- Synecdoche, NY
A couple reasons I need to see this:
-Directed and written by Charlie Kaufman. He also wrote Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Being John Malkovich. All great movies. Synecdoche is his first venture into directing, so we'll see how he does with that. If I were to judge by the previews (a dangerous game, in my experience), it looks like he did pretty well.
- Philip Seymour Hoffman. Is there anybody he can't play?
- Defiance
Daniel Craig, although it has taken him a while to move up from B-movies to Hollywood-grade fare, he really is a decent actor. Also this movie is directed by Edward Zwick, who has made two decent/good movies (The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond). Also, although it's an incredibly-overdone genre, WWII movies still hold a certain appeal for me.
I got about halfway through this movie before, and then I just couldn't take it. I need to go back with a renewed sense of resilience and watch the rest of it. It really is a horrifically heavy story, but one that I do want to finish. Plus how can I say no to a movie in which Donald Sutherland doesn't completely suck?
Although I'm usually not a huge fan of Asian cinema, I was highly impressed by Korean director Chan-wook Park's Oldboy, and so I do want to finish "the vengeance trilogy." To watch subtitled films, however, I really need a time when I can just sit and watch the movie, rather than just watching it in the background or without my complete attention.
- The Warriors and The Lost Boys
Sure, these are both old, cheesy action flicks, but they've also achieved something of a "cult classic" status, which makes them worthy of adding to my list of "have-seen"s.
I've heard a lot of great things about this movie, but just never bothered to watch it. I have it waiting for me on a DVD, I just need to get around to it.
Amazingly I still haven't seen this Wes Anderson classic. Again, waiting on a DVD.
There are of course many more but I'm tired of writing now.
1 comment:
My initial review of Synechdoche:
I didn't find this film to be a complete mess, though it took me 15 minutes of reflection sitting in my car after I exited the theater and then a night's sleep full of dreams and odd narration in my head to reach that conclusion this morning. I found it to be extremely deep and existential (for lack of better adjectives), and Kaufman as writer and director left it up to the viewer to decide if what we're seeing and hearing is coming from Caden's mind, reality, or this strange combination of reality, fantasy, and Caden's "true" play, all inside the warehouse. As one reviewer already pointed out, nearly every scene includes Caden, and I felt like this was because Kaufman wanted to take me as deeply as possible into the mind of this broken man, so that all of his hopes, fears, trumphs, doubts, and memories could be related to what it means to be a "true" human being, as I try and dictate the everyday life around me and my own actions, and how that is impossible and the control that I have as "director" over myself, friends, and family only extends so far. And to be obsessed with this control and trying to grasp it all over the course of a lifetime, as Caden does, is impossible, so those few fleeting glimpses of true happiness and and moments when everything seems to make sense are all the more valuable and need to be appreciated and treasured all the more. Caden's physical maladies and his moments of sexual confusion/questioning his identity and beauty seem so odd in the film and yet by the end, as the haunting song played in the trailer and closing credits is heard, all the oddity and confusion slips away because you realize that the film was about you, as a human being, and Kaufman dug deep and far and wide to plunge the viewer into the human experience. Ultimately I think his aims fell just short, and that's not because he failed to do what he set out to do, but this film didn't break a boundary of "truth" that other films have broached equally as well, if not as deeply. Perhaps Kaufman intentionally wanted the film to seem incomplete by the end, just as Caden's attempt to create a "true" play ended in failure, because both creator and character want us, the viewers, to remember that when we exit the theater, then we are the Caden, in control of our own life and directors in a way of those around us, and there needs to be some sense of responsibility and an overbearing sense of inevitability in death, so don't let "true" life pass you by.
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