Couple of new UNMEI KAIHEN posts (lots of writing lately, haha): Ep7 of Spice and Wolf II and ep5 of Aoi Hana.
Training Day (2001): Pretty solid movie, actually. I'd heard about how good Denzel Washington is in this (he won the Oscar for Best Actor), but I wasn't certain whether the movie would deal with the world of gangs in a way that wasn't really over-the-top or corny, because it is really easy to just throw out a bunch of caricatures with this sort of thing. But it's not really a problem at all, haha. The chemistry between Washington and Ethan Hawke (who plays an unseasoned cop) is really what brings the whole movie together. There's this battle between them the whole time, where Hawke's character, Jake Hoyt, is trying to resist following the same path as Alonzo (Washington's character), but it's tough because Alonzo is such a natural in this environment, and it seems as if he has all the answers, so Jake is kind of strung along the whole time while trying to keep a hold of his values.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008): There's this constant sense of dread hanging over the events of this movie, because we all know (or should know) about the events of the Holocaust, and the story travels straight down that line of logic until the very end. What it really depends on is the dramatic irony of the audience knowing what happened during the Holocaust, while the 8-year-old German protagonist, Bruno, is kept in the dark by his parents, even as he makes friends with a young Jewish boy, Shmuel, who is in a concentration camp. The movie does get a bit close to stretching Bruno's ignorance a bit far (he's not a dumb kid, and he hears and sees enough to be able to piece things together at least a little bit), but the story unravels all the tension just at the point where everything could get a bit too ridiculous. The acting (the kids are generally good, and David Thewlis and Vera Farmiga are both really good as the parents), the way the story slowly unfolds and the way the tone gradually shifts really help make the story as effective as possible (and the ending really is very effective).
On the queue for this week: White Heat (1949), All About Eve (1950), Death at a Funeral (2007) and Ronin (1998)
Total Movies: 112 (Gaslight, The Last King of Scotland, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Darjeeling Limited, This Film is Not Yet Rated, Diary of the Dead, Bullets Over Broadway, Interiors, Husbands and Wives, The Professional: Golgo 13, Lars and the Real Girl, Lolita, Quills, Hamlet, Iris, Manhattan Murder Mystery, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, The Savages, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Stranger, Love and Death, Harold and Maude, Spartacus, Scarlet Street, Sabrina, Zelig, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), Stardust Memories, Barry Lyndon, Be Kind Rewind, Radio Days, Deconstructing Harry, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Creating Rem Lazar, Undefeatable, Ninja Terminator, Ninja Dragon, Rumble Fish, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, In Bruges, The Bank Dick, Marathon Man, Clannad, Air, Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress, MirrorMask, Slither, It's a Gift, Splendor in the Grass, Waitress, North by Northwest, Monkey Business, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, The Brave One, 3:10 to Yuma, Bringing Out the Dead, Gurren Lagann: Gurren-hen, There Will Be Blood, Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder, The Princess Bride, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Spellbound, Frenzy, Anatomy of a Murder, Clue, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Changeling, Shadows and Fog, Into the Wild, Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Synecdoche, New York, Carlito's Way, Shoot 'Em Up, Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Up, Yor: Hunter from the Future, Tropic Thunder, True Romance, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, A Woman Under the Influence, Casablanca, Frost/Nixon, Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Le Samouraï, Inland Empire, The Reader, Doubt, Arachnophobia, Manhunter, Wild At Heart, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, The Omega Man, Hitman, Leaving Las Vegas, Cape Fear, Say Anything ..., Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa, Chasing Amy, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Point Break, 500 Days of Summer, Man Bites Dog, Burn After Reading, Glory, Training Day, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas)
