October DVD rentals
Dec. 2nd, 2018 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stdesjardinsI recently started a DVD rental plan with Netflix, and since then I've watched almost a dozen movies. Seems like it would be nice to do quick reviews of the movies I've watched, and since that's too many to do all at once, I'll break them up into a few batches.
The first movie I rented was Colossal, a rather odd monster movie starring Anne Hathaway as an unreliable screw-up who moves back to her home town after her boyfriend dumps her, and then discovers that under certain conditions she can manifest as a giant monster in Korea. The movie logic is very much more metaphorical than realistic, but it's a sensibly handled metaphor, and when I said this was a monster movie, I wasn't referring to the giant monsters crushing buildings. It apparently grossed only $4 million on a $15 million budget, which is a terrible shame, as I thought it was excellent.
I then watched the first few episodes of Peter Gunn, a detective show from the 1950's which is noteworthy for its award-winning score. It's very stylish, and makes excellent use of B&W cinematography and jazz music, but the stories were somewhat less compelling and found myself finishing the DVD with less enthusiasm than I started it. Glad to have tried it, but I won't be getting any more episodes.
How to Talk to Girls at Parties, based on a Neil Gaiman story, is a very bold movie. It may not be a masterpiece, but over-the-top visual style makes it fun to watch, and I'd rather see an original but uneven movie than something polished and predictable.
Mary and the Witch's Flower is a Ghibli-style movie made by animators who had worked at Ghibli. An English dub is available on streaming Netflix, but I got the DVD for the sake of the Japanese soundtrack. I may prefer originality to polished predictability, but, you know, the Ghibli formula is appealing enough that I will accept polished predictability. It's an enjoyable movie full of likeable characters, and I'm good with that.
The first movie I rented was Colossal, a rather odd monster movie starring Anne Hathaway as an unreliable screw-up who moves back to her home town after her boyfriend dumps her, and then discovers that under certain conditions she can manifest as a giant monster in Korea. The movie logic is very much more metaphorical than realistic, but it's a sensibly handled metaphor, and when I said this was a monster movie, I wasn't referring to the giant monsters crushing buildings. It apparently grossed only $4 million on a $15 million budget, which is a terrible shame, as I thought it was excellent.
I then watched the first few episodes of Peter Gunn, a detective show from the 1950's which is noteworthy for its award-winning score. It's very stylish, and makes excellent use of B&W cinematography and jazz music, but the stories were somewhat less compelling and found myself finishing the DVD with less enthusiasm than I started it. Glad to have tried it, but I won't be getting any more episodes.
How to Talk to Girls at Parties, based on a Neil Gaiman story, is a very bold movie. It may not be a masterpiece, but over-the-top visual style makes it fun to watch, and I'd rather see an original but uneven movie than something polished and predictable.
Mary and the Witch's Flower is a Ghibli-style movie made by animators who had worked at Ghibli. An English dub is available on streaming Netflix, but I got the DVD for the sake of the Japanese soundtrack. I may prefer originality to polished predictability, but, you know, the Ghibli formula is appealing enough that I will accept polished predictability. It's an enjoyable movie full of likeable characters, and I'm good with that.
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Date: 2018-12-03 06:31 pm (UTC)