But, instead of all seven cramped in this post, I made a special post to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) on separate page since i thought that this movie required more than just a paragraf of appreciation.
It began with Sir Anthony Hopkins' The Human Stain (2003). It told about a denial by Coleman Silk (Hopkins) a classic professor that after a certain incident that audience should easily spotted was completely not intentional, he recieved an accusation of being a racist and hence result in releasing his job. By this early incident, the audience then learn that Coleman Silk though white is the color of his skin, was an Afro-American to begin with and he had tried to escape that past by passing as white since he was in school.
Coleman then tries to deal with the injustice of the accusation by writing about it, and he eventually made friend to a novelist, Nathan Zuckerman (Sinese) and stumbled into a young woman who also tried to escape the past (as but nowhere near Coleman's past), Faunia (Kidman).
The interesting, and maybe the most touching part of this movie was when it told about the young Coleman, and his first girl-friend who happened to be white. Whilst, the chemistry between Coleman and Faunia was easily disposable from the screen. Rating: ** / ****
After passable drama, The Human Stain I went into three successive teenage flick, How To Deal (2003), Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004), and Chasing Liberty (2004). All three of which receive uniformly one rating out of four.
My nightmare began with Mandy Moore's How to Deal who told of her quest to find one true love as she doesn't believe in love when she witnesses the love around her had failed to reach its goal, a broken marriage of her parents, her pregnant bestfriend, and a misconception of her sister's wedding that seemed always ruined it. It's enough if not exaggerating reason for her to not believe in love. But then it should all going to change when she met this guy. And blah blah blah you'll know the rest.
Okay, I hate romantic movie especially which played by teen and intended to the teenage audience.
Next, it wasn't getting better with Lindsay Lohan's Confessions of bla-bla. It says that Lohan should and would be an actress, because that was her destiny. And as she adjusting to the remote live in New Jersey on contrary to her sparkling previous life in New York, she met -- you can easily guessed it -- a true friend, and a group of b*tch which always -- mark my word, always -- consists of three b*tch with one ultimately ugly, rich, but surely knew how to draw attention to herself, and pompous leader b*tch. You know the rest, the good always win, and the bad get the worst of herself.
Chasing Liberty. O yes, i was chasing my own liberty by counting down the clock and tried to comfort myself through this flick. And it's official now that I do hate Mandy Moore. Chasing Liberty is about Liberty -- U.S Secret Service's code-name to the first daughter -- who tried to ran from his father's oppressing authority as she had a rather hard time adjusting her teenage life with her high-school life, with boyfriend and all with Secret Services all around her. At one family official-visit to the Czech Republic tough, she met one particular man and quickly both on their rendezvous voyage throughout Europe. One thing that Liberty didn't aware of that the man was an agent himself, and on one spot of the movie, when they had fell in love to one another, Liberty found out about his lies and so-on, so-on, so-on, with a happy-ending.
And finally, thankfully my nightmare had ended.
There's two more movies that I intended to write about in this segment. Both of them I think was a comedy -- black comedy -- as it involves killing, horror, and rather mysterious non-sense plotting. Those two were Bubba-Ho Tep (2003) and The Big Empty (2003).
Bubba-Ho Tep is a pure imagination told in a mix of horror and comedy. It told about Bubba-Ho Tep an ancient Egypt soul sucker in his voyage sucking soul out of elderly person that live on a resthouse somewhere in Texas by the reason of their fragility thus become an easier prey to Bubba than regular person.
The hero in this twisted dark-tale was Elvis Presley (Bruce Campbell) and John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davies) both of which is a living-legend in their dusk of life in this resthouse. Yes, Elvis and JFK was not dead in this tale, and they had the reason and the humor of why, contrary to the popular beliefs they're old and yet breathe the living air instead of dead and lying six feet under.
However, the humor was so thin that nearly all scenes only managed a few chuckles instead of a brim laugh, and the horror.. well, Bubba Ho-Tep was far from the popular definition of frightening-thing. All in all, I'm so glad that I'm back on track, to movies that required rather more thought than happy-happy-joy-joy-teenage-club movies that instead thrust me into the abyss of nightmare. Rating: **1/2 / ****
The Big Empty is well... empty. I'm not saying that the emptiness in the term of lack-of-quality sort of things. The movie was very enjoyable, the plot was flowing in easiness yet in a perfect pacing as it told the journey of John Parsons (Jon Favreau) to deliver a mysterious blue suitcase to the even more mysterious man, Cowboy (Sean Bean) in a remote desert city of Baker. And as he stumbles into a motel where he supposed to meet this Cowboy man, he met adorable bartender, Stella (Darryl Hannah) with her daughter Ruthie, (lovingly-beautiful-adorable-ultra-cute Rachael Leigh Cook), her menacing-useless-jealous boyfriend (Adam Beach), and ultimately, the Cowboy himself who led the plot with all of the chemistries into a vast desert set with flock of people in blue dress with blue suitcases.
What emptiness you said? well, I still wondering what the message this movie tried to deliver with its conclusion that apparently involving aliens and alien-kidnapping but ultimately offers nothing. Sad, cos I rather enjoyed the first minutes of this movie. But fortunately to this movie, that I love to see Rachael Leigh Cook and it rather lifted this movie and save it on the edge of the ravine that led to impenetrable dark abyss of junkie film. Rating: *1/2 / **** Some say that this movie is a mix between David Lynch and The X-Files. Well, make sense since nobody -- as far as I know -- understand David Lynch's message in his movies.