Grizzly Man

There's a good chance you've heard of the "Grizzly Man," a guy who spent thirteen years living with grizzly bears who was ultimately killed an eaten by one along with his girlfriend. His name was Timothy Treadwell, and this documentary tells the story of his late life among the grizzlies and his - some would say inevitable - death. Before I go any further, I have to point out that this was quite a disturbing movie. Not only is it haunting to watch a man rave about how much he loves grizzly bears literally hours before he gets killed by a grizzly bear, but the graphic details of the kill scene, found a day after the attack, are provided as well. Timothy's mangled head, part of his spine, and one arm remain. When park rangers kill a bear and perform a necropsy on it, they find its stomach filled with clothing, fingers, limbs, and human hair. Worst of all, Timothy's camera was running during the fatal attack, and while we're spared the audio of his dying cries and his girlfriend's desperate screams, we witness the documentary's director and narrator, Werner Herzog, listening to the audio on headphones, and can see how deeply disturbed and shaken he is. It was like watching a "Two Girls, One Cup" reaction video, only far more macabre and chilling. And speaking of Werner Herzog, his cold and thickly German-accented narration only further serves to create an air of unease throughout the documentary. The film is really primarily a character study of Timothy Treadwell, and plenty of time is spent on interviews with his parents, some ex-girlfriends, and some of the local authorities - park rangers, helicopter pilots - familiar with Timothy and his work. His work, for lack of a better word, was to film and study grizzly bears. It's very clear that Timothy holds a special place in his heart for wildlife. This love for animals ranges from "cute and normal," like when he befriends a family of foxes who frequent his campsite, and "mentally deranged," like when he openly weeps over the beauty of a big pile of bear shit. The cynical nature in all of us - filmmakers and interviewees included - makes it easy to say that a man who spent thirteen years trying to befriend grizzly bears had this coming. That a bear is a bear, incapable of love or friendship or kin, and that one day a big old bear decided it was hungry, or maybe just annoyed by Timothy, and did what bears tend to do, and killed and ate him. But to dismiss Timothy as a nutjob is far too easy, and is also to miss the point of this film. "Crazy" is a strong word, and while Timothy certainly did and said some very crazy things, I don't know if it's entirely fair to call him a crazy person. A foolish one, definitely. Blinded by his passion for grizzly bears and either oblivious or far too careless of the dangers involved with living among them, Timothy is difficult to feel complete sympathy for; he was one of the foremost grizzly experts in the world, and knew exactly what they were capable of. In that regard, perhaps he was like Steve Irwin in that both men had a tragic demise brought on by an intense passion for wildlife and the risks associated with close encounters with said wildlife. It's hard to believe Timothy didn't have this ultimate end in store, but it's also hard not to still feel sorry for him and his plight all the same. Perhaps the most tragic figure in the entire tale is his girlfriend, Amie, who died at his side in the grizzly bear attack, and who never even liked bears a lot to begin with. According to diary entries made by the pair of them, Amie was very uncomfortable being around the bears so often, and often demanded that they leave or at least relocate. She must have had some sort of passion for wildlife of her own to even tolerate Timothy in the first place, but she absolutely comes across as an innocent victim, a woman caught in the middle of Timothy's obsession whose biggest mistake was not making good on her threats to leave. Adding to the depressing nature of the whole story, the pair were killed just one day before their scheduled departure from the camp after spending an entire summer there. All in all, this was a somewhat moving and very disturbing documentary, and while I'd watch it again and give any interested party the green light on seeing it, I can't say I slept easy last night, tossing and turning and unable to get bear attacks out of my head. I've seen scarier and more harrowing movies, but this documentary was just plain chilling.

