Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

My favorite thing about this movie was the way the dead bodies slapped into the cement after going down Sweeney Todd's little barber chair chute. The insouciant way Todd slit the throats while singing his song was also rather delightful. I'd never seen the musical, but I imagine mostly everything that was cool about this came from that, and it was good enough here that I can't imagine they fucked up too much about the musical. Johnny Depp, of course, was enjoyable.

Someone needs to get Burton to back of the digital color manipulation though. He already's ruined a few movies with it's over/misuse, and could've done so here if the music wasn't good enough to inject life into the movie even though Burton tried to sap all the life from nearly every frame. Mrs. whoever's (HBCarter's) extended daydream with the extra-saturated color, though, was a nice touch, but it didn't need the grayed out London of the rest of the movie to make it effective. Burton decided, I guess, to make the whole thing seem as if the characters were all wearing the One Ring...

The Golden Compass

It flew by really quickly and I felt very entertained, and it made me really want to read the book. No, really, when it ended I thought: when's the next one come out? I was seriously ready for about an hour more of movie. By which I mean, I guess, it felt like a lot was missing, but what was there was very good and made me want more. I just kind of wish this wasn't the finished movie, and I could go up to the filmmakers and say, "Yeah, that's a really good start. Keep going." I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not.

I did feel like there was a pretty serious critique of authority kind of happening in the background... No, actually, I guess it was pretty explicit, it just wasn't actually very interested in it. I think that's why I want to read the books. I assume the book was actually interested in that aspect of it. If I read this book to my kids will they grow up to be good little anarchists? I hope so!

I Am Legend

I really wanted this movie to be good, but it wasn't. It's stubborn refusal to actually go anywhere with any of the intriguing developments it presented completely ruined it.

Why did the zombie leader not do anything except scream? If he was smart enough to set up a trap for Will Smith? Are their people out there who really think huge-mouthed screaming is that awesome or scary? And why are those people allowed to make movies? Now I just want to watch the Omega Man again and dream about the present-day big-budget blockbuster that could really do this movie right and pretend this movie'd never happened.

It almost felt like someone had come in and decided that the three-hour movie the first hour and a half seemed to be setting up were just too long and so they ripped off a page from the Judge Dredd playbook and decided to blow everything up.

I've hated this movie more every day since I watched it a week and a half ago.

Duck, You Sucker

Really kind of awesome, actually.

The introduction of James Coburn's character has to rank near the top of the list of coolest entrances ever--so great that it almost made me forget about the twenty minutes preceding it until just now, with Rod Steiger acting perfectly disgusting but still ending up more likeable than than the rich snobby folks in their coach. The closeups of their mouths while they were chewing seemed especially refreshingly un-Leone to me, an intrustion of a Fellini-esque weirdness into the hard edge of Leone's usual style.

I think it's probably that exact excess of ideas that is the major difference between this movie and Leone's earlier trilogy. They were so focused and sharp--even TGTB&TU at nearly three hours never really meanders. This has the first half hour of pure Leone coolness and then it kind of wanders into a more... something else... I guess if there's a genre of small-guy-accidentally-getting-caught-up-in-historical-events, a la Forrest Gump and Zelig, it was kind of that for a while... the momentum of that first half hour probably doesn't quite hold up the rest of the movie, especially with the draggy flashbacks to Ireland. They were so long and weird that I have to assume part of the point of them was their length and their weirdness, but I'm not convinced that they were very necessary anyway.

I really have no idea what to think of the final flashback, where Coburn hands over his girlfriend to his future-traitor friend. It was already creepy how happy they all were and how into watching them make out Coburn's friend was, but what exactly the hand-off was there for is beyond me, unless as some kind of indication that the revolutionaries in Ireland were also sexually liberated or something, which is a point that doesn't really seem to have a place in the movie. But, whatever. I'll give it points for being weird and for being the logical conclusion of all the creepy shoulder-patting by Coburn's friend while they were kissing.

