This Week in Blockbuster

JCVD was a great look into Jean-Claude.  He has actual acting chops behind his kicks.  It's powerful and I'd love to see him in a role where he wasn't playing himself.  He does a great job and I loved the camera work.  I think I may just hate the way that French dialog is delivered?  Like it ticked me a wrong way and this movie has to be lightyears away from Goddard, whose 3 movies I hated the way the dialog was constructed too.  Who knows?

After being ambivalent about The Godfather (the strongest thing I took from it was Pacino not playing Pacino), Goodfellas was definitely a better experience.  I liked when it became a completely different film in the last 20 minutes that sort of set up how The Departed was paced.  I liked The Departed more though.  That one had actually likable characters.  The Godfather sets it up so that you never see the criminal side of things.  You merely see the family destroyed by outside forces and the rules of the mob.  The big trick is it shows them as "good""family-oriented" people, regardless of the families they probably destroy. 

Goodfellas doesn't put up that illusion.  Most of them are idiots and trash whether directly stated or shown by their actions.  They get a lot of money by robbing and have no class on how to spend it.  Eventually the business changes (the film covers a good 30 years), and they get caught for doing precisely what they were told not too. 

My eternal love of WKW influenced me liking the voiceover narration.  It is used wonderfully when it switches characters.  Here the female characters have depth (I guess???)   At least compared to The Godfather where they are almost scenery.  It took reading review of The Godfather to realize that a phone call that followed in someone's death was a setup.  That was probably the shining point of the film.  In Goodfellas they talk business on the phone enough for the viewer to take note. 

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest it turns out the only cure needed for mental illness is life experience and Jack Nicholoson.  If this film wasn't remembered it wouldn't be remembered I don't think.  Danny Devito never registered as Devito.  It is indulgent in the story it wants to tell and not the setup and following resolution.  Maybe it retains that because it is stopping expectations.  Or because it won oscars because it had mental illness without confronting mental illness.

Moonrise Kingdom sure was Wes Anderson.  I don't know anything really about Wes.  I have maybe seen a few of his films.  This was full on that style.  I had to stop it every few minutes because it became too much.  Upper-class white people with non-problems and lots of twee-chiche.  Just twee-ing all over the place.  There's some great shots in it though.