ivyfic | Movies I have watched recently

I'm splitting this into two posts. First for good movies. Amongst those:

Brick
I highly recommend Brick, which was Joseph Gordon Levitt's breakout adult role after Third Rock (if you can call a small distribution indie film a breakout). I saw it when it was released in 2005, and spent a lot of it going, wait, isn't that the kid from Third Rock from the Sun?

It is an archetypal noir. If I wanted to exemplify the genre to somebody, with just one movie that had all the features, it would be Brick. Which makes it even more interesting that it gets counted as "neo-noir" because it's set at a high school. But it's set at a high school in the way that Romeo+Juliet was set in a modern city--that is, in no way except sets and costumes. All the main characters are high school kids--or rather, they look like high school kids--but act like adults with the long history that entails. This somehow really works. The writer/producer has said that he wanted to make a new Dashiel Hammett story, but didn't want to fall into all the visual cliches of the old noirs. So he came up with this.

And it is, throughout, brilliantly plotted, brilliantly acted, and brilliantly shot. Though it may take more than one viewing to catch all the pieces of the plot.

Rewatching this now was of particular interest, because the writer/producer and JGL are teaming up again--on Looper. From the ads, I kind of dismissed it as yet another high concept shoot-em-up (something like RED, which is entertaining, but not more than that). But if it came from the guy who wrote Brick, it's probably phenomenal. And the early reviews seem to think so.

Sneakers
I love this movie. I really do. And I do not want to hear any trash talk about it. I rewatched it cause my dad pointed out that it's set in San Francisco, and I've been watching movies filmed in SF lately. This was kind of shocking to me cause--I've watched this movie many, many times, and can remember the visuals of many scenes. But watching it again, after having been to SF--there's a scene where Alcatraz is bang behind Robert Redford, enormous, and I'd somehow never managed to notice that. They talk about the fog horn at the Golden Gate, they talk about the toy company being in Palo Alto, and I'd somehow managed to never notice any of this because I didn't know the place they were talking about.

What I enjoy about the movie at this point, well, a few things. A) I love all the performances, particularly Ben Kingsley (this is the role that made me love him) and Mary McDonnell, who will forever be the woman in Sneakers to me, and was the best part of BSG, in my opinion. I have not watched her new show, but I am so excited for that when it hits Netflix. Anyway. B) I love the score. And C) the techno-nostalgia. Tape recorders! MS-DOS! Keypad locks! Answering machines! God, I get such a kick out of all the gadgets. This is the technological landscape of my childhood.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sneakers is famous in nerd circles for making the villain's super device what is basically a quantum computer, quite a few years before Shor devised his factoring algorithm for them.

They're pretty vague about how it works, though. They literally call it a black box.

Yes. Shor waited until after the movie came out to demonstrate that a quantum computer would be such a black box.

That, and the way they mess up mathematical terminology is hilarious. Our entire summer intern group broke down laughing when they mentioned cyclotomic fields.

Rian Johnson is one of my favorite writer/directors of all time. Have you seen The Brothers Bloom? Because it's quite possibly my favorite movie ever. Totally agree with everything you said here about Brick. And the cast of Brick all have little cameos in The Brothers Bloom, which is a fun little nod. I'm incredibly excited for Looper.

If you're into old JGL movies, I totally recommend Manic, which is also available on Netflix streaming (Don Cheadle is AMAZING in this), and Mysterious Skin, even though it's DVD only and disturbing as all hell. But seriously, Manic is worth a watch.

I almost never watch indie type films--I tend to go for films where shit blows up and I don't have to think too hard. A friend dragged me to Brick, and I came out incredibly impressed (and a little confused).

I'll have to check out Brothers Bloom, since that's the only other film Johnson's done between Brick and Looper (can you tell I was too lazy to look up his name?). Maybe Manic. Don't know about the disturbing as hell one, though.

Rewatching Brick, though, I was like oh! This is where the obsession with Arthur's curly hair comes from!