Can't forget to mention the shot when they finally get to Mesa Verde and the camera pans across the posters of the governer and then stops to settle on one poster for a while until suddenly a finger protrudes from the white space to the left of the governor's face and tears a straight strip across his eyes, and then from behind Rod Steiger's eye's move into the light and look out from behind the governor's face. No word for that but 'awesome.'

In a Lonely Place

Where this movie really got me was about fifteen minutes in (maybe less) when Bogart takes the coat check girl back to his place and she's blabbering on about the book, and the perspective switches for a few minutes so that she's suddenly talking directly at the camera. Except that I'm not completely sure that the camera was suddenly supposed to be in Bogart's head, because he wasn't in the same spot that the camera was when she started talking to it. Maybe it was still supposed to be a Bogey POV shot, but the effect was that she was talking directly to the audience. I just wasn't expecting it, and it completely sold the movie to me.

I do think I could watch Humphrey Bogart trade flirty barbs with his sassy costars for the rest of my life and never get bored of it. He just did it so well, and either he just got extremely lucky with his costars or he was able to draw it out of them, but I don't know that I've seen anybody else who could do it quite like that.

What was the deal with the masseuse lady, though, I wonder? Somehow she was supposed to be able to take care of any problems for Bogart's gf? It just seems weird that it was the masseuse who was supposed to be her savior...

Blade Runner: The Final Cut

It was hard to watch this without trying to spot differences between this and the Director's Cut, with which I'm pretty familiar. I really didn't see all that many, aside from a few short shots that seemed new to me, and of course the different order of the ending sequences, so that Deckard runs away with Rachel after surviving his fight with Batty.

I was a little confused by his nod. Since everyone knows that after the Director's Cut the big question was about Deckard's human/replicant status, it almost seemed like having the nod be the last bit of expression we see out of Deckard, after he picked up the origami unicorn, it was pretty easy to assume that the nod was meant to be in response to that question, so that Deckard seemed to be actually thinking about that question more than I ever thought he was before, except that if that were the case, just nodding seems like a pretty stupid response to him making up his mind. Or maybe he just nodded because Harrison Ford couldn't figure out how else to respond to an origami unicorn, but thought he should respond somehow. Also, maybe the shot where Batty kills Tyrelle was held a little longer? I don't remember so much blood before, but I'm not sure.

I was really happy to be able to see it on a big theater screen, but I can't see the cut seemed to be that much of an improvement over the extant one.

(12/9/07)
Okay, so my worst fears have been realized. Here's Ridley Scott on "the nod"

Wired: You shot the unicorn dream sequence as part of the original production. Why didn't you include it in either the work print or the initial release?

Scott:As I said, there was too much discussion in the room. I wanted it. They didn't want it. I said, "Well, it's a fundamental part of the story." And they said, "Well, isn't it obvious that he's a replicant?" And I said, "No more obvious than that he's not a replicant at the end." So, it's a matter of choice, isn't it?

Wired: When Deckard picks up the origami unicorn at the end of the movie, the look on his face says to me, "Oh, so Gaff was here, and he let Rachael live." It doesn't say, "Oh my God! Am I a replicant, too?"

Scott:No? Why is he nodding when he looks at this silver unicorn? I'm not going to send up a balloon. Doing the job he does, reading the files he reads on other replicants, Deckard may have wondered at one point, "Am I human or am I a replicant?" That's in his innermost thoughts. I'm just giving you the fully fleshed-out possibility to justify that look at the end, where he kind of glints and looks angry. To me, it's an affirmation. He nods, he agrees. "Ah hah! Gaff was here. I've been told."

I've always kind of wondered how the guy who made Blade Runner and Alien could've also made Gladiator and... well... pretty much all of his other movies. Apparently it's because he's kind of an idiot (seriously, what kind of an imagination thinks "Yeah, when Deckard finds the unicorn he thinks 'Ah hah! Gaff was here. I've been told.' and then his response to learning unequivocally that he's a robot is to nod quickly and walk away"?) Oh, well. Blade Runner's still great (even if now it will forever have that silly nod), but I guess I can stop wondering what happened to Ridley Scott...