Excess of Opinions

imbued with the kind of heavy import and reference that is mostly lost to a viewer who isn’t Chinese and doesn’t intuitively understand the significance of its characters and events. still, it’s very pretty and nicely-acted with notably stunning costume and set design. i found the dialog super cliche – but this could be a problem of subtitling?

altogether gorgeous, but unfortunately not enthralling for even 2 1/2 hours, much less forever.

pretentiously weird and pointless French piece of crap.

the acting is actually great, but no possible tool could dig the characters out of this deep hole of suck.

this stop-motion animated Belgian…experience…is so deliciously loony and fun i can hardly stand it. i literally never knew what was happening next, but it all made an insane kind of sense and was logical within its framework of children’s fantasy logic. SO MUCH FUN!!!

it has a subtle adult sensibility about it, such that like classic Muppet Show episodes, there are hilarious implications that would fly unnoticed over the heads of the kids but warm the dark hearts of their parents.

extremely taut and realistic heist/crime movie from Iceland. the pace is fast and the writing is sharp, and the whole thing is one of the best-crafted and most satisfying movies i’ve seen in years.

i’ll level with you, i resisted going to see this because i hadn’t really seen a Scandinavian movie that had no one staring out a gray window for 10 minutes, wearing a tattered Cosby sweater and thinking about their dead friend, expressing less than 10 total lines of dialog. this movie kicked my ass and took my name.

well-done sweeping Dutch castle epic for older kids – all the actors are natural and earnest; the plot is simple but not dumb and filled with easy-to-grasp symbolism and morals; the sword-fighting is nicely executed and the locations and cinematography are beautiful.

Schindler’s List In China!

powerful and devastating, perfectly choreographed down to the last detail with flawless acting, but has a small uncomfortable whiff of “hey, everybody get off our German balls about the Holocaust! the Japanese did it TOO, dammit!!”

affecting and well-done documentary about the caste of garbage collectors/recyclers in Cairo.

although i did get the impression that the producer screened for the most beautiful young men of the Zaballeen – i was all “if you’re that worried about cash, move your asses to Paris and get on a runway”.

behold: perfection.

i’m not at all sure how i got to this point in my life without having seen this, but holy crap. that was a helluva thing.

i had NO IDEA there was a time when Joe Pesci could act. no idea!

one does need to watch this with one’s time machine vision, as it’s definitely dated, not to mention it’s been ripped off and/or parodied many times in the intervening decades.

gorgeous.