I do love watching JGL. It's my one reservation about Looper. Why have him in a film if I can't look at his lovely face? He's made a risky choice with the makeup--it will be interesting to see if it pays off.

(I deleted your anon comment since it's duplicated.)

(Also, I think I might have to request Brick for yuletide.)

Yeah, sorry about the anon comment. I don't know why LJ logged me out. -_-

I'm pretty sure the thing about the makeup in Looper was that they weren't sure that they were going to get Bruce Willis. And then when they did, there was a brief celebration of HOLY SHIT WE GOT BRUCE WILLIS, and then they realized that he and JGL look absolutely NOTHING alike and that would need to be addressed. Either way, I'm excited, and I think JGL is a strong enough actor to pull it off.

Manic is great, really emotionally intense, but so well done. JGL plays a teenager with rage issues who's in a mental institution, and Don Cheadle is the doctor attempting to help the kids heal. Baby Zooey Deschanel in this one, too. I think it's where she and JGL met.

...I am not a Zooey Deschanel fan. Too manic pixie. For all that I love JGL, there are a number of his films that I will never, ever watch. Like 500 Days of Summer. And 50/50, though I've heard it's good. Some things the dimples will not compell me to do.

This was long before she started the manic pixie schtick. In Manic she's quiet and withdrawn and basically a ghost. It's really interesting, actually.

50/50 is good, and nary a Manic Pixie Dream Girl in sight. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is good to the point of being heartbreaking in it, too. I'm anti-Seth Rogen, and that movie made him almost work. (It helps that he wrote the story based on his true life friend suffering from cancer.)

Spoiler! It's more that I really really don't want to watch a film about cancer. At all.

I...don't think I spoiled anything?

Well, you did say the friend survived.

No, I did not. Where did I say that? I said Seth Rogen wrote 50/50 based on his friend who had cancer. I nowhere indicated whether "had cancer" meant "had cancer and is now better" or "had cancer and died." ::harumphs:: I'm usually very good about not spoiling!

Sorry--misread suffering as surviving. Blame reading it on my iPhone.

Oh good. For a second I thought I had spoiled the fact that the guy survived.

...kidding! I can neither confirm nor deny that guy's continued existence. You'll have to watch the movie to find out. :)

And it's worth it, I think. 50/50 was good and it made me hate Seth Rogen a smidge less despite the fact that he's pretty goddamn awful (as a person) in that movie at points. You realize he's just that wigged out about his friend being really sick and he's the one in denial/overcompensating to try and make the feelings he has about that sort of thing stop freaking him out. It's an incredibly human, relatable response even though the manifestations of it annoy.

Still really, really don't want to watch something about cancer, even if it's well done. I DON'T LIKE MOVIES THAT MAKE ME FEEL.

Does this mean you're coming to see Looper with us? Either of you? :)

I've been meaning to re-watch both of those for a while!

I don't remember if you liked the Closer or not, but Major Crimes is a lot like it (sharing a cast seems to have that effect for some reason), only with Mary McDonnell's Closer character as the main instead of Kyra Sedgwick. I very much like both shows, but if you're not a Closer fan, I'm truly not sure if you would like it.

I actually like the Closer quite a lot--it's one of my go to procedurals. And I always liked McDonnell's appearances. Especially since you could see her and Brenda as the two strategies for being a powerful women in a male dominated field: the bitch and the sweetie. Both are equally hard, but use different strategies to hold on to their authority.

I've been meaning to watch Major Crimes (and to do watch through of the Closer to find what episodes I missed since I only catch it in syndication) but I can't really follow any show right now with my schedule. I'm more than a month behind on White Collar and six months behind on Fringe. And lately I've been watching documentaries more than anything.

Wow. I also have never realized that Sneakers is set in the bay area. Clearly I haven't watched it recently enough...

Yeah, I love Sneakers. Watch it again every so often, and quote it far more often than that. "You get all the fun stuff."

And we really enjoyed Brick.

Movies I have watched recently

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