Three Movies

Saw three movies in the past couple of days, mostly in a desperate attempt to do anything other than study for my actuarial exam. I'm sure I'll find more creative uses of my time as the exam approaches, but for now this is what I came up with.

Thirteen
Good movie, probably an 8 or 9/10. Got into a discussion over a beer afterwards about what the role of the boys in the movie was. I argued that they were really secondary to the relationship between the two girls, but everyone else at the table (who just all happened to be female) disagreed, stating that the attention from boys was the prime mover of the movie. I'm still not convinced though -- there was just too much interaction between the girls where the guys weren’t even around, or just used as objects for sexual experimentation. The real emotional bond was between the girls and I think that's what drove the characters.

Had some great scenes, including one where the two girls first meet and there's a quick montage where they check each other out to see if they're wearing the appropriate clothes. The movie sold the relationship between the characters well to -- I found that despite the risqué and sometimes questionable nature of what most of them were doing, I still empathized with them and the crappy stuff that they had to go through, especially the mother who tried to walk the line between being 'cool' and being the protective mother.

The Quiet American
Probably the first movie I've seen where Brendan Fraser was OK. Playing opposite someone as talented as Michael Caine helps though. Overall I thought this was pretty good, although I think I'd have to give it a 7/10 because I felt that the story could have been better adapted to the screen. An interesting perspective of Vietnam during the late French colonial days when they were fighting the communists. Shows how American ideology (personified by Brendan Fraser) caused their eventual involvement. Isaac voted against this one because it didn’t have a ‘message,’ but I thought the story itself held up independently.

Solaris
Well, there had to be one movie I saw that wasn't all that good. I blame this one on Isaac, since he was the one who made the decision to rent it. A sci-fi flick starring George Clooney about a planet-star-thing that makes the dreams of people on an orbiting spacecraft come to reality, or more specifically, the person they dream about. Shot in a very minimalist style à la 2001, except here they couldn't pull it off. The result are piles of scenes where the action is slower than cold molasses, usually with George Clooney broodingly staring around. Opposing these scenes is the most strained dialogue I've possibly heard in a movie. It would have been better if this was shot as a parody, since at least then I could understand what they were trying to accomplish. Surprisingly, it good fairly good reviews from the critics, with the lead review in Rotten Tomatoes calling it a 'gorgeous and deceptively minimalist cinematic tone poem.' Maybe if you've smoked a gram or two beforehand.