I'm super behind again.
I saw
Sylvia on Lifetime, so I'm not sure how much they cut out of the film. I liked the mood and the way the film looked. It seemed to get more and more gray as Plath descended into her depression. Of course, Gwyneth Paltrow ("The Good Night") and Daniel Craig ("The Invasion") gave solid performances as poetess Sylvia Plath and husband Ted Hughes. I liked that as a biopic, it didn't try to encompass Plath's whole life, just the time from when she met Hughes to her suicide. But despite the good qualities, it just wasn't all that interesting.
Sublime is further proof that one should never blind buy no matter how cheep the DVD is. The plot sounded good. The day after his 40th birthday, a man goes into the hospital for a routine colonoscopy but things go wrong and the hospital isn't everything that it seems. Creepy hospital. Botched surgery. A recipe for success? Alas, no. The production was good. Very nice lighting and colors. A good dosage of gore. But the film moves slow. And it's needlessly confusing. I'm sure we were supposed to be feeling the character's frustration. But, instead, I got annoyed. And then the horror movie cop out that makes me the most angry. [spoiler] It was all in his head [/spoiler] Totally lame.
Year of the Dog starts out following Molly Shannon ("Evan Almighty")'s lonely life with only her dog as her companion. When he dies, her world is thrown into a spiral as she quests for meaning and purpose. This film captures the Shannon's loneliness of living alone and frustration of being surrounded by people who don't understand or support her passions, trying to force her into the mold they think she should fit. The sadness is mixed with a good dose of humor. And the plot went somewhere I never expected. A rare thing. I really enjoyed this film. This is the directorial debut for writer Mike White ("Nacho Libre") and I am very interested to see where he goes next.
The Seventh Seal is my second Bergman, and while Smiles of a Summer Night was an easy introduction, this film is much heavier and stranger. Netfilx calls it a "powerful meditation on God and the meaning of life." A knight, played by a very young Max Von Sydow ("Rush Hour 3"), returning from the crusades, meets death and challenges him to a game of chess. The game spans several days as the knight and his squire (the best character in the film) travel home and meet all sorts of strange people. Again, some of this film is very absurd and funny. But much of it is painful to watch. The cinematography and many of the shots are gorgeous. And I understand why this film is so famous, but I'm not gung-ho to watch it again.
The Warriors just makes me want to chant, "Warriors, come out and playay" over and over. Set in the future, all the gangs of New York gather for a meeting where one man tries to unite them against the rest of the city. He's assassinated and the Warriors are framed. The rest of the film follows them as they try to make their way through a hostile city back to their own turf. The really great thing about this movie are the costumes of the other gangs. Especially the Baseball Furies. Awesome. The synth music is everywhere and, I think, very influenced by the Halloween theme. It's gritty and really just a lot of fun.