My uninspired last 24 hours of movies...

Okay, I'm going to make these brief. Cause I'm in the middle of a good book

For some reason, there's been talk about this German film Head-On when there really need not be. I joked with my boyfriend after fast-forwarding thought the last 45 minutes (which PS I almost never do) that it should have been called My Dark Big Fat Turkish Wedding. Now I'm a big Fassbinder fan, and the comparisons here are just plain sad. Director, Faith Akin, seems to forget that he's making a film and that film is a medium to be considered. Instead, like any normal Hollywooteer (and contemporary British filmmaker, for that matter) he coopts film as a means by which to solely relate plot. And the plot here is obvious and painfully intentional. The girl is run of the mill "cute" and the guy is hot in a fuck-you-in-the-alley sort of way - and it seems that this is the most Akin wants to convey at times. I've read that the film reaches wonderful atmospheres and I'll say that the production designer did a good job. But a good production designer does not a good film make. I got this as a free rental. I got what I paid for.

Woody Allen's latest film, Match Point is one long tedious picture. Allen allows the only source drama for the film's eternal first hour and a half is the chemistry free affair between the bland (but Ooooh remember him when) Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and the talentless Scarlett Johansson. Letting the actors off the hook a little, Allen's dialogue free encounters hold far more weight than the insipid wording he chooses to call dialogue, and though the film is not without his perks, the compelling moments are few and far between those that leave you sitting alone in the dark just thinking, "oh, will somebody just die already." And someone does (thank god!) in a manner that made me curious as to what our violence weary friend Mr. David Cronenberg might think of it. What is a movie with a violent twist that never shows its victims but just leaves them to fall off the written page? Is this a representation of violence that perhaps, I'm not saying condones, but allows for more metaphoric purpose than it truly holds. But Brian Cox is there to save the day, yet again, as Meyers' father in law. His scenes are the only ones with any vitality. The neurotic mortimer holds her own (far better than the two leads) and hers is perhaps the most familiar Allen-type. If you're really curious, wait till video so you can fast forward through it like I just did with Head On.

Tonight and tomorrow I will see 2046, The Beat My Heart Skipped, and The New World. Then you will have a movies of the year. (To be perfectly honest, I think it's finished already.