It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia: Season 6

This is the third time on this blog that I'll be reviewing a season of Always Sunny. For my Season 4 post, I kind of loosely described the show and why I enjoy it. For Season 5, a season I still consider to be my favorite season, I made a lengthy post in which I described and rated each individual episode. This time around, I just want to offer a belated half-apology to Season 6. Last fall, perhaps because it had to follow Season 5, Season 6 just did not impress me in the least. "Sunny got bad!" I lamented, and wondered if the end was near for the show I'd loved throughout my college years. Having just re-watched the season, I can now admit that maybe I was being a bit overdramatic, because Season 6, like so many other Sunny seasons, had its share of hits and misses. Without doing another lengthy episodic breakdown, let me run through the season with some loose grades real quick. The opening pair of episodes, involving gay marriage, regular marriage, and divorce, I would give a C. The boat episode gets an A. "Mac's Big Break" wasn't an instant classic, but was a perfectly decent Sunny episode: B. The one where the gang tries to break into a member's only pool? A-minus. The one where Mac and Charlie's moms move in together was something of a B-minus. Then came the best episode of the season, "Who Got Sweet Dee Pregnant?" This Halloween-themed episode used the Rashomon effect to allow the guys to piece together their own partial memories, or "brown-outs," to figure out which one of them banged Dee at a costume party. Easy A. (Ugh, just thought of Webber's favorite movie.) Anyway, moving on, next up came a loose two-parter in which Dee became a substitute teacher and Charlie took a custodial job. Part one dealt with the gang acquiring a new member, and was a C-plus. Part two involved the gang's homemade Lethal Weapon 5 movie, and I imagine I would have enjoyed it more had I seen any of the Lethal Weapon movies. For now, it gets a B. The three episodes that rounded out the season were the one where the gang forgets Charlie's birthday (B-minus, saved by the "denim chicken" and "Vermhat" at the end), the one where the gang gets lost in the woods (A-minus), and the finale in which Dee gives birth (a solid B). For those of you not keeping track - and why would you be? - that breakdown amounts to the following twelve-episode line of C/C/A/B/A-/B-/A/C+/B/B-/A-/B. No need to do any actual math here, but that's a GPA of about 3.0 on the semester. So yeah. All in all, not such a bad season after all. (Looking back, I think Season 3 and Season 4 were weaker, actually.) And the current season has been very average so far. One definite clunker, two or three gems, and the rest very average overall. I'd say "Sunny's back!" but in truth it may have never left in the first place. I suppose I'll be back in another year with some Season 7 analysis to offer.

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

Rarely does a movie, book, or game contain a subtitle that can stand alone as the name of a holiday, and it only seemed fitting right from the moment I purchased Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day back in March to wait eight months to watch it on the actual All Saints' Day. Now, fulfillment of that gimmick aside, there was really no reason for me to watch this movie (or any other movie) last night. I was tired and my girlfriend was a little bit sick and all signs were pointing straight to "early bedtime for all." Instead, I stubbornly attempted to get through this two-hour movie and fell asleep for about fifteen minutes early on, forcing me to re-watch half of the movie after finishing it just to make sure I hadn't missed anything of note, only further delaying bedtime. Not my best "weeknight free time" decision. Anyway, let's discuss Boondock Saints II, which we can only do by revisiting the original 1999 movie. For those of you who never saw it or can't remember, Boondock Saints was a low-budget independent film about two blue collar Irish-born brothers living in Boston who turned into a pair of vigilantes after killing two Russian mobsters in self-defense. They then methodically took down the Russian mob with their wise-cracking friend while being pursued and later aided by a gay federal agent. The movie was a failure both critically (17% on Rotten Tomatoes) and at the box office (grossing less than $250 thousand worldwide) before defying all expectations by becoming a home video cult classic, grossing $50 million in DVD and VHS sales. I first saw the film in what must have been 2003 or 2004 and, along with several friends, enjoyed it, and eagerly anticipated its rumored sequel. Seriously, there was an IMDb page for a "Boondock Saints 2" for the better half of a decade. It was the Arrested Development movie back when Arrested Development was still on the air. And by the time the movie became a reality in 2009, the same peer group that was dying for it in early high school was now ready to graduate college, and if I may speak for all of the fans of the original for a moment, we simply no longer cared. (In hindsight, maybe The Departed fulfilled everyone's desire to see another Boston-based crime movie.) Regardless, I always did have interest in seeing this follow-up, even if I knew it couldn't live up to the original simply by virtue of the fact that I had expectations going in this time. To its credit though, this sequel did everything it could to be the exact same movie as its ten-year-old predecessor. Rather than trying to up the stakes, it spent two hours showing the same two brothers murdering criminals associated with the same Russian mob family. They were once again aided by a (different) wise-cracking friend and were once again pursued by a (female, not gay) federal agent, who once again decided to help rather than hinder the brothers. And there were plenty of Mexican standoffs and action-filled crime scene reconstructions and all in all it really did feel like a two-hour extension of the original movie. Unfortunately, as I had known it wouldn't all along, it just didn't make an impact or resonate the way the original film did. The first Boondock Saints is an interesting and entertaining movie because of the firefights and unique characters, but it's also a philosophical movie that asks - even if a bit too bluntly - whether or not vigilantism is a good thing. On the one hand, the brothers are cleaning up the scum that seeps through the legal system. On the other, they're engaging in criminal activity themselves and can very fairly be compared to terrorists. Boondock Saints II by contrast features next to no reflection on the morality of the protagonists. They start the film, spend the film, and end the film as vigilantes who have both fans and detractors, and that's all there is to it. Rumor has it (again!) that there may end up being a third Boondock Saints installment, perhaps in the form of a TV miniseries. I'd watch it if it got made, but I'd also hope for some sort of deeper conflict beyond "brothers vs. lawmen" and "brothers vs. criminals." Not necessarily "brother vs. brother," since one of the most touching parts about the "Saints" is their unwavering brotherly love, but what about "brothers vs. equally morally righteous person who takes issue with their vigilantism?" What about "brothers vs. selves, finding it harder and harder to live with their ever-increasing kill count?" There are still intriguing places to go with a third movie. Of course, even if it happens, it'll probably just be another two hours of fan-service, another two hours of firefights and interesting characters. I guess I'm okay with that, too.

