Oh Lena & Vanilla Ice & Jesus & Pauly...

300(dir. Zack Snyder)
Homophobic and homoerotic? You bet. This film's idea of manliness is defending a society with such good wholesome morals as throwing babies in pits to die if they won't make good warriors because of deformities or some visible sign of weakness. The film's look isn't all that great. There's been a lot of hoopla about the film's look, but it's visually uninteresting when compared to a film like Sin City. The most visually interesting aspect was one of the few non-computer generated aspects of the film and that was the main actress, Lena Headey. A breath of fresh air in this sausage-fest of a movie. The film throws around words like freedom and slavery to add weight to their cause, but you don't really care because the acting and dialogue is bad. It would have been fine if the movie was trying to be campy, but the film takes it's idea of masculinity too seriously and expects people to buy into it. Probably the most manly scene doesn't even concern any of the 300 spartans. It concerns Lena Headey's character and a politician. There's actually spontaniety and excitement to that scene that is seriously lacking in the rest of the film. The action is dull because of the extreme amount of slow motion intended to make all the teenage boys in the theater to go "that's hella sick, bro." Snyder makes Mel look like a minimalist when it comes to use of slow motion. It can't even deliver on the violence either because of the computer generated blood looking extremely fake. I'm sure, some could make an argument that it's stylish, but it's still shitty looking especially when the rest of the film is bland and fairly one-note. The color that you'll come away with is gold because the sun always lights the scene in a dull gold shade. I actually liked Xerxes more than any of the spartans because he was flamboyant and actually had personality. It was obvious that the director intended for all the male viewers to view Xerxes as a freak because he's pretty much a drag queen, but I find him more sympathetic than Leonidas or his men because he's accepting of the hunchback character. The hunchback's betrayal was probably supposed to be some huge blow to the audience and I could imagine the audience wishing Leonidas would have killed him, but he has way more personality than any of the 300 spartans. This movie sucked.
*1/2 out of ****
TMNT(dir. Kevin Munroe)
No Shredder + No Personality + No Vanilla Ice = No Good
*1/2 out of ****
The Life of Jesus(dir. Bruno Dumont)
I like how he displays these asshole characters as pretty much assholes. I think the title applies to the Arab character because he's easily the most sympathetic guy in the movie and well, he dies. He adds a sense of humanity to the picture that the film was lacking. The shots of actual penetration during the sex scenes were unnecessary. Along with seeing Freddy's mom's vagina after she got out of the bath, which amounted to about 2 seconds of the film and seemed as if the editor just didn't cut in time or something. The ending was moving in a sense, but you could picture it having a stronger emotional impact if you were able to sympathize with Freddy's character more.
***1/2 out of ****
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters(dir. Paul Schrader)
This is the way you make a film about an artist. You show bits of his life and you show bits of his work. It shows how his life shaped his work and it shows how his work shaped him. Phillip Glass's score is amazing. This film would have been amazing if a moment near the end didn't feel so ridiculous and akward. It's easily the best film I've seen by him so far.
***1/2 out of ****