This is really just for me, cause for some reason word doesn't work on my computer =__=
but hey, yah mind find a movie that interests you.

Before Sunset
Before Sunrise was a celebration of the time the two spent together. It was really fucking romantic, the kind of movie that was so genuinely sweet it made me wish I had seen someone I loved. That way I wouldn't have ended up giving myself hickies. The entire movie is about Hawke and Delpy squeezing as much enjoyment as they could out of their time together. And that time would become pleasant memories with the promise of more later. Before Sunset ain't romantic. It's something else, maybe wistful. While the two lovers enjoy each other, there is sadness in it because both know their time together is finite.

There is an inherent sadness, I think, to any pleasurable experience that has to end. Like sex. Who doesn't think about how shitty it is that sex can't ever last longer than 30 seconds? Then it's over. And if, while you're doing it, you become obsessed with the end of it, that spoils the joy of the experience.

Children Of Men:
Children of Men has a fairly standard premise that feels like a lot of other dystopian sci-fi stories. It takes place in a war-torn near future full of bureacracy, xenophobia and awful filthiness. The filthiness and nearness of the movie's future looks like what Spielberg probably wanted for Minority Report, but director Alfonso CuarÛn does it way more effectively. You can taste dirt in the food and feel grime on the floor in nearly every scene.

Clive Owen is like a lot of movie heros before him: reluctant and disinterested, but drawn in against his will and slowly committed. He plays a numb bureaucrat in a world 20 years ahead where all countries have collapsed except England--presumably because of their manners--and all women have been rendered sterile by pollution, war, using too much hairspray, etc., for more than nineteen years. So, humanity is in its last throes and the haves and still trying to keep the have-nots away from their stuff. The government does what it does best and instills hysteria and blame in its people. Primarily they do it through trapping, caging and dehumanizing immigrants from other, destroyed countries, claiming they are the problem. Hmmm, that sounds familiar.

Owen was once a political activist, along with his ex-wife Julianne Moore. But after the death of their son some twenty years earlier, he has gone cold and buried himself in paperwork. Moore, on the other hand, has stayed active, and now works with a group ostensibly trying to protect the rights of the immigrants. That's how Owens gets dragged into helping transport a young, pregnant African (Claire-Hope Ashitey) out of the country and to a (maybe fictitious) group called The Human Project before the government can either exploit or bury her.

City Of God
The City of God is a slum in Rio de Janeiro built by the government to house the poor and keep them out of sight of the tourists and world in general. These slums are cheap, tiny houses crammed together with no electricity or hot water, and the people who live there are either low-wage workers or hoods. The hoods rob and steal, deal drugs and kill. They have the money and the glamour. All the workers have is their dignity. In either case, there's a damn good chance of dying in the constant, amoral violence borne of desperation and necessity.

City of God is the story of the rise of the most cold-blooded of the hoods, told through the eyes of a kid struggling to stay on the right track. Rocket (Alexandre Rodriguez) thinks the only reason he's a good kid is because he's a coward. Little ZÈ (Leandro Firmino de Hora) is his age and grows up with no conscience and a lust for power. Before puberty, he's shot a motel full of people and laughed while doing it.

Firmino de Hora's only goal in life is to rule the City of God. Robbing and stealing is a means of survival, but as the 70s roll around and drugs become prevalent it's clear to him that he needs to deal to reach the top of the heap. In a single night, he kills every team of drug dealers in the City and takes control of distribution. He keeps control by killing anyone he doesn't like, and taking what he wants. Firmino de Hora's right hand man is Benny (Philippe Haagensen), a level-headed kid who is more interested in being cool than selling drugs. He keeps Firmino de Hora is check and spends his money on the latest Hang Ten T-shirts and James Brown records. Together they rule until Haagensen decides to take his unbelievably beautiful girlfriend (Alice Braga) away from all this shit. Christ, she's the kind of girl I want to cover in hickeys. I mean, every square inch until she as scratchy and lumpy as wool socks.

At the same time, in the same slum, Rodriguez tries his own hand at hoodlumism, only to find that his heart's not in it. He's too busy with the same teenage problems the rest of us have: he wants a girlfriend, to lose his virginity and not get shot. He takes a job delivering newspapers and dreams of working as a news photographer.

Firmino de Hora's power in the City of God grows; so does his ego and he becomes increasingly reckless and violent, even as he becomes more isolated and lonely. Finally, he is confronted by the last remaining independent drug dealer and the growing ranks of people whose family members he's killed. This unleashes an all-out war and the City of God is divided. The two sides recruit younger and younger kids into their armies until ten-year olds carry guns and sell coke. Rodriguez is the only person at the newspaper with access to the City, and he is assigned to photograph the war, despite his fear that he'll be killed.

