Popeye

I suppose it had to be done. I guess it couldn’t have been done a lot better either. One of the few movies where Robin Williams isn’t “Robin Williams”. This doesn’t even compare to the really old b/w popeye cartoons from the 30’s though, where he’d beat up on people for just looking at him wrong – before the Hollywood morality police took over.

 

The Postman

Yes, the Kevin Costner movie that nobody saw. This movie had possibly the worst trailers I’ve ever seen. They made it out to be this epic story… I remember turning to the guy next to me in the theater and asking “is this a joke?”. I was serious, but… so was Kevin Costner. I’ve seen a lot of worse movies, I think ‘The Postman’ just got a bad vibe and was doomed before it ever came out. Some people have called this “waterworld without the water”. That’s actually a pretty good description. It’s about a loner in a post-apocalyptic world who accidentally finds something to believe in, and rises up against a tyrant (oh, he falls in love with a strong, independent woman too). Except in this one, Kevin is trying to get to the water (some ocean-side village) instead of land. The story & writing in this movie is a little better than waterworld, but the special effects weren’t as numerous. Remember how you felt about waterworld because you’ll probably feel the same way about this movie. If you haven’t seen either movie, you didn’t miss that much.

 

Pleasantville

I’m sorry if you liked this movie, but I thought it was completely full of itself. After a half hour, I was sitting there saying “ok, I get it… when people ‘wake up’, they turn into color… oooh! a metaphor or something”. But that was the whole movie. This was just stupid, they were living in an artificially constructed reality in the first place, any growth of the characters was just stupid.

 

Pink Flamingos

Finally, I’ve seen this. Yup, it was every bit disgusting as I’d heard. I had heard quite a bit about this before I saw it, but never any mention of the plot. So, in case you’re curious… It’s about a struggle between two parties of people to be called the “filthiest person alive”. Group 1 is a couple who lives in the city and makes money by selling the babies born to women who are chained-up in their basement. Group 2 is headed by “Divine”. They live in a trailer in the woods and keep their egg-addicited scantly-clad fat grandma in a playpen. Both groups go through a number of acts to prove how filthy they are. The movie includes depictions of stuff like: sex with a decapitated chicken, masturbation, oral sex, Divine eating dog poop, full nudity, people licking feet and furniture, drool, public exposure, public urination, murder, arson, rape, and bad haircuts. The movie’s production value is about as low as humanly possible, but that’s part of the appeal I guess. It’s definately an offensive movie through and through… (just like I’d expected!) so be warned if you decide to see it.

 

The Pillow Book

Peter Greenaway makes really cool movies. ‘Movie’ really doesn’t describe them well though, they’re more like ‘paintings which move’. I predict that 500 years from now, when movies are nothing more than a historical novelty, Peter Greenaway’s movies will have a cult following. I haven’t seen all his movies… just the more recent ones. “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover” was probably his most well known. “Prospero’s Books” was the most ‘out there’, and “Drowning by Numbers” was just fun to watch. I can’t really do justice to any of these movies with words. If you must know, “The Pillow Book” is about… um… calligraphy, and one woman’s obsession with it. If you are expecting a normal movie, you’ll probably be disappointed. if you have an open mind, you’ll really dig all of these movies.

 

Picnic at Hanging Rock

This is an old Australian movie which is based on a true story that happened like 100 years ago. It’s about a bunch of girls at a boarding school who go for a picnic at a wilderness area called hanging rock. A few of them wander off, never to be seen again. The movie goes beyond the simple tragedy of the event though, and into how it affects the lives of all the people involved. It does a pretty good job of transporting the viewer to a different time and place.

 

The Pianist

I can’t decide if I really needed to see people graphically executed at random for about an hour straight, but I haven’t been able to put the image out of my mind since seeing it. Is that good? productive? I don’t know. A part of me wants to say that we’ve had enough movies about the horrible things that happened to the Jews in WWII, and there are all kinds of museums, books, TV shows, magazine articles, etc etc etc.. it’s really overload! There have been plenty of simlarly awful genocidal episodes in recent history that don’t get fair play – Cambodia, Rwanda, Tibet, etc. Then again, this movie was so well done that I can’t be at all negative about it. It’s a compelling story that was worth telling. The gradual descent into chaos was shown really well, one can’t pinpoint the time when things got completely out of hand, and I guess that’s just how it happens.

 

Pi

This was pretty unique. I think it’s the only mathematical mystery/conspiracy movie I’ve seen. This is the story: A mathematics genius discovers that the key to all kinds of perplexing chaotic systems is a single 216 digit number. This knowledge drives him toward insanity – the closer he gets to understanding it, the more his life falls apart (not that he had much of a life to begin with). This movie probably tells us something about something, but I’m not sure what… if you knew the ‘secret to everything’ what would you do? how would it affect you? The whole movie was filmed in black and white… which worked pretty well (I’m not usually a big fan of b&w) since the main character had a pretty simplistic black & white view of the world.

 

The Perfect Storm

I had the feeling I was watching a carefully constructed hollywood entertainment product… and I was. It had elements which appealed to both adult (braindead) men and women, thus increasing the total market. The directing, cinematography and writing in this movie were totally flat. There was nothing imaginative or interesting throughout the whole movie. That was a shame because there was a lot of opportunity to do some interesting stuff. For example, when the main character talks about the “Zen of Fishing”, they could have filmed some really cool stuff for him to talk over. The only redeeming qualities were some of the special effects and the acting. The rest of the movie played like it was made-for-TV.