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brokenrecord) wrote2010-03-20 10:26 am
brokenrecord) wrote2010-03-20 10:26 am
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I think I'm going to try to start reccing awesome movies I've seen (and even try to write more reviews of all movies I see when I see them rather than posting them all together at the end of the year, but since I've been meaning to do that since January and haven't yet, I think that might be less likely). Anyways, the first one is going to be Memento. I watched with my mom last night, and it's not my first time seeing it (my third time, actually, and it was #3 on my favorite films of the decade picspam I posted last December), but every time I see it or just think about it, I have to rec it. It's just so freaking good. If you haven't seen it, you have to. It's directed by Christopher Nolan, who also did Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Prestige, which are all excellent films, but this is my favorite of his (that I've seen).
The film is about a guy, Lenny, who has anterograde amnesia, which means that he can't form new memories. He remembers everything up until the accident which caused his condition, but past that, he only can keep things in his memory for a few minutes before he forgets everything. He developed his condition when a man came into his home, raped and killed his wife, and then bashed his head into a mirror. The only thing keeping him going now is to find this man and kill him. To remind himself of this, he has a bunch of tattoos telling him what he's trying to do and a bunch of facts about the guy that he's discovered so far.
This alone would make the film interesting, but on top of that, the film has a unique and really wonderfully done narrative structure. The film starts with the last chronological scene of the story. It then switches to the first scene chronologically of the story. Then it goes to the second to last scene. It switches back and forth like this (scenes from the first half of the story are in black and white, which helps differentiate them, although it's pretty obvious what's going on), and the film basically ends in the middle. It's organized so we experience events like Lenny: we have no idea what's going on at the start of a scene and how Lenny got there or what he was trying to do, and we have to figure it out as he does. A structure like that sounds like it would be kind of weird, with us knowing the end of the film at the very start, and ending in the middle seems like it could be anti-climactic, but it really isn't. It can make it a bit confusing, however, and immediately after I saw it the first time, I felt like I had to see it a second time to fully understand everything that happened. Every time I see it, too, I find things I didn't notice the first time.
As a psych student, I really love how the film handles memory. I mean, obviously the whole anterograde amnesia thing, but there's also a scene when Lenny is talking to someone and basically says that yeah, he has this condition, but no one's memory is perfect. People convince themselves of things and alter their own memories and even people who are supposed to have fully functioning memories can still make horrible errors in memory. And I like how the film discusses how people construct their own memories and lie to themselves to make themselves happy.
The acting in this is all top-notch. There's really nothing more to say about them than that. Guy Pearce is wonderful as Lenny. I completely sympathized with him the entire time, because you can see how hard living life like this is on him, and how desperate he is to avenge his wife's murder. I also really liked Carrie Anne Moss in this. I think Natalie could have been a tough character to really get a hold of, but I think she did a great job.
I could talk about this film forever, but I don't want to say any more because I don't want to give any of the twists away (of which there are many, and none of which I could have predicted beforehand but also none of which were just thrown in for like... shock factor. Everything that happens makes perfect sense, in my opinion). I will warn you that this is not a happy film. It's a pretty tragic story, which you can probably tell from just the bits that I have already described. It's definitely not as devastating or emotionally scarring for me as other films I've seen (namely, Requiem for a Dream, which was an amazing movie, but I never want to see it again). But if you're in a bad mood, this isn't exactly a pick-me-up. Still, it's an amazing film, and everyone should see it.
My dad totally randomly met Tiffany (the singer, who was in the HIMYM episode Sandcastles in the Sand, which is where I know her from) the other day. He told her that he really enjoyed seeing her on HIMYM. I find this all very amusing for some reason. It was just so random!
I've gotten so behind on TV, it's ridiculous. I'm caught up on a few of my favorite shows, but even others that I really love (like Lost), I'm behind on. I don't know why, I just got out of the habit of watching so much TV when I didn't have internet for a few weeks and then there wasn't much on because of the Olympics. I'm just so behind that I don't know where to start, so I haven't been watching anything. And I've been much more in the mood to read books and watch movies, which hasn't helped either. Eventually I'll get in the mood again and try to catch up, but I feel like that might not be for awhile.
