Weekly Cinemeh

Welcome back to Weekly Cinemeh, this weeks theme was a little odd, which is fitting. "The world slightly askew". Movies that depict this world, but different from reality. All three movies are great, and we had a lot of fun watching them. To the list!

1: Kingsman: The Secret Service
I didn't know what to expect when we started watching this movie. I know that one of the ads I saw for it featured a lady with prosthetic legs that had swords in them killing some fools, which is great but not super informative. What it ended up being was Kick-Ass does James Bond. This was a fun movie to watch. The main premise is a group of gentleman spies work to make the world a better place, and now a new villain seeks to kill a majority of the worlds population with a plan that is logically dubious at best. The thing is, this movie knows what it is supposed to be: fun. It has some awesome, bombastic action scenes and even calls itself out in the middle of the movie. It is not without its problems. There are some moderately sexist depictions of a couple female characters, but since its supposed to be a James Bond style film I am not sure if it was intentional of not. Still, a fun movie to watch with some friends. Also Samuel L. Jackson as a Bond Villain was amazing, though he was doing a voice that made me think of Mike Tyson.

Eshi: The first fifteen minutes of this movie had me kinda nervous. And then shit went crazy. This is not a good movie, have no misconceptions of that. There isn't much in the way of subtlety, there's pretty much nothing in the way of a meaningful message, and it is in no way touching. It is, however, spectacularly fucking awesome. Seriously, there's a character who has swords for legs, Samuel Jackson is a hemophobic, megalomaniacal nerd, and beating fuck out of people with an umbrella is a matter of course. Definitely worth renting.

2: Unbreakable
This fucking movie is why I hate M Night Shyamalan. Eshi and I both feel the same way about this so I bet you are going to hear the same thing from him. Shyamalan has some serious chops in this movie. It is clear that he had a vision of what he wanted to do, and he executed it well. The movie is about a man who survives a massive train wreck that kills all of the other passengers, but leaves him completely unscathed. He is contacted by a man who believes he has superpowers, and wants him to fulfill his destiny. Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson both do a great job, though that is not a surprise. This movie is shot beautifully and tells its story competently. The reason this movie makes me hate Shamyalan is that he clearly shows talent but I think he got a little full of himself afterwards. His movies become more and more self indulgent and up themselves. His twists become less and less believable and his scripts more cliche ridden messes. His next movie was Signs, which was good for the first half, but terrible after that. The twist in Signs was that the aliens are hurt by water. WTF are they doing invading a planet that is 75% water then? Shit, it literally rains death down on a regular basis over most of the planet. Did the aliens not do recon at all? Did the aliens travel vast fucking distances with an armada and didn't think to check to see if they could survive on the planet? It makes no sense. Also, he cast himself as a major character in Signs, which felt masturbatory and disappointing. Still Unbreakable is a fantastic movie that deserves watching.

Eshi: Fuck M. Night and his shitty fucking water fixation. Unbreakable is the only genuinely good Shyamalan movie, and it highlights the depth of his failure in every other movie he's done. The story is interesting, the cinematography is relatively immersive, and the twist, while not entirely surprising, is a legitimately touching moment. Though it would be nice if anyone other than Bruce Willies psycho kid wasn't the only remotely human character. Seriously, fuck M. Night.

3: Inglourious Basterds
I have talked before about my love of Tarantino movies and one is no exception. Basterds is about a Jewish woman hiding from the Nazi's and a group of American Jews who work as  guerrilla fighters in France during world war II. It is cast extremely well. This was my first experience with Christoph Waltz who was fucking amazing. He plays a great villain, he was charismatic and ruthless and I couldn't get enough of him. This was also my first experience with Mélanie Laurent who played the revenge driven Shoshana who is hiding under a false identity in Paris. She was good, and I thought her interactions with Hans Landa (Waltz) were very well done. This movie, much like Tarantino's other work, gets the untraviolence just right. The movie is witty, tense, and a lot of fun and I would suggest giving it a watch if you haven't seen it yet.

Eshi: There is a lot of great casting in this movie, Brad Pitt is great, Michael Fassbender is delightful (though under utilized) and Eli Roth is amazing as Donnie The Bear Jew. That said, Christoph Waltz makes this film. Hans Landa is an amazing villain, charismatic, approachable, and deeply disconcerting. I cannot express how much I goddamn love Christoph Waltz.