Understanding the World Through Extrapolation

Perhaps much of what I know about place sin the world where I have
not been is based on what I have seen in movies and related media.

So I take a sense of how places I HAVE been are portrayed in movies
-- the mis-representations, the exaggerations, the fabrications, and
the accuracies -- and use that to judge how well movies about places
I have NOT been likely portray those places. Using that calibration,
I then extrapolate what the places I have not visited, but have seen
in movies and other media, must be like.

Death of President; Westworld

Death of a President is oddly patriotic for a film critical of Bush's
America. The patriotism lends the fictional documentary an aura of
authenticity, but would be the first place to start when trimming the
running time to a digestible length (perhaps 70 minutes).

Westworld: Now I recall why it took me so many years to watch this
movie: Even now the only version of this campy sci-fi classic from
the early 70s is a pan-and-scam travesty of what was probably a very
cool Cinemascope motion picture. The film oozes "limited budget and
not sure how to stretch it" from every frame, and manages to hit
every cliche. What impresses one most, now, if the soundtrack -- not
the twangy western bits, but the incidental music, especially during
the third, chase, act.

Sunshine

Not necessarily a particularly good movie. It seems like most of it
we have seen before. But there were some personal highlights:

In New York, in the 1970s, I recall a cab driver asking my father
about his work as a solar physicist. After hearing the quick
explanation, including a few seconds about nuclear reactions, the
cabbie asked whether, when the sun dies, it would be possible to send
a bunch of atomic bombs into the sun and "re-kindle" it. Fast
forward a few decades and we now have a movie about just that idea.

That was cool connection, but not really a reason to recommend the
film.

There were many nice CGI shots of space, and the images of the sun
would not have been so real had there not been several huge
scientific efforts over the past few decades to record details about
what the sun looks like in great detail.

But to really see great shots of the sun, check out the Imax movie
Solar Max. And to see a really great movie about a deep space
mission gone wrong, revelation, mysticism, and cool special effects,
go see 2001 (again).

Grindhouse

Well, the verdict is in: Tarantino made a sort of lesser 70s
grindhouse flick. Rodriguez mimic-ed a classic.

Derailed

It really looked like it might be very bad -- the reviews and word of
mouth and plot summary looked mediocre -- but the truth is this is a
rather good latter day neo noir. Great? No. But for those that
like the genre, it's a worthwhile way to spend 2 hours. Some of the
plot twists will be familiar, but they are expertly executed -- with
the right level of paranoia and disturbing implications. Better than expected.

Day of the Locust

I am not at all sure how I managed to not see this movie for so long,
being:

1) A significant movie made during the 1970s American film
renaissance, and
2) A movie about Hollywood in the 1930s, and
3) A title I've been encountering for years,

all should have put this one in front of me years ago.

But it took until now.

So I will call this a kind of a sleeper, because that is what it
appears to be, now. No one seems to be watching it, not even the
most film-historically-literate.

It's shot in that 70s take on 30s Hollywood (a la Chinatown), and it
has surprisingly little about Hollywood, and a whole lot about people
who haven't come to embrace how their lives' reality doesn't match
what they thought it should be -- which gets in the way of them
actually achieving their dreams.

And then the apocalyptic meltdown. This is what "Perfume" wanted to
achieve but produced silliness, instead. It almost happens here, but
ends up being just what it should: A creepy turning point, instead
of a narrative failure.