Mary and Max, is excellent. Its dark – it deals with mental illness, alcoholism, suicide, and a host of other topics. Its by no means a cheery movie. Darker, and grittier than “Let the right one” say, but a world above “Edmond”.

If you like dark, slow paced movies, with nice character development, you’ll like this stop motion movie. Its not a kids movie.

A friends 9 year old daughter watched Star Wars for the first time the other night. During the famous trash compactor scene, she came up with a profoundly insightful question.

Katie had the line of the night during the garbage-chute scene: “Who would throw away a one-eyed octopus?”

Spoiler toward the end.
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Edmond is a disturbing movie. Its not an overly gruesome movie – its just really bleak, really depressing, and its a lot like watching a bad train wreck, with no way to stop. Its really bleak by my standards of bleak. And, I LOVE bleak dark movies, where they start off bad and end up worse.

I can say I like this movie, even though I’ve watched it three times now. Its a bit dark by my standards of dark.

Its about a man – Edmond, played by William H. Macy. He blows a fuse one night (mental fuse) and goes wandering the streets of New York. Mostly seeking to get laid, actually. And he keeps descending. And descending further…..

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On the other hand, there is a degree of satisfaction to seeing William H. Macy end up a prison bitch.

Okay, this is an odd movie.

So, Roger Ebert (the only movie reviewer I pay much attention to) has this hilarious bit to say about zombies

I think zombies are defined by behavior and can be “explained” by many handy shortcuts: the supernatural, radiation, a virus, space visitors, secret weapons, a Harvard education and so on. I suppose it would be a “spoiler” if I revealed why the Crazies are on the lurch, but come on, does it matter? What if I revealed they got that way because of, oh, say, eating Pringles? Would that spoil things for you? What difference does it make? All that matters is that they got to be zombies somehow. Before that, they were your friends and neighbors. Then they started in on the damn Pringles.

He is a bit tired of zombie movies, if you can’t tell.

First, I have no idea why its called Chocolate. The title makes no sense.

Chocolate is the martial arts movie about the autistic girl “A special needs child with a special need – to kick some ass”. Anyway, overall its a “meh” movie, except for a couple of interesting tidbits. Though I did rate it four out of five stars in the “late night Kung Fu” movie category. That is however, a pretty darn limited category.

From a gaming perspective, its interesting because of the wide variety of fight locations. They fight in lots of places, and use the environment extensively. At one point they fight crouching under a metal grill area, which is pretty extensive. There is a traditional dojo fight, an ice cutting factory fight, a big fight in a pig slaughtering factory, and the final fight. The final fight is vertical. Its on the side of an elevated rail track, about 30 feet above the ground, and extends over to the ledges outside the windows of a cheap hotel. These ledges are a foot wide, at most, with a small fire escape. I think a system like FATE captures this better than a more traditional system, like D20. Because really, the goal is “leap onto the sign, and race over it before it collapses, while launching off it to kick a guy in the face, then land spread eagle against the wall, dropping a foot or two to the ledge”. In FATE, you just add a couple of modifiers to the roll. In a more traditional system, those would be several rolls, and thus really slow.

The other interesting thing, is watching her fight. She uses a lot of Taekwondo, so you see a lot of elbow and shin strikes. That was the most interesting part of the movie to me. I was like “Is she striking with her shins, not her feet? (She does use both)”. And sure enough, she was. So I started paying more attention to the fighting style. It was quite interesting.

So the Lightning Thief has Uma Thurman as Medusa?

Alright, now I have to see it. Uma has been in my top five for 20 years now. I saw her in The adventures of Baron Munchausen at the Lefont Tara in the late 80′s. I noticed her as the bit dancer Rose, before she showed up in the movie as Venus (an apt role for her).

I haven’t seen most of her movies, but I’ve always liked her. And Medusa is one of my favorite mythological creatures.

British Serial Killer trilogy – 3 movies.

http://www.slate.com/id/2243738/

Looks like it might be worth watching.

A sci-fi thriller with no special effects, a cast of four and a single location used with Hitchcockian economy, “Timecrimes” boasts the kind of smart, resourceful filmmaking that champions ingenuity over spectacle.

Just a quick note of a couple of interesting things. While the movie (Timecrimes) isn’t perfect, its pretty good. Its worth a rewatch or two, but thats about it. Still, next year an American remake will be coming out. I rolled my eyes when I first heard this, but if the screenwriter for Children of Men is onboard, it gives me hope. Children of Men is an awesome movie – to be perfect, it just needs to be 3-5 seconds shorter.

Adhering to its own hermetically sealed logic, “Timecrimes” is cerebral enough to attract David Cronenberg, who signed on as the prime-choice director of an up-coming remake.

With no time machine at our disposal, we’ll just have to wait to see if Cronenberg’s version (adapted by Timothy J. Sexton, the screenwriter of “Children of Men”) offers any tantalizing improvements.

4 out of 5 stars.

A witty, engaging, science fiction mystery. Its a time travel movie, though far from the best that I’ve seen. (Memento has that honor – which while not technically a time travel movie, in practice it is).

Poor slob sees a girl undressing in the woods (boobies! Always a plus in a movie). He goes to investigate. He gets stabbed in the arm. He runs. Soon there are three of him running around.

Then it gets confusing, until it isn’t.

And, he pays a terrible price in the end – though not the most terrible that gets paid.

Its a touch odd.

I’m pure profit to them.

I have the cheapest plan (I pay either 4.99 per month, or 5.99 per month. I can’t remember which). I’ve had the same movie (Timecrimes) since May of 2009. Under the cheapest plan I can rent exactly two movies per month (Or watch about 2 hours of streaming video), and I can only have movie out at a time. So, I’ve paid 30 bucks so far, for this one lone DVD to sit in my house collecting dust. Because I HAVEN’T WATCHED IT yet.

How about streaming movies, you ask? I’ve watched Corpse Bride, Jason and the Argonauts, and Read or Die (first episode) in that time. Thats it.

But, I have my reasons for having it, and I won’t give it up. Its worth the 5 bucks or so a month. (Though I wish I could find Timecrimes right now, I want to watch it, return it, and get started catching up on some stuff).

I don’t have formal new years resolutions this year (I never even remotely keep them, so no reason to have them). But I do have an informal one to watch more movies/tv. So, in browing Netflix last night, I stumbled across two things that look interesting…

In modern-day London, Dr. Jekyll’s last living descendant, Tom Jackman (James Nesbitt), carries on his famous ancestor’s legacy. Tom believes he can control his dark side and protect his wife and children, but a secret society that’s followed the Jekyll family line for a hundred years has plans for both halves of Tom’s personality. Gina Bellman and Michelle Ryan co-star in this offbeat adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic.

Its about a TV show (the only lasted 6 episodes) called Jekyll.

The other is an Anime series – hard science fiction (not space opera) which is a particular interest of mine.

n the distant future, humanity has begun to colonize the solar system. But in order to make further advances, a mountain of trash must be cleared out of Earth’s orbit. Traveling faster than bullets, these millions of bits of debris can perforate a spaceship. That’s where the Planetes come in: They’re trash collectors. Through their point of view, we see the social and political changes brought about by access to this new frontier.

I’ll be looking into both in the upcoming year.