Today is my last full day left here! I'm flying back tomorrow morning. I was dreading going back most of the week because of this group project I had due Wednesday which we hadn't started on because the last piece of this group project was due right before spring break, so we really had no time to do it because had to do the other part first, and since this is a project we have to do all together in person (meaning, we can't complete it separately and through e-mails and such), we only would really have had Monday and Tuesday to complete it, which is pretty ridiculous and was stressing me out a lot. But then my professor e-mailed all of us and said she was pushing it back a week, so now next week is so much nicer. I do have a super-short German essay due Wednesday and a German exam on Friday, but neither is going to be super intense or stressful (particularly since I have a 100 in German right now), so now I'm much more positive about going back. And there are really only like 6 1/2 weeks left of school once I get back. Not too bad. Although once school is out I need to find somewhere to volunteer so I can be productive with my summer, and ugh, I hate applying to places and all that. And then in the fall I have to start applying to grad schools, and that's even worse. So maybe I shouldn't be in such a rush for the semester to be over. =/
The film is about a guy, Lenny, who has anterograde amnesia, which means that he can't form new memories. He remembers everything up until the accident which caused his condition, but past that, he only can keep things in his memory for a few minutes before he forgets everything. He developed his condition when a man came into his home, raped and killed his wife, and then bashed his head into a mirror. The only thing keeping him going now is to find this man and kill him. To remind himself of this, he has a bunch of tattoos telling him what he's trying to do and a bunch of facts about the guy that he's discovered so far.
This alone would make the film interesting, but on top of that, the film has a unique and really wonderfully done narrative structure. The film starts with the last chronological scene of the story. It then switches to the first scene chronologically of the story. Then it goes to the second to last scene. It switches back and forth like this (scenes from the first half of the story are in black and white, which helps differentiate them, although it's pretty obvious what's going on), and the film basically ends in the middle. It's organized so we experience events like Lenny: we have no idea what's going on at the start of a scene and how Lenny got there or what he was trying to do, and we have to figure it out as he does. A structure like that sounds like it would be kind of weird, with us knowing the end of the film at the very start, and ending in the middle seems like it could be anti-climactic, but it really isn't. It can make it a bit confusing, however, and immediately after I saw it the first time, I felt like I had to see it a second time to fully understand everything that happened. Every time I see it, too, I find things I didn't notice the first time.
As a psych student, I really love how the film handles memory. I mean, obviously the whole anterograde amnesia thing, but there's also a scene when Lenny is talking to someone and basically says that yeah, he has this condition, but no one's memory is perfect. People convince themselves of things and alter their own memories and even people who are supposed to have fully functioning memories can still make horrible errors in memory. And I like how the film discusses how people construct their own memories and lie to themselves to make themselves happy.
The acting in this is all top-notch. There's really nothing more to say about them than that. Guy Pearce is wonderful as Lenny. I completely sympathized with him the entire time, because you can see how hard living life like this is on him, and how desperate he is to avenge his wife's murder. I also really liked Carrie Anne Moss in this. I think Natalie could have been a tough character to really get a hold of, but I think she did a great job.
I could talk about this film forever, but I don't want to say any more because I don't want to give any of the twists away (of which there are many, and none of which I could have predicted beforehand but also none of which were just thrown in for like... shock factor. Everything that happens makes perfect sense, in my opinion). I will warn you that this is not a happy film. It's a pretty tragic story, which you can probably tell from just the bits that I have already described. It's definitely not as devastating or emotionally scarring for me as other films I've seen (namely, Requiem for a Dream, which was an amazing movie, but I never want to see it again). But if you're in a bad mood, this isn't exactly a pick-me-up. Still, it's an amazing film, and everyone should see it.
My dad totally randomly met Tiffany (the singer, who was in the HIMYM episode Sandcastles in the Sand, which is where I know her from) the other day. He told her that he really enjoyed seeing her on HIMYM. I find this all very amusing for some reason. It was just so random!
I've gotten so behind on TV, it's ridiculous. I'm caught up on a few of my favorite shows, but even others that I really love (like Lost), I'm behind on. I don't know why, I just got out of the habit of watching so much TV when I didn't have internet for a few weeks and then there wasn't much on because of the Olympics. I'm just so behind that I don't know where to start, so I haven't been watching anything. And I've been much more in the mood to read books and watch movies, which hasn't helped either. Eventually I'll get in the mood again and try to catch up, but I feel like that might not be for awhile.
Today is my last full day left here! I'm flying back tomorrow morning. I was dreading going back most of the week because of this group project I had due Wednesday which we hadn't started on because the last piece of this group project was due right before spring break, so we really had no time to do it because had to do the other part first, and since this is a project we have to do all together in person (meaning, we can't complete it separately and through e-mails and such), we only would really have had Monday and Tuesday to complete it, which is pretty ridiculous and was stressing me out a lot. But then my professor e-mailed all of us and said she was pushing it back a week, so now next week is so much nicer. I do have a super-short German essay due Wednesday and a German exam on Friday, but neither is going to be super intense or stressful (particularly since I have a 100 in German right now), so now I'm much more positive about going back. And there are really only like 6 1/2 weeks left of school once I get back. Not too bad. Although once school is out I need to find somewhere to volunteer so I can be productive with my summer, and ugh, I hate applying to places and all that. And then in the fall I have to start applying to grad schools, and that's even worse. So maybe I shouldn't be in such a rush for the semester to be over. =/