Recent Movie Reviews

Since no one cares, some reviews of stuff I’ve been watching over the past few weeks. I don’t watch that many movies nowadays.

Ocean’s 12 was shockingly boring. Wow. 1.5 stars.

Bourne Supremacy – I liked it a lot. Nothing deep about it, just a very entertaining movie, well executed, well acted. 3.5 stars.

The Incredibles – great movie, 3.5 stars. I told someone my ranking for this movie and they’re like, why only 3.5 stars? I dunno, I’m not into the all or nothing mentality, 4 stars or none. I really liked TI. But that doesn’t make it a 4 star movie. I dunno, for me, to reach a 4 star level, it has to be perfectly entertaining. Like Singin’ In The Rain. There was nothing wrong with TI, it just wasn’t perfectly entertaining. To reach 5 star status, it needs to have some life changing profundity, like Shawshank or Dragon: The Bruce Lee story, in addition to being a great movie. I didn’t find anything profound about TI. Maybe something about how making everyone special actually rewards mediocrity. But I dunno, that has limited applicability to my life.

SN. We watched this with Jieun’s family and her dad didn’t understand a word of the movie. I understand the feeling. We also watched this Korean comedy involving some loser and his guardian angel. Did not understand a thing. Apparently there were homoerotic undertones. If it’s in Korean, there’s no way I’m picking up on undertones. Or overtones. Or anything beyond a 2 year old’s vocabulary and the phrase “in Jesus’ name.”

SSN. Some adult was surprised at how I knew a Korean prayer was ending. I dunno. Anyone who was raised in a Korean church, no matter how bad their Korean is, picks up this skill. After years of training, we all develop a Pavlovian response so when we hear (in Korean) “in Jesus’ name” we immediately wake up and say Amen. Or at least I do.

The Pianist – 3 stars. Good movie, but slightly frustrating. Jieun kept asking, what’s the point of this movie? And I’m not sure. It’s just a story of something that happened, nothing more. I think I read somewhere that Polanski himself survived the Holocaust in part due to chance and luck so he was resistant to making a movie like many others where the protagonists survive due to their noble characters or determination. That he wanted to show that chance and luck play a large part in survival. I dunno, that’s kind of interesting.

Anyway, I spent most of the movie pissed off at the capacity of man to do evil. You know what bothers me though. When people just write off Hitler, Nazis as pure evil. I mean, they are evil. But there was this TV movie recently that kind of dared to explore Hitler’s humanity and there was this huge outcry about it, how dare you consider Hitler human, he was evil. But the fact is he was human, and the greatest mistake we can make is to write him off as an inhuman, single anomaly. Better to think about how we can avoid another Hitler than assume that no one as evil will ever come about again. Man’s capacity for evil is nearly unlimited.

OK, that’s not depressing.