Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Hidden (Cache) - 2004

R: Wow. WOW. There's a simple equation that guides me in choosing films to watch:

(psychological thriller) x (allegory on decolonization) = (utter wankery)

Here, that equation fails. It's a little surprising, but it manages to be both of the things on the LHS, and not the thing on the RHS. Impressive.

A little synopsis: a fat happy French family starts getting anonymous video tapes containing footage of their house. This is more than a little creepy, and as you might hope, things start to get weird. The surrealism settles in slowly, which is a blessing. Or maybe it's not surrealism -- the director decided not to include the dialogue in the last scene, which renders the whole movie quite the puzzle. I'd be happy to argue with you about it after you've seen it :)

Night Watch/Nochnoi Dozor (2004)

R: If you're reading this, chances are I've already raved about this one to you. Yes, it's an action/horror movie, and you've seen a few of those. What sets this one apart? Well, this one's hip-deep in moral ambiguity. There is, dare I say, a point, well beyond "special effects are supercool" (though they are). So I like it for that reason.

Oh, also -- it's Russian.

The World's Fastest Indian (2005?)

Good clean fun. Not particularly important, but fun. And better than most "based on a true story" movies. Now, it's not clear how close this stays to the true story, though I'd believe it's closer than most.

A fluff movie for people who are not supposed to like fluff movies