Diary of a Network Geek

Quarantine

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Quarantine on Sunday.

This is a dark and disturbing movie and I cannot recommend it to anyone with a weak constitution. It wasn’t scary, per se, but it was surprising, which is a refreshing change for me when it comes to horror films.

The entire movie is filmed in a kind of “Blair Witch” style, but better. It’s all done on a single camera, or point of view. The idea is simple, really, a TV news reporter and her camera man are shadowing a pair of fire-fighters in some unknown urban setting. The entire thing is filmed from that perspective.
The movie starts off simply enough with this reporter filming some intro work and getting to know some of the firemen. It’s all normal, fun stuff, basically a reporting doing a puff piece about the heroic firemen. Then, they get a call.

The firemen that the reporter is shadowing go out on the call and arrive at an old, relatively short, apartment building. They meet a pair of policemen who have called for assistance getting into an apartment where a tenant is believed to be trapped, possibly hurt. They break into her apartment and find an old woman who’s become dangerously ill and, it turns out, violent.
Honestly, at this point, I thought it was going to turn into a standard zombie movie, just in a building, but, well, it turned out to be something more. Not too far into the movie, after it’s established that there’s some sort of illness running through the residents, the CDC and National Guard show up and seal everyone into the building. That’s where the name of the movie comes from, I suppose, the quarantine.
Naturally, in my standard movie review style, I won’t reveal the rest of the plot and spoil it. Let me just say that, even though the plot is simple, it’s handled very well. And, there is a bit of a surprise ending. At least, it was a bit of a surprise to me.

I liked this movie.
It was a little scary, pretty gory, and disturbingly realistic in its portrayal of the events. It does take place mainly in a single four or five story apartment building, but that enhances the whole thing. And, it is filmed from a single camera perspective, but, again, instead of limiting the film, it adds realism and immediacy. The single camera thing also adds a fair bit of suspense and sets up the surprise ending. I really was pleasantly surprised at how effectively that was used in this film.
Also, keep in mind, this isn’t my kind of movie, generally, but I liked the way it was constructed. And, it didn’t disappoint at all. I cannot recommend this film to most of my regular audience, but if you like a good horror movie, this will do quite well this Halloween season.

Quarantine was well worth the matinee price I paid. Even though this wasn’t a zombie movie, if you like them, go see this movie.

BurnAfterReading

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

Okay, so I saw two totally different movies this weekend.

I’m going to review them in reverse order, actually.
Sunday, at the earliest matinee, I saw Burn After Reading. Now, I have to admit, I went into this with pretty high expectations because, after all, it is a Coen Brothers’ film. Also, from the trailers, I was expecting a total comedy. Well, I’ll say this, I was certainly not sad that I went to see this film. And, it was very, very funny. But, it wasn’t really a comedy.

The story, in a nutshell, is this… Osborne Cox, a CIA analyst gets demoted, but quits in protest. His wife, a castrating bitch, is cheating on him, but also wants a divorce. He starts writing a memoir, which she copies to a disk along with a bunch of financial information to bring to her lawyer. Somehow, the disk gets, well, lost and falls into the wrong hands. In this case, the “wrong hands” is the staff at a health club, each of whom are messed up in their own way.
And, that’s just the first thirty minutes, or less, of the film! Oh, and that’s all without any of the subplots that all become hugely important later. It’s very much like Fargo, in all the best ways, even including a lot of the cast from Fargo, in fact.

Well, as always, without revealing any significant plot spoilers, let me say that this was a good movie, albeit complicated, convoluted and quirky. Of course, it is a Coen Brothers’ film, so I guess that’s to be expected.
The thing is, from the advertising and the trailers, I thought this would be mostly a comedy, but it’s not. Really, I’m not sure what it is, outside of being different and good. Well, it is funny, too, it’s just not full-out comedy. I mean, it’s better than that. It’s kind of hard to explain.
Okay, let’s just summarize and let me say that it’s worth paying full price to see this movie, and I almost never pay full price to see a movie any more.

Now, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is an entirely different animal.
As I wrote on Flickr, guys, if you take a date to see this movie and you didn’t get laid? Duder, you are doing something seriously wrong. I am not kidding.

