10 things I hate about you

We ended up watching this movie at the ladies’ night… and no, I’m not gonna attack it. In fact we watched it from my very own DVD of it, and it’s by far my favorite high school rom-com.

I’m not quite sure why I kind of love this movie, despite not being a fan at all of its genre. Maybe it’s because it treats making you laugh as a main goal instead of an afterthought. Maybe it’s because the main character doesn’t get a make-over, or become popular – and that it’s not her goal, either. But to be honest, it also probably has a lot to do with the fact that when I first saw it (about 8 times), I was a non-conformist outsider in high school, and I had a much prettier, much more popular younger sister.

Starship Troopers

Seriously: how could anyone miss this was meant as satire? 14-year-old boys who think that Fight Club‘s message is that punching each other is cool, that I can still kind of understand. But this movie’s so out there that it’s impossible to imagine anyone taking it at face value. It’s pulp at its best. 

So yes, I found it enjoyable. Highly enjoyable. Good, however? That I’m not sure of. It’s glossy, shallow look, and the corniness of the lines: of course it’s all fully intentional. But it does make for a rather empty viewing experience: you think “whoa, cool!” and “ew, gross!” on a regular basis, but the romantic drama gets very tiresome after a while, and killing off so many main characters isn’t brave if your audience gets no reason to care for them.

 

 

Ok, I’m sure there’s more to say, but since I can’t think of anything, I’ll leave that to you – it’s not that I’m suffering from writer’s block, really, but more that lately I can’t think of anything interesting to say. Also: I’ll be interviewing Laurent Cantet, director of Entre Les Murs/The Class, this Friday, and suggestions for questions are very welcome, since what I’ve been coming up with so far can’t exactly be called original.

Two music movies

Not everyone might know it, but Once wasn’t, in fact, Glen Hansard’s acting debut. He was also one of the band members in the titular band that the charming little movie The Commitments is about. The one with the abundance of red curls, to be precise. And when I say abundance, it’s rather an understatement. In all fairness, his role is a fairly small one.

The movie’s lone slightly original touch is that the main character isn’t a musician, but the band manager Jimmy, who interviews himself at length from the (imagined) vantage point of later success. The relative lack of drama about all the partner swaps, or rather, about who sleeps with which background singer, is remarkably cliché-free, and all in all, for a movie about all-out soul, this is a remarkably low-fi movie. I liked it quite a bit… but it was the other music movie (also, incidentally, with a clear link to a 2007 film) that I really, completely, unapologetically loved.

That movie was… *drumroll*