Movie quick-hits

I've rented a few movies recently. I know that you're not comfortable making your own rental choices until you've heard from me, so here you go:

Apocalypto -- as much as I disliked "The Passion of the Christ," I enjoyed Apocalypto. It succeeds on many levels: as action film, as history, as allegory (for the decay of America, and the foreign adventures it has led to -- so says Mel Gibson, anyway). It is a beautifully, skillfully, painstakingly made movie. I'm not prepared to call Mel a great filmmaker, but really, who else is making movies like this? For me, the only demerits were for a few scenes of gratuitous violence. The subject matter is violent by nature, but I don't really need to see an arrow going through the back of a guy's head and coming out his mouth.

Little Children -- geez, I don't know. Whenever I watch movies, I tend to ask myself, "What was the point of that?" This movie is not a slice of life. (Or if it is, then your life is one weird pie.) It doesn't make you think. It doesn't communicate anything worth communicating. It does contain sex scenes involving Kate Winslet, however, so I give it two thumbs up. (If you rent this, prepare to be creeped out by Jackie Earle Haley, the one-time Kelly Leak of "Bad News Bears" fame. He's a bald, skeletal, pock-marked pedophile who, when forced to go on an actual date, comes up with an auto-erotic alternative to the goodnight kiss. Come to think of it, I've got a date tonight...)

House of Sand and Fog -- Jennifer Connelly naked. That's all the guys need to know. Oh yeah -- Ben Kingsley naked, too. You might want to make Jiffy Pop during that scene. Actually, this is three-quarters of a great movie. The last quarter is VERY Hollywood, though -- highly unrealistic. Plus, in the last half hour or so, Jennifer Connelly plays all of her scenes fully clothed. Didn't really work for me.

The Blair Witch Project -- yeah, I watched this one again. I was struck by five things this time. First, I was rooting for a painful, protracted, witch-induced death for Heather. Man is she annoying. Second, the scene where Mike admits to kicking the map into the stream still does not ring true. Third, on a second viewing, this movie really drags in spots. I guess I didn't notice the first time around because of the novelty. Fourth, they could have done a better job explaining why they had cameras rolling the whole time. It could have been as simple as, "Look, this is our first film. So, I want to do a little sub-documentary on 'the making of,' okay? Forgive me for being a little over-eager. But when we're rich and famous filmmakers, we'll look back on this footage and smile." Finally, the special features on the DVD are really worth watching. They maintain the fiction that the whole thing is true. There's no "how we did it" stuff. It's just more myth-making, and it's well done.