Batman: Arkham City

Incredible. Astounding. This is the perfect game in the history of all games in all the known universe... and even unknown.

Reading that statement over again, I think I may have gone a little over the top. Let's try again. Batman: Arkham City is fun.

Ugh... Still not doing it for me. Whatever. Let me just explain my experience and allow you to judge the game for yourself.

First combine the movies Crank and Escape from Los Angeles (Escape from New York actually works a little better for this example, but the sequel had Bruce Campbell in it... enough said) and throw them into the Batman universe. You've got the premise to this game. Wait. Any hands for those that have seen either of John Carpenter's Snake Plissken movies?

I'm going to assume there's a "no" out there somewhere. Let me explain: There a series of films about one bad-ass dude with an eye-patch (Kurt Russell)...

BOO-YAA!

...who's consistently sent into these giant, urban prisons to rescue something valuable the government wants but can't get. Do your best to ignore that, though, it's the prison you should be interested in.

Like in those movies, Gotham, under a police-controlled state, has sectioned off a portion of the city to be essentially a giant prison with very little to no security within it's walls. The first scene in the game has Bruce Wayne arguing out against this design before he's suddenly arrested by Big Brother (I forgot the organization's actual name... uh, the government?) and thrown in Arkham City. You run around as Bruce for a while - beating up thugs and learning the controls - before Alfred drops some equipment your way and you begin to find the dude (Hugo Strange) who had you locked up here as Batman. Oh, Hugo knows that Wayne is Batman - not sure how. That might play an important part in the motivation or something or other?

On route you stumble past a dying Joker. Poisoned by the Titan formula in the previous game, the Joker is on his death bed. While Batman goes to check on - what looks to be - a dead Joker, he's tricked as stabbed with a syringe injecting him with the same poison - see the Crank reference at play here? The only thing worse is that Joker is also in the process of dispensing the Titan formula into they city's drinking water. Joker needs a cure for this disease and now Batman has no choice but cooperate to save his own ass and Gotham's.

The game unfolds a lot like many sandbox games. You zip around the city (gliding from building to building is extremely satisfying) looking for the main storyline or side-quests to activate allowing you the chance to level up Batman and make him more badass while fighting... and you need to look bad-ass while fighting. When you get to the combat in this game, it becomes more like God of War. It's blazing fast hack-n-shlash that's not too difficult (I was on normal difficulty), but I don't feel that the challenge is what's important here. It's how cool look as you ram your elbow into some goon's temple while simultaneously round-housing the two gents behind you. Once again... satisfying.

Wait-a-tic, Batman. One of those fellows has a gun! RETREAT!

Yes, guns in this game will kill you very fast - even when fists, knives, and baseball bats don't. Time to go all Metal Gear Solid stealth. You go classic scary Batman and pick off enemies one-by-one without being seen. From what I can tell, all of the combat systems are actually similar, if not identical, to the last game. If you've played through Arkham Asylum already then I apologize for wasting your time. Just scroll down and I'll explain the true reason this game bowled me over.