The Constant Gardener
Ralph Fiennes (pronounced "ralf fee-enn-ess" regardless of what he says) is a British bureaucrat in Northern Kenya, accompanied by his well-intentioned hippie wife (Rachel Weisz). When Weisz is murdered on a trip with a Kenyan doctor, Fiennes uncovers a pharmaceutical conspiracy that goes all the way to the top of British government.

The story is based on a John LeCarre novel, and like most of his books it's a hell of a lot like Graham Greene. A passive anti-hero becomes entangled in a situation beyond his control. He is forced out of complacency to make the strong moral decisions he spends his life avoiding. In this one, Fiennes knows his wife has been secretive and duplicitous, but he assumes it's because she's having an affair. He's too spineless to confront her while she's alive. But once she's dead, he discovers the corruption she's uncovered and has to act out of respect for her and her mission. The crime is that big British pharmaceuticals are testing experimental drugs on the African poor, and killing far more than they admit.

What makes the Constant Gardener so damn good is that it never simplifies or talks down. The story isn't spelled out as through we're fucking morons; it's told in the margins and in the small gestures, like the way Weisz takes a Kenyan doctor's hand, or how Fiennes thinks to read Weisz's private e-mail but is too scared to actually do it. Just like in his last movie City of God, director Fernando Meirelles shows respect for both the audience and his story. He also shows a bit too much flash, but it's not obnoxious.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Jim Carrey plays a square bachelor of indeterminate age who has decided to undergo an extreme procedure that will completely remove all memories of his free-spirited girlfriend of two years (Kate Winslet). He makes this decision after learning that she erased him first. After agreeing to the procedure, Carrey reconsiders. He can't back out, so as the doctor's assistants erase his brain, he unconsciously fights to salvage memories of Winslet. He tries to hide her in memories where she doesn't belong, like those from his childhood or a particularly cringe-worthy masturbation recollection.

Ghost World
Ghost World beautifully captures the adolescent moment when Enid (Thora Birch) realizes that she is forever doomed because she stayed her course while everyone else compromised. She's fucked up, just like me and most of you, and while we all hope for happy endings, we chicken out, sabotage our chances and have to settle for something like a desk job that makes us contemplate swerving into a tree on the way home every night.

After high-school graduation, Birch and Becky (Scarlett Johansson) mock the losers they graduated with and correctly surmise that graduating high school is about as worthy of celebration as getting syphilis in Tijuana. Out of boredom and meanness, Birch answers the most pathetic personal ad she can find, simply to see what kind of loser (Steve Buscemi) will show up. She slowly entwines herself in this sad sack's lonely existence. As she becomes involved in Buscemi's life as an obsessive collector of jazz and blues 78s, she learns that he is actually better, more interesting and complex than the mainstream. But his beauty is hidden because everyone is too focused on the homogeneous, prepackaged images that get shoveled down our throats. She admires him, adores him for his ideals, but is repulsed by his loneliness and the sorry resignation he faces the world with. In him, she sees what lies ahead for her.

Meanwhile, her friend Johansson is slowly migrating into society. She gives up the alienation shtick for a job, an apartment and normalcy. To her, the bitter disappointment with the world was really just a hobby. Birch feels her only friend slipping into the mainstream, leaving her alone in the "ghost world" of individuals who coexist with society but are marginalized, unfelt and unseen. She's betrayed. Even worse, though, she is alone.

Magnolia
"Magnolia" is several stories that take place around Magnolia Boulevard in Burbank, California. Tom Cruise plays the ultra-arrogant creator of "Seduce and Destroy," a guide for men who hate women but want to fuck them. He preaches to rooms full of hooting immature guys who wish they were in fraternities where woman-bashing is celebrated. Jason Robards is his estranged father, a TV producer slowly dying while his trophy bride, Julianne Moore, realizes that while she married him for money, she now actually loves him and hates herself for having cheated on him. Philip Baker Hall is a game show host dying of cancer, and Jeremy Blackman is the child genius on his show being pushed too hard by a greedy father. Melora Walters is Baker Hall's daughter, a strung out coke-addict and the object of desire for John C. Reilly, a bumbling cop. William H. Macy is a former game show whiz-kid who can't afford a decent jacket or tie and tries to deal with the legacy left behind by his pushy parents. These five main stories, all with tangential characters almost as good, collide in ways determined by both coincidence and family ties. It's hard to describe exactly how, but trust me when I say it works in ways so damn beautiful that my sorry-ass grip on the English language won't do it justice.

Each character is pursuing his or her life, no longer happy, and just going through the motions. Some have faith that there is good in the world, some don't. They're all lost. Their stories reflect the similarities between ourselves and our neighbors. Two characters are dying of cancer and want to confess their sins. Two characters have love to give and nobody to give it to. Two women hate themselves and probably would rather be dead. They all deal with it differently.

