Incredible Brightness of Seeing

Old reviews added in

I've moved a few more reviews over from my "old" (now offline) site:

• Limbo
• Last Night
• Lantana
• Curse of the Jade Scorpion
• Jackie Brown

I'm going to try and finish up the move soon. I have about 10 more. Of the above, I liked them all but really really recommend Lantana. I enjoyed rereading the review and now I want to pick it up to buy.

Watching and buying

I've done a little watching and also some buying. For watching, I had the pleasure of sitting down for Intacto [Review] [Info] [Rent] [Buy], a really top-notch Spanish/English film, riffing on the subject of luck. Reminded me a little bit of Run Lola Run [Info] [Rent] [Buy] with its playing with time as well, although not nearly so completely. Just more imagining how things might have been different had the luck been changed. But an excellent movie and one I will review here shortly.

I also picked up a couple of Best Buy "2 for $15" specials. Once Upon a Time in the West [Info] [Rent] [Buy], a Sergio Leone [Info] classic, as well as This is Spinal Tap [Info] [Rent] [Buy], the special edition even. Looking forward to watching both of these.

Watching "Cross of Iron"

I watched Sam Peckinpah's [Info] [Rent] [Buy] Cross of Iron [Info] [Rent] [Buy] on a quiet Sunday evening and thought it just okay. I recently watched a Peckinpah retrospective on cable and it mentioned his last few films weren't really ones he made while at the top of his game. And Cross of Iron is one of his last and it felt very over done. His trademarked slow motion killings all seemed forced and a little out of place in a World War 2 film; that sort of movie making works okay in a mythical Old West, but just doesn't seem to fit the WW2 oevre. I also thought that it was typically Peckinpah to be contrary and film a World War 2 movie from the German side, especially during them getting their butts kicked towards the end of the Russian campaign. I enjoyed James Cobrun [Info] and James Mason [Info], both solid professional actors, but I thought even Maximilian Schell [Info] overacted as the maniacal officer driven towards earning an Iron Cross.