Okay, look, I’ll admit it. I have a secret weakness for romantic comedies that are heavy on the romantic. Nick and Norah is such a film. It may not win any Oscars, but, if I had to pick a must-see movie, behind Dark Knight, of course, this would be it.
Two kids, seniors in different high schools in the greater New York area, have a mutual acquaintance in common. Nick’s ex-girlfriend and Norah’s arch-nemesis. They also share a love of music, which is featured through out the film.
Nick, the only straight member of an otherwise gay band, finds himself dragged out in search of a mythical band “Where’s Fluffy?” as he tries to recover from being dumped. Norah, a nice girl with a couple of self-image issues, gets dragged out to take care of a friend who invariably ends up drunk and, of course, by the lure of finding “Where’s Fluffy?”. Somewhere in the middle, they meet and…

Well, in my fine tradition of not ruining films I review with spoilers, I’m not going to tell you if they actually get together by the end of the film. But, let me reinforce that guys, if you are even the slightest bit nice, kind, sweet, gentlemanly, caring sort of guy that Michael Cera plays? This movie should pretty well make any normal, romantic, sweet, “bring her home to meet the parents” sort of girl you ought to be dating totally melt. As long as it’s your idea first, not hers, and you totally buy into the romance of this flick. You have GOT to believe it, brothers, or it will not fly.
But, uh, yeah, I need to find a date while this movie is still in the damn theaters. Like, pronto.

It’s been a great year for movies so far, and the rest of the year looks pretty good, too.
Stay tuned for more reviews. Oh, and another book review later in the week, too.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"I love deadlines. I especially love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
   --Douglas Adams

DarkKnight

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw The Dark Knight today.

Wow.
I feel confident that this is going to be the best movie of the year. I have to admit I was a little dubious based on the massive amount of publicity the movie’s gotten and all the rave reviews my friends gave it. I mean, when they compared Dark Knight to the Godfather movies, well, I thought the reviewer had lost his mind, but I think they may be onto something.

So, the Dark Knight picks up where Batman Begins left off. Batman Begins retells the origin story of Batman in a way that’s closer to the original comic than the first movie did. This movie continues with that story, though Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawson and Aaron Eckhart joins as Harvey “Two Face” Dent. Christian Bale still plays Bruce Wayne/Batman, with Michael Caine as Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, not to mention Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon.
The story opens with Batman fighting a number of criminals in a parking garage, along with some Batman copycats sort of getting in his way. He seems to find the whole thing a little depressing, having copycat vigilantes. He’s also sort of looking for a way to retire, once the city is safe from organized crime. For this, Bruce looks to Harvey Dent, the Gotham District Attorney. He’s the last honest man, outside of Jim Gordon, in the city and he’s putting away plenty of criminals. He’s also dating Rachel Dawes, much to the pain of Bruce Wayne.

Well, it seems he has his work cut out for him when he goes up against a new kind of criminal, the Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger. He’s scarred, both physically and mentally, and appears in makeup to hide both. But, his crazy shows through both when he kills his accomplices and offers to kill the Batman, for a fee. So, off he goes, in his crazy way, using random violence and our own worst nature against us.

Well, I don’t want to give away too much plot, because you all really have to see this movie, so I won’t tell you more, but it is a violent roller coaster through a dark world of back alleys and sub-levels and ruined buildings. There are explosions and guns and more explosions and hand-to-hand action and car chases. But, oddly, there’s also a fair amount of philosophy, brilliant dialog, and social commentary. But, none of that stuff gets in the way of the story or the action.
The sets and cinematography are brilliant, too. Oh, and most of the movie was shot in Chicago and near where I worked for several years. I kept seeing things in the background that totally reminded me of home. In a good way.

I’m sure I’ll see this movie again, possibly on IMAX. The friend I saw it with today had already seen it twice before and was talking about seeing it again. Dark Knight is one of those movies that you can watch many times, finding more each time you watch it. It truly is the best of the Batman films and, really, is one of the best films I’ve ever seen.
I cannot encourage you enough to see this film. If you see no other movie this year, make it Dark Knight.

AntedW

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Wanted today.

I’m not a huge fan of Angelina Jolie, or the comic book this movie is apparently based on, but I have to admit, it intrigued me when I saw the trailers and TV ads. I’d seen mixed reviews and even had gotten a less than stellar review from a friend who loves movies, too, but I really, really wanted to see this. In fact, I wanted to see it so much that I went by myself today at a matinee because all my friends who had talked about wanting to see it were otherwise engaged this weekend. I try to do this, actually, occasionally, because I always admired people who were so comfortable with themselves that they could go to a movie alone. Yeah, a little weird, but, well, there you are.

