he spewed (for example, Texas for him does not exist since he subconsciously knew the fact that his father cheated his mother by using Texas as his alibi) which may help him discover his own self (that he contemplated suicide way back First Grade, etc). Splendid!
That first scene (him in the MRI scanner) actually appeared three times. He also tried to resolve the conflict three times. There were also three people who actually told him about the subconscious: the doctor, the nurse, and another nurse. It meant something, and that something I wasn’t able to catch up since it’s probably 3 AM. The story’s probably an infinite loop or something (same with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, perhaps).
UPDATE: NO IT’S NOT AN INFINITE LOOP. The movie was so anachronistic, it didn’t even made sense at first! Gaddamit. I hate French movies. They’re such a pain.
And another update: the WEBSITE of the film, if you guys are interested. I dare you: it’s in FRENCH. Ha!
Perfect Storm
The first book I’ve read was this novel by Sebastian Junger–well, that’s aside from The Big Big Book of Atlas and all that Reading Marvels and those elementary books. It’s just one of the decent books I’ve read. Decent: that might not be the word.
The surprise was: George Clooney was Billy Tyne in the movie. It’s funny, really, that at first I can’t really believe that Clooney could actually sail a schooner. There’s also Mark Wahlberg, which I also didn’t expect to sail a schooner. All I thought he’s Jason Bourne and he’s only Jason Bourne (and that freaky, overprotective protagonist at Fear) and period.
The movie’s boring, though I also kind of identified the boredom in the book itself. Dad force-fed this novel at–where else–Booksale. It’s not even my interest, but I somehow managed to finish it within seven months, perhaps. All I’ve seen in the movie were humongous waves taller than those seen at Phuket. No drama or whatsoever. Just.. water and some flashes of lightning and Coast Guards.
I’d better quit this.
Little Children
It’s a community-wide movie, and it shifted from an awkward-looking deranged dickhead to an estranged husband of two (who had sex with Kate Winslet after they’ve met at the park with their children). The plot develops until it converged into one single mass of heartfelt anger, lust and even a free literary review of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary! Cool.
This movie made me think of fathers and their inclination to womanize beyond their vows of matrimony and that religiously-related limitations and stuff.