Growing up I was an avid fan of The Batman and Superman Adventures. It was on every afternoon on the WB when I got home from school. This cartoon was the shit and I'm going to assume you all agree with me. Well, like the last game this one is still voiced by a majority of the same vocal talents (i.e. Mark Hamill as the Joker). In fact, Hamill supposedly came out of retirement to do this role one last time finishing the Joker's story. Does that means he dies? Does Batman finally break his own rule and kill that damn Joker?

Fuck spoilers. Yes. Joker dies by his own hand and it's a very moving scene.

In whole, that game is fast-paced, not too difficult yet still challenging (especially when trying to 100% all side-quests), and fun as all hell. Oh, and although I found this to be fairly small and insignificant to the majority of the game you do get to periodically play as Catwoman. It's only four simple, easy missions. Don't even bother leveling her (you do have that option), it won't matter. Just focus on making Batman more bad-ass. Remember... BAD-ASS!

A History of Violence

October's been a hell of a month for movie-logging for me (fifteen!) and twelve of those films were released in 2002 or later. I've definitely gone out of my way this month to check out some movies that came out while I was in high school and college, and A History of Violence (the last mainstream movie to get released in VHS) fits right in with so many other recent viewings in that regard. Clocking in at just a hair over ninety minutes, this was no epic movie and the scope was fairly limited. A simple suburban man becomes an overnight hero when he kills two would-be-murderers who try to rob his diner. His actions draw national attention and all of a sudden some mobsters from Philadelphia decide to pay him a visit, forcing him to confront his very dark and violent past. It's no original concept, and nothing you haven't seen before. A gifted assassin or hitman just wants to retire to a simple life with his family, but don't you dare try to goad him out of it or you'll pay the price indeed. Man on Fire and Taken were richer in character development and more violent, respectively, but there's still something so elegantly simple about the much smaller and less meaningful killing frenzy that Viggo Mortensen achieves in the shorter and simpler movie I just enjoyed. It just goes to show that even a sparse - if not exactly minimalist - crime thriller can work very well with the right writing and solid performances. Actually, that last sentence more or less sums up Drive, a newer movie I recently saw in theaters. I'm sure I'll log that one someday because it was too awesome for me not to someday own a copy of on Blu-ray. But A History of Violence was pretty good too. Happy Halloween and good night one and all.

Breakfast of Champions

In the preface to Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut describes the novel as a "50th birthday present" to himself. That's a really apt description of the book in general, which has no real moral or theme overall (or at least, even less of one than most of Vonnegut's books), but which is easily the most "Vonnegut" of all eight Vonnegut books I've read. There are non sequiturs, there is overt foretelling of events (straight up spoiling, really), the fourth wall is broken and completely abandoned about two thirds of the way into the story, and there are even crude illustrations of things like Nazi flags and vaginas - which made me very worried and aware of my surroundings as I read this book in an airport and on a plane, by the way. Vonnegut interjects human tragedy with human silliness, and vice versa, for 300 pages in his trademark way, and even though the book was fairly light on plot, per se, it'll likely go down as one of the more memorable books I'll ever read. Totally silly, but completely enjoyable. "And so on."