In the end, a bizarre coincidence strikes them all and transforms their direction in life. I won't describe it because you wouldn't believe me if I did. Some of you will say "What the fuck? That's bullshit!" and others will buy it. I bought it as strange coincidence, nothing more. And as that, it's pretty fucking cool.

Mulholland Drive
not even explainable, creepy, just watch.

Pan's Labyrinth
Pretty standard, well known, I've just never watched it, a fantasy movie.

The Quiet American
The Quiet American is a pretty good fucking film, primarily because of its ability to shade its characters in the gray section between good and evil. Hollywood creates villains that sit around all day thinking about how great it is to be evil. In reality, very few of us are pleased at our evilness. Evil actions are the result of selfishness, jealousy, home-schooling or some other skewed perception, not a desire to be evil. No matter how shitty someone's actions, he always thinks he's justified when doing them. Just like Orson Welle's Harry Lime in The Third Man who sold diluted penicillin to orphanages, Fraser's Alden Pyle is so fucking creepy and evil because he doesn't even know the damage he's doing. He has social skills, he's not walking around with devil horns and a tail, but his skewed reality makes him capable of incredible brutality. I guess he represents the American sense of invincibility: that we are always right and whenever we enter a war, we are automatically the moral authority. Graham Greene hated us for that, and whether or not you agree with him, he makes a pretty fucking compelling argument that we can do more harm than good with our international arrogance.

Raising Victor Vargas
Raising Victor Vargas isn't about anything special. We've all had crushes and made mistakes. But it's so fucking nice to see a story told without makeup or a shiny coat of Hollywood softener. And the characters are so real. There are no big dramatic moments, no car chases or shitty, sappy monologues, just some genuinely funny comedy and real drama. It's naturalistic; you can see the girls' pimples and the guys' sweaty backs.

Science of Sleep
The plot is simple and classic: boy meets girl; boy likes girl; boy sabotages any hope he has for girl. But the movie is about recreating the feelings, not documenting the events. Gael GarcÌa Bernal is the young and timid hero. He returns from Mexico to his childhood apartment in Paris after his father's death. A sensitive artist type, he often confuses his dreams and reality. He imagines himself the host of a talk-show about his own life, conducted in a cardboard studio behind his eyelids. He dreams of being the kingpin in a cheesy druglord drama. In Paris, he sleeps in his childhood bed, surrounded by his childhood art supplies and fantasies. Maybe it's his mother trying to keep him a child or keep him physically or emotionally near. Regardless, he accepts the arrangement, including a shitty job that his mother got him.

When he meets his next-door neighbor Charlotte Gainsbourg, an art-store employee, he feels the swelling lump of uncertainty that comes with unrequited love. He begins his courtship of her the way every shy young man does: by expecting her to hate him. Alternating giddy excitement and self-loathing, he goes to great lengths to impress her, including building her a stuffed toy pony that can run, lying about where he lives, and building her a one-second time machine that uses old flash bulbs to transport the user forward or backward in time one second.

Slacker
Richard Linklater's first and best film, a journey through the barely-there subculture of layabouts in Austin, Texas. There is no plot that directs you from A to B. That would be counterproductive to the entire idea of slackers. They aren't trying to get anywhere. In fact, the beauty of slacking is that you're perfectly content to sit at A and think about it. Slackers are people whose lives are suspended forever in a post-college haze. Each day is a ritual of achieving nothing but talking a lot about it. Like the movie's characters, the movie drifts through the city, latching momentarily on to bums, curmudgeons, anarchists, conspiracy theorists and philosophizers. As you leave one person, you join another, and so on, each with something interesting to say. As one character so eloquently summarizes, "Hey, I may live badly, but at least I don't have to work to do it." Those are words to live by. Slacker is simultaneously amateurish and clunky, seamless, flowing and a pure celebration of unique lives. It's about the pure joy of having nothing better to do than fart around with old cars, rationalize that the Smurfs are part of a Krishna conspiracy, or linger in bookstores.

Straight Story
the story of a nutjob in Iowa with more dignity than any prick you can throw at him. He sets his goals and he achieves them, and only a motherfucking asshole would question why.

Richard Farnsworth is Alvin Straight, a 73 year-old man with diabetes and emphysema. His hips are so bad he needs two canes to get around and he's mostly blind. I know what you're thinking: let's mug him!

Farnsworth lives in a beat house in Laurens, Iowa with his mentally-disabled (not a retard) daughter Sissy Spacek. Laurens is the kind of town where the old guys get together every day, no matter if they like each other or not, because it's all they have to do. And if one of them is late to their gatherings, the others worry, not that he is ill, but that death has visited so closely. One day, Farnsworth learns that his younger brother has suffered a stroke and determines to go visit him, even though they haven't spoken in ten years (sort of like me and my son of a bitch brother-in-law). Being blind and poor means he can't drive, and the bus doesn't go near his brother's shack. So, Farnsworth decides to drive his lawnmower, camping in farm fields and eating wieners and braunschweiger for every meal.

