New Zealand Time – July 9th, 7:29pm
Sitting here, working away on a couple assignments. I thought I’d write up a brief list of movies I’ve seen in the last several weeks, along with my usual ramblings regarding current events down here in the Southern Hemisphere. This is largely in an effort to make work on the aforementioned assignments a bit less painful.
- Letters from Iwo Jima
- Death Race 2000
- Stay
- Bubba Ho-tep
- Shooter
- Sicko
Plot: The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.
Thoughts: Fantastic movie. For whatever reason, it didn’t fare too well at the box office. Instantly became a movie I plan to add to my DVD collection down the road. Considering it is filmed from a Japanese perspective, I’d like to see a similar film in the same style from a German/Italian perspective (and I suppose to a much lesser extent Hungary, Romania, etc.)
Rating: 9 out of 10
Highly recommended.
Plot: A champion of a brutal cross-country car race of the future where pedestrians are run down for points has a change of heart while being hounded by rivals and a conspiracy seeking to stop the race.
Thoughts: Made in 1975, starring such names as Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine, this … interesting movie … was enjoyable to watch for all the wrong reasons. The movie combines among many things car racing, over-the-top-characters, political activism against a totalitarian government, and people intentionally being hit by cars. Yes, intentionally. The concept is odd enough, but combine that with horrible special effects/acting/lines, and well, it is really the definition of a B movie.
Rating: 3 out of 10 … but on a B-movie scale, I’d give it a 7.37 out of 10
If I ever assemble a collection of B-movies, this will be there.
Plot: This movie focuses on the attempts of a psychiatrist to prevent one of his patients from committing suicide, while trying to maintain his own grip on reality.
Thoughts: An interesting movie, which isn’t the easiest to define. A lot of plot twists, but I never felt lost in them, which was nice. Nothing worse than feeling as though you’re perpetually catching up with a story as a movie progresses. I’m at a loss for words, mostly because I don’t want to write anything that would spoil the movie. That being said, my thoughts after watching it were mostly, “Ah, okay. Perhaps I should have watched some episodes of He-Man instead.” Not horrible, but not great. Just “meh”. In this case, “meh”=6.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Just average really. Unfortunately, it didn’t involve nor promote intentional vehicular homicide so I can’t bump its rating via the B-movie scale.
Plot: Elvis and JFK, both alive and in nursing homes, fight for the souls of their fellow residents as they battle an ancient Egyptian Mummy
Thoughts: Starring Bruce Campbell of Evil Dead fame, Holly recommended this. It is one of those movies that has been on my “to-see” lists for quite some time, and I’m glad I finally got around to watching it. Despite the odd plot, I was a fan. Quirky with doses of humour and drama, I liked this movie a lot more than I thought I would going in.
Rating: 7.1 (repeating decimal) out of 10
Elvis, JFK, and an Egyptian mummy battling? Nobody should need any more incentive.
Plot: A marksman living in exile is coaxed back into action after learning of a plot to kill the president. Ultimately double-crossed and framed for the attempt, he goes on the run to track the real killer and find out who exactly set him up, and why.
Thoughts: The old man-gets-screwed-by-his-own-government movie. In this case the backstabbing is emphasized by the fact he was attempting to help them in the first place. However, much like Bubba Ho-tep, I liked this movie more than I thought I would. Nothing too special, but I didn’t think it had any weak points for a man-with-gun-seeking-revenge movie. Perhaps I should just keep making up more words with hyphens.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Man with a sniper rifle vs. the U.S. goverment = a good action movie
Plot: A documentary comparing the highly profitable American health care industry to other nations, and HMO horror stories.
Thoughts: Another documentary from Mr. Moore. I found it to have less bias than some of his other work, but as with any documentary you have to be careful when fact gets blended. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Possibly my favourite Moore documentary to date, but I might be biased in that do to the health care focus of the film (I do love my free health care!). While the focus is the health system in the U.S. and its roots, Moore does a good job at spending a lot of time looking at international health systems (including Canada naturally; we’re quickly becoming the natural supplement of any Moore documentary), and I think this is part of the reason why I enjoyed this more (pun?) than previous works of his I have seen. Though a commentary on the U.S., he doesn’t spend as much time on camera poking at the States with a pointy stick as he has before.
Rating: 8 out of 10
An interesting perspective on U.S. health care that is worth watching.
Thanks to IMDB for giving me good plot summaries to steal so I didn’t have to rack my brain thinking of ways to describe them myself. Thanks to myself for this brilliant idea, as it has eased the pain of typing out words concerned with lesson plans, unit plans, learning intentions, and alike teaching oriented terms. Believe it or not, these aren’t always as exciting as movies.
I’m back at college now, after my two weeks off. However, in less than two weeks I begin my 3-week stint with a year 1/2 class. Looking forward to hanging out and teaching the young ones. Potentially moving quite soon. Doing so will not only put me closer to a few important things in town (college, stores, … pubs?) but will same me some money in the process.
I should cease writing for now and get back to finishing up this work.
Hope everyone is well.
Cheers.
By 
