Y tu mamá también. Alfonso Cuarón. 2001. ⚃

This is one of those mysterious DVDs I have no recollection of buying. I think it’s been on my shelves for… at least a decade? Without me watching it. Perhaps I got it at a raid on a used DVD shop at some point? That’s the only explanation I’ve got, because I’m not really a fan of Cuarón. I mean, I’ve seen only one of his movies (Gravity; it’s not horrible), but he won the best movie Oscars for Roma? So I assume that that is terrible?

Anyway! Roll film!

[ten minutes pass]

I like the pale colour scheme… everything is desaturated and dusty-looking. The voice-over technique is pretty odd: The movie will be going on as normal, but then suddenly all the sound drops out and then a second or two later the omniscient voiceover comes in. It’s pretty disturbing — the first fifteen times this happened my mind went “did the sound crap out?” before I remembered (again) that this is how this movie is.

I like the actors — it feels like a fresh movie.

[ten minutes pass]

These guys are behaving kinda oddly for somebody in their mid-twenties… are they supposed to be teenagers?

[half an hour passes]

I’m really enjoying this, but it’s also a bit unnerving… I’m waiting for some horrible, horrible thing to happen in the midst of all this happiness.

[the end]

Well… the ending was what I thought it had to be (except that it didn’t happen the way I expected). Fuck that shit! It’s the worst, most boring cliché of The Big Book of Standard Movie Plots, and fuck Cuarón for using it.

If you stop watching this movie two minutes before the end, it’s a fabulous movie.

Leather Jackets. Lee Drysdale. 1991. ☐

[six minutes pass]

Don’t tell me this is going to be durchkomponiert!

From the moment the movie started until I paused it now to type this, there’s been the worst selection of stuff from Now That’s What I Call Royalty Free Smooth Jazz Hair Metal playing and it’s the worst ever.

EVER!

[two minutes pass]

*phew*

The “music” stopped.

[twenty minutes pass]

I have no idea why I have this DVD. I don’t really see any redeeming qualities beyond Bridget Fonda’s performance, but that’s not really enough.

So I’m bailing on the movie here.

Out of the Blue. Dennis Hopper. 1980. ⚄

[half an hour passes]

Wow. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this.

It’s such an odd movie. It’s got these improvised scenes, and these little bits where the extras go “is that a cut?”, and this inchoate storyline… Was Hopper on drugs? I mean, what drugs was Hopper on? Whatever it was, he should do more of those! This is great!

Lovely use of music, too. Most prominently Out of the Blue (and into the black), of course, but all this cool (and not) music.

OK, it’s a bit on the nose here and there.

[the end]

Wha

wha

what the fuck.

Well!

That was pretty gruelling. I don’t even want to say anything about it other than …

wat.