Is he a nut? I'd bet my entire collection of Hustlers on it, but he doesn't give a flying fuck what I think. On his 350 mile journey, which takes six weeks, he meets a runaway teen, a priest, another old guy with World War II still stuck on his mind, and every single decent person in the Midwest, except for the guy who doesn't want to sell him his grabber. Farnsworth is never a hero, or even that friendly, but even asshole bicyclists grow to respect him.

Waltz With Bashir
semi-documentary, animated in a bold-angular comic-book style. One night at a bar, Folman's friend describes a recurring nightmare about 26 rabid dogs chasing him down the streets. When Folman asks how he knows 26, his friend says it's because that's how many he had to kill during the Lebanon War of the early eighties. He remembers what every single one of them looked like and where he was when he killed them.

Folman remembers nothing of his time in the war, and that disturbs him. He doesn't know what he had done-or been involved in--during that time. This is the impetus for the movie. He documents his visit to a therapist friend who explains to him the unreliability of memory. It's a fucking brilliant frame for the story.

What Folman learns is that memories are way more arbitrary than we want to believe. What we remember may never have happened, and things that did happen may not have taken place the way we remember. Our brain has the capacity to fill in blanks when it can't comprehend or remember details and events. We also have the reflexive function that can prevent us from entering the darkest corners of our own memory. That last bit scares the shit out of me; if I remember digging out one of my own ribs with a spoon because I was high on model glue and thought I swallowed a quarter, what sort of shit am I being protected from? Oh, and don't worry. I learned my lesson. I use a different brand of glue now ad wait until I pass loose change before retrieving it.

Folman travels across Europe and Israel to talk to the people with whom he fought in the Lebanon war. One memory returns: of him and his platoon emerging from the sea, naked, to be met by a swarm of wailing Palestinian women. Each of Folman's fellow soldiers has one or two distinct memories of the war. He isn't sure he can trust it. His comrades remember other events: being so scared upon landing on a beach that they emptied their automatics into the first thing that moved: a sedan containing a family. Another is of the troop under attack and abandoning one member who had to swim miles to safety. The most vivid and horrific is when the Israelis controlled the perimeter of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, while their convenient allies, the Lebanese Phalangist Christians, massacred thousands of the refugees inside. The Israelis were aware of the massacre and did nothing. Folman's troop mates were made aware and alerted their superiors, who intentionally didn't act.

After each story is related to him, Folman honestly asks if he was there. He was. He just doesn't remember. One thing is clear: no matter how much training and preparation, these very young men and they were not prepared for war. War forced them to do and see things they weren't prepared for and didn't want to do. All are still haunted. In the case of the massacre, the men live with the realization that by doing little, they were complicit in the murder of thousands of young men, women and children. Maybe Folman is lucky that he can't remember. Or, maybe he is unlucky that he can't mourn and regret it

You Can Count On Me
You Can Count On Me is about a single mother (Laura Linney) still living in the town where she was born, afraid to leave. She is in and out of contact with her flaky brother (Mark Ruffalo). They have an unusually strong bond because their parents died when they were only kids. After traveling the world and spending time in jail, Ruffalo is back in their home because he needs money. He's a fuck up, but he knows it. Thank you to Kenneth Lonergan for pointing out that us fuck ups who disappoint the family and occasionally back up the toilets are not necessarily bad people. We know we're fuck ups, but God didn't give us the skills not to be, so we do what we can and try to stay out of the way.

Ruffalo's return to their upstate New York town is at first a blessing for Linney. She is maternal toward her brother and wants him where she can see him. As she is with her son, she's overprotective and doesn't trust him to make his own decisions. But, because of her hard-ass new boss (Matthew Broderick again doing a great job as a intimidated, confused wimp), she has to put her young son in his care. The son and brother bond, and although Ruffalo's a fuck up, he's the best male role model the kid has. Linney is so worried about Ruffalo that she can't even see what a fuck up she is, too. She sleeps with her married boss and strings another poor sap along. But the real heart of the story is Ruffalo's struggle to find some worth in himself. He's so beat down and convinced that his mere presence spells disaster that he tries not to touch anyone. His relationship with the son teaches him that it's worth connecting and that he is important. Similarly, Linney has to learn to let Ruffalo and her son free. She has to stop mothering them and just know they can take care of themselves. There is no easy solution, just characters that grow believably.


Credit for the long, honesty, and, er, graphic descriptions goes to Bigempire.com's movie critic; Filthy.