quarterfull

infinite blindness of the eagle eye

i was really excited about seeing blindness this weekend. i’m a bit of a sucker for dystopian thrillers and with the quality work spanish directors have been putting out, i was looking forward to this year’s children of men. i had even strenuously avoided all the commercials and reviews, closing my eyes and humming whenever they came on, so i wanted to see it as soon as possible to avoid catching any spoilers. so despite staying out in queens until 2 last night, i made it to the 10:40am matinee at kips bay this morning (movies at amc theaters are only $6 before noon on weekends).

[SPOLIERS] it was not good. it wasn’t terrible, but it focused much of its running time on probably the least interesting part of a global blindness pandemic, the breakdown of society in a quarantine filled with early victims. the events in the last half-hour seemed like a meatier opportunity for larger messages, but were probably too expensive for them to do much with. apparently the book divides its time more evenly between the two parts, and the movie certainly could have used less quarantine. the director did use an interesting style for the camerawork in blurring scenes out of focus, allowing the camera to drift or for actors to move into empty frames. and all of the blind action was convincing, the actors must have all been well-bruised from banging into things by the end of the shoot.

so anyway, i decided amc owed me another movie for my disappointment, and i’ve been interested in seeing eagle eye. first of all, because i’m slightly fascinated by shia lebouf. i can’t think of anything he’s been in where his cute-but-nerdy-trying-to-be-cool-but-failing-adorably-and-taking-too-much shtick improved the film, he makes me feel old though, i feel like he’s a movie star for a younger generation, and that kids today see something that i just don’t get. that he’s a reflection of some zeitgeist that i’m no longer in touch with. blah blah blah, i also want to say that he’s the patrick swayze of this generation, in that he’s someone that people outside a certain generational split have no appreciation for. the alaogy falls apart in that swayze had an obvious talent for the dance, whereas shia has demonstrated no such unique abilities. oh and second of all, i hadn’t planned on ever seeing disturbia, but i caught it on hbo and couldn’t turn it off. though that may have been partially due to the way the director and costume designers fucked sarah roemer with the camera. and eagle eye is also displacing dark knight in many imax theaters (at least for a couple of months) and i was curious to see how it measured up.

shia lebouf is a great actor

anyway, eagle eye didn’t start for another hour, but nick and norah’s infinite playlist started in 30 minutes, so i snuck into that. and it was alright. setting aside for now the debate of whether michael cera’s shtick is getting old, since moving to new york, i’ve developed a soft spot for films set in the city, recognizing locations and streets. i did pretty good in devil wears prada and even the new york scenes in the last bourne film. nick and norah was really easy to recognize because it takes place almost entirely in les/east village. i haven’t liked kat dennings in either of the things i’ve seen her in [she was one of my least favorite parts of 40-year-old virgin (of which, incidentally, there are many)], but she did great in this, if her character was more than a little underwritten, arguably qualifying as a manic pixie dreamgirl. at any rate it was a cute, light, teen comedy that i’m glad i didn’t spend $12 on.

so by the time i got out of N’n'NIP, another screening of eagle eye was starting, and i figured why not? so i walked into that, and it was completely ridiculous. please, dear reader, never see it. i don’t know if i was dizzy from having marathoned three such colossally different narratives, or if the story really made no sense. but any time you’re weaving a tale of identical twins, harmonically activated crystal explosives, the state of the union and sentient AIs, i kept expecting nicolas cage to pop up. it seems like exactly the sort of thing he’d be in these days.

i do double features all the time, especially now that movies usually cost $12, but i haven’t pulled a triple-feature in years. It’s kind of self-defeating… you generally pay to see what you want to see first, but by the time you get through the other two you’ve forgotten about the first. and all that sitting can be rough, but there’s a lot coming out in the next couple of weeks i want to see (religulous, dubya, rachel getting married, city of ember, let the right one in), so i’m glad i got these out of the way.

so just to remind you all, i do keep track of every movies i’ve seen in 2008