Anyway, the movie was good. It started with a narrator describing his sad, pitiful life as a cube drone with a crappy “best friend” who’s banging his nagging, shrewish girlfriend. He’s got an obnoxious, cruel boss who gets her jollies by making her employee’s lives miserable. The sad thing is, Wesley Gibson knows all this and, in case he’s not sure, he ought to figure it out when he gets no results Googling his name. His life changes, though, when Fox, played by Angelina Jolie, finds Wesley in a drug store buying his anti-anxiety medication to tell him that his father has just been assassinated. Before he can digest that little tidbit, someone tries to kill him. Naturally, Fox saves him and tell him that his father was a member of a group of assassins who keep the balance of power called the Fraternity. And Wesley can be one of them.

These assassins all are a little bit beyond human. They’re faster, stronger and more resilient. They have ways of regenerating any damage they take in the course of their assassinations very, very quickly. And, they can do things with bullets that violate the laws of physics and ballistics. They call it “bending” the bullet.
After some pretty intense training, the leader of the Fraternity, Sloan, played by Morgan Freeman, tells Wesley that he’s there to kill the man who killed his father. Eventually. First, he has to kill a few other people who are picked by Fate, via a code that the Fraternity can read and interpret, to practice up first. Well, before he can off to many people, Wesley finds himself being quite vigorously pursued by this mysterious assassin and forced to fight back.

Well, to tell you more at this point would be spoiling the movie, so let me say that there are several twists and turns, some more expected than others. And, keep in mind, this isn’t so much a mystery movie as an action movie. There’s a little suspense in regard to who is trying to off who and why, but, mostly, the plot only exists to show off the great special effects and Angelina Jolie’s tattoos and ass. Mostly, her ass. In all those goals, the movie performs remarkably well.
The action is consistently pretty good and, as I’ve already mentioned, the effects are very good. They just sort of disappear behind the rest of the movie, which, of course, is just what good special effects should do.

It’s well worth seeing, especially if you’re an Angelina Jolie fan or a fan of action movies. But, don’t go thinking it’s going to be a classic, by any means. It will be largely forgotten by this time next year, which is fine and not a reason to skip this movie at all.
And, of course, if my friends who wanted to see this movie, too, get disentangled in time to catch it next weekend, I’d be happy to see this again, which is rare enough for me.
So, it you have the chance, Wanted is worth a look.

I watched No Maps For These Territories this weekend.
I’m not a huge fan of documentaries, even though I like shows in the Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel.  But, I’ve been really getting into my Netflix subscription lately and, as a result, I’ve been renting DVDs that I might not otherwise get.  So, since William Gibson is one of my favorite authors, I thought a good “stretch” for me to take was getting a documentary on, and starring, William Gibson.  In general, it was okay.  It’s certainly not something I’d be interested in if it were some other author, but, somehow, hearing and seeing Gibson talk about his work and the future and writing in the back of a moving car was an oddly engaging format.  I think, in particular, hearing his voice talking much like he writes was appealing, at least to me.

Of course, it’s not something that would interest anyone who wasn’t a Gibson fan.  It’s not the kind of thing that someone who’s interested in simply science-fiction or writing, for instance, would find all that appealing.  I think, too, that Gibson himself is an acquired taste.  Even people who have enjoyed his writing may not be particularly captivated by this documentary.  The “arty” portion of the film was somewhat, well, annoying, to be honest.  When the film-maker was being subtle, by altering the view outside the car’s windows, it was good.  However, when the effort was more obvious, it was just distracting and irritating.  I don’t know quite what he was going for with some of that video stream-of-consciousness but it failed at being anything but confusing and silly.  A straight interview with Gibson talking to us from the back of the car would have been better, I think.  He is, after all, the draw for this film.

Some of the extras were nice, though.  For instance, some of the things that were cut out and compiled with the DVD were as interesting as anything that were included.  In fact, I think I would have just left them in the main part of the film.  There were also several readings, by Gibson and others, which had no video with them, that were nice, too.  I just closed my eyes and listened to Gibson read his own writing, feeling the pace and timber of his voice.  Really, that may have been the best part of the whole thing.
I could have done without most of the film-maker talking about making the documentary itself, though.  There was only one section worth including and that was really about the interaction between the crew and Gibson as they filmed in the car.  The rest of the segments where the documentarian talking about his “process” are, to me, worthless crap.

In all, it was an interesting departure for me.  Worth a look for the hard-core William Gibson fan, but not really for anyone else.