Watching Movies Apr 19

Oscar-nominated short about a day in the life of the director of a small abortion clinic in Atlanta, where a few fanatical Christian protesters spend their days outside with a bullhorn trying to persuade people from entering. There's nothing revelatory or remarkable about it, and aside from getting the nomination, there's not much reason to see this.

All the weird and surreal Miyazaki stuff is there, but there's no entryway to bring you into the story. It's basically about a teenage boy trying to find his lost stepmother, but the motivation is as minimal as can be, and thanks to the expressionless animation, the boy has almost no reaction to all the fantastic things going on around him, so you don't know what he thinks about any of it or if it's weird or do you care that much (contrast this with any of the "ugly" or non-human characters, who are full of reactions and emotions). So yes, the animation is lovely, but I was completely unengaged by the story, which seemed to be full of rules I wasn't privy to. 

Seems like as a storyteller you'd want to use time travel to create problems, not fix them. Every time something bad happens in this film, he just time travels and fixes it, and there's no stakes, no complications, and no fun. It also completely ignores the ethical dilemmas of how he manipulates those around him, or how he himself might have been manipulated by those around him, or how he doesn't actually deal with his problem - sort of the opposite of Groundhog's Day. Instead, it leans into the idea of living with your mistakes and valuing the time you have, which is a good way to go and apparently this resonates deeply with fans of the film, but I don't think the first half sets any of that up well and everything is muddled because his perfect, wonderful life only happens because he fixes all his mistakes and doesn't make him a better person. I was also frustrated that after his first big blunder (losing her phone number) he didn't do the one very obvious thing to fix it, which is go back to when she gave him the number. That said, it's a lot more tolerable than other Richard Curtis movies despite the schmaltz, a filmmaker I futilely keep holding out hope for just because he worked on Black Adder and Mr. Bean.

Is Donnie Darko the last of the 90s cynical Gen X disaffected with suburbia and the American dream movies before 9/11 changed our perspective on world affairs? I saw this when it came out and I wasn't as impressed as a lot of people. This time I was hoping to see more of a connection with Harvey, but it's probably closer to Equus. I like that it's weird and how the convoluted story turns in on itself, but there are also too many characters with weak relationships and story threads to follow. I especially wanted him to talk to the old woman, but that seems to go nowhere. It doesn't feel complete, so maybe I should check out the director's cut, even though fans say it removes all the mystery.

The film is notable for being the first color feature to use blue screen, but boy is the effect terrible to modern eyes, and they use it a lot. It's a lavish and colorful spectacle, but it's also very noisy with music constantly playing over the dialogue, which made it monotonous to watch. Sabu is a charming street urchin, but his companion and main character John Justin is wooden and charmless. This would be such a better movie with a different lead (like the athletic Fairbanks in the 1924 version). Consequently, Conrad Veidt steals the movie as Jaffar. The story is rough as well. The Djinn in the bottle just happens out of the blue as if it's only there to move the plot along, but mostly what hurts the film is that the effects are pretty terrible despite being inventive. Perhaps it's good enough to entertain kids, but I had to remind myself that this was a year after Wizard of Oz, and now I'm more impressed at how fully realized and convincing Oz's fantasy world truly was.