Magnolia

For a long time now, Magnolia has been one of those movies I've always been meaning to see because it earned both critical acclaim and a fair share of "WTF?" reactions from many of my peers. I figured it was some kind of confusing movie on the surface rife with underlying meanings. Whenever people complained about the absurdly biblical ending (spoiler alert: it rains frogs) I always imagined that had to be foreshadowed throughout the film in some meaningful way. Well, I finally did see Magnolia last night, and I have to say... "WTF?" Don't get me wrong. This nearly-three-hour movie kept me intrigued and entertained, which I guess is all a movie is supposed to do, but after it ended - and even after sleeping on it and poking around on the Internet for the opinions of others - I can't say I have any real idea what the point of the movie (or the climactic amphibian downpour, for that matter) was. There's an ensemble cast of characters, and they're all connected in certain ways ranging from employer-employee relationships to familial ties. And these characters are all looking for happiness or closure or love or something similar, and most of them mingle or cross paths with most of the others in some way, and some find what they're looking for and others don't, and then it rains frogs. And in a closing paragraph, a narrator asks us to consider whether or not certain things that happen are coincidental, or something more. And that's that. Again, I didn't hate it, wasn't bored by it, and don't regret seeing it. But man, do I have no idea what it's all supposed to "mean" or "do." Was it supposed to elicit certain emotional reactions in me? Was it supposed to just be a collection of smaller simple personal stories that intersect? Did it rain frogs in some sort of biblical symbolism, or was that an intentionally cheap deus ex machina trick thrown into the script with a wink? The other two Paul Thomas Anderson movies I've seen - Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood - were also fairly vague at times, but the former resonated with me emotionally as a love story and character study, and the latter was just an excellent biopic about a ruthless American capitalist. Magnolia? I dunno. I've got nothing. It seemed like Crash in that it was just sort of a collection of small interconnected stories, but in Crash there was a common underlying theme of racism in America. Magnolia had no such unifying feel to it, and instead just looked at a whole bunch or people struggle with mostly minor personal demons. In that regard, it very much felt like the late '90s film it was. Is it just me, or was 1999 just something of a year-long self-aware feel-good party in America? The economy was great, there were no real foreign conflicts to fear, the new millennium was coming, and it was time to let the good times roll. The biggest box office hits were psychological pieces rather than historical biopics or war films. We all turned our observations inward and looked at American society at the turn of the millennium. Fight Club. American Beauty. Being John Malkovich. The Sixth Sense. The Matrix. Office Space. So much focus on "man vs. self" rather than "us vs. them." So many commentaries on how shallow and vapid our society had become. You just didn't see movies like these, at least dominating so much of pop culture all at once, after 1999. Soon the millennial party was over and it was time to get back to focusing on the future instead of taking an in-depth look at our culture as it currently stood. September 11th, a pair of wars, a pair of recessions, and some sobering natural disasters and bubble collapses later, we're much more jaded. It's all about the day-to-day grind. We're no longer interested in taking a deeper look at the holes beneath the superficially perfect American lifestyle because the American lifestyle is so clearly no longer even superficially perfect. No, don't show me a movie where a man is unhappy because he has some daddy issues. Show me Batman saving a fictional city. Show me a man cutting his own arm off with a pocket knife in order to survive. Show me a planet full of blue catlike people, and let me watch them defend their home from an invasion. Show me a social outcast who becomes a billionaire because his website became an Internet sensation. These days we want inspiration, not introspection. We want protagonists to succeed, not to defeat themselves. Our thematic content of choice has collectively gone from "find meaning and purpose in your life" to "live and get by for another day." (Whew. Lengthy ramble. Sorry, it happens from time to time.) Anyway, maybe some of the deeper meaning or beauty of Magnolia was lost on me because its already dated and no longer relevant. If I was supposed to share the anguish of once character when, say, he peed his pants on national television (no, really, that happened), I didn't. I kind of laughed at him and at his situation. And maybe I was supposed to. Again, I'm not really sure what it was Magnolia was trying to do or say. And not because the plot was vague or hard to follow. If anything, it was overly easy and straightforward. Mundane, even. I dunno. I'm running out of coherent things to say about Magnolia, but I feel no closer to really describing or exploring it than I did when I began this post. So what about you, fellow bloggers and dear readers? Did you ever see Magnolia, and if so, what the hell was it all about anyway? I concede the floor to the rest of you.

Samurai Champloo

I don't really watch a lot of Anime, but of the few series I have seen Cowboy Bebop is one of my favorites. The show about a group of rag-tag space bounty hunters had a truly original aesthetic appeal as well as an amazing, diverse soundtrack (Bad Dog, No Biscuits!). This show (that we should see in a live-action movie soon starring Keanu Reeves and Bruce Willis... and Megan Fox, sad-sigh) was all the brainchild of Shinichiro Watanabe. Back in High School, he released his new work: Samurai Champloo. I only ever caught an episode or two, but remember Sheridan raving about it. Well, I've finally sucked it down and have found it rather refreshing.

Much like Cowboy Bebop, Watanabe has incorporated a truly original theme and style to this show. Even though the show's set back in 1800's (?)... ummm, a long time ago when Samurais roamed Japan, there's this cool, rap/hip-hop attitude infused with the soundtrack and theme. (Hell, the main title screen is placed on a spinning vinyl record.) This is just plain... cool.

Take this and add in gore and violence in the non-stop avalanche of sword fights and samurai duels. Always engaging. Always fun.

