Movies

Our last two Netflix movies were The Hours and Hero. Let me lay out a quick review of both for you:

The Hours is basically like watching an extended episode of Sex and the City. Except that instead of well-dressed socialites, you have frumpily dressed women in various stages of mental decay. Although both the Hours and Sex and the City have shown women kissing women, I have a feeling that I'm understating the importance of these kisses in the Hours. If you asked your film studies major friend (you know, he works at Arby's), he'd tell you that the kisses represent the yearning for a deeper meaning in the confined world that a women is forced to operate in by the patriarchal system of domination. The movie involves the ways in which a novel by Virginia Woolf steers and frames the lives of two other women, but let's not forget that Woolf was a certifiable nut case. Maybe one could turn to some other sources of inspiration.

Hero is in that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon genre of Chinese action films and involves lots (LOTS) of wire-fighting martial arts scenes. There is nothing terribly stunning about the fights relative to CTHD (or the Matrix, for that matter). The story could have been intriguing, but it is told in such a way as to rob it of all the suspense. All that being said, this is probably the coolest looking movie I've ever seen. The movie tells the same story several times over, from different points of view, and each point of view is represented by a different primary color being used for the costumes and major props. And the colors themselves are brilliant - bright blue, stop sign red, pure white. The settings are fantastic Chinese landscapes. Rent this, put the mute on, and just watch.