If I had to say anything bad about this show, it's the same thing I would want to say about Watanabe's previous work: The show's story craps out by the end. This was my big guff in Cowboy Bebop. There was this awesome build as we find our main character's doppelganger has obtained control of this huge crime syndicate, his best gal has just been gunned down by hired goons, and now we're approaching the final showdown. Alright, I'm ready for this... but then the fights over even before it has begun, and as for all the rest of the characters (there are four besides the lead), they just sort of go off on their own paths. Nothing is resolved. Life just resumes. This didn't seem to bother most people as it did me. I guess I just like closure.

Back to Champloo... The story revolves around three individuals: two samurais (one well-tempered, the other a nut-job) and a ditsy girl that's run away from home or some crap. Anyways, the girl convinces the other two guys - who are committed to having this duel with one another - to hold off fighting and help her find a samurai that smell of sun flowers. In short, through much blood they find the sun flower samurai (turns out to be the girl's estranged father) which is accompanied by a bunch of long-winded battles... then the show ends. Not to spoil anything (although I've already revealed plenty), but all three characters live, the two samurais agree to not battle one another, and everyone splits off at a diverging road to head along their own paths, literally. Once again, no closure. It just rubs me the wrong way when you witness a lack in character growth - or, in this case, none at all. What did I just suffer through? What was it all for? Sure, there were some entertaining fight scenes - I'll give it that much - but why not show, let's say, the nut-job samurai how to control himself???

To be fair, the show does touch upon these points. And while not completely obvious, there are a few fleeting moments where we see some changes in our characters. It seems what Watanabe looks to do in his work is to just educate the audience on his characters' backgrounds; slowly but surely. That's the payoff... I suppose. By the end of the show we are finally made aware of how each person has got there, and maybe that gives the audience some indication of where they might go next after the story ends. For some, this works.

Not for me. I like a proper ending, dammit!

Before Sunset

Nine months ago, I watched and very much enjoyed the 1995 film Before Sunset. This is its sequel, made (and presumably set) nine years later with the same two actors playing the same two characters. And it works very well as a follow-up to the original. The characters are older, wiser, and more mature now, and as such, so are their conversations. But by the same token, it doesn't quite capture the perfect "strangers as soul mates" feeling that the first movie provided way back a while ago. These people are still young, for sure (probably in their early to mid-thirties) but with a handful of life experiences behind them now, they're also just a little more cynical and jaded. Both are in serious relationships (one is married with a child) but neither are very happy. Both eventually admit to being unable to stop thinking about each other since the fateful night nine years ago when they first met. This movie unfolds in real time and is only eighty minutes long; the two leads, after nine years apart, do a very convincing job in picking up right where they left off initially, but also in slowly letting their guards down over the course of their very brief reunion. There's also an ambiguous ending. The man must catch a flight to go back home, but it isn't clear if he does so or does not. (Just as the last movie ended with a question about whether they would or wouldn't meet again.) Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy helped write all of their dialogue in this film and both have said they'd be open to revisiting this pair of characters in the future. I think that'd be very interesting. If another sequel came out every ten years or so to revisit these characters and where their lives have brought them, I'd keep tuning in. Of course, at a certain point they'd either have to hook up for an extended period of time or agree to stop seeing each other once every decade or so. Maybe the hypothetical next movie finds the pair married and completely unhappy with each other. I dunno. All in all I was pretty happy with this movie. It expanded upon the story that originated in 1995 without trying to outdo that original one night stand. I suppose I prefer Sunrise to Sunset, but maybe only because the former movie can stand alone while this movie kind of requires some familiarity with the original in order to get the full effect. Regardless, the movie backlog is back down below ten, and the goal is to keep it there.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Whenever you see a very old but very widely acclaimed movie for the first time, it can be tough to view it with a truly neutral and passive eye. All too often, there's a desire to like the movie and to appreciate it because it's what so many people before you have done. Or, if the movie just isn't clicking for you, there's a sudden impetus to take things in the other direction, to hate the film, to dub it "overrated," and to feel at least somewhat counter-cultural for doing so. But 2001 was just too weird, too unique, too ahead of its time, and too dated all at once for me to either emphatically like or dislike it. This is a movie that came out in 1968. That's before man had ever even walked on the moon. (Or - fine, I'll entertain the conspiracy theorists - before the government ever tricked us into believing man had walked on the moon.) The movie depicts a "future" 2001 in which the space age has really taken off and traveling to the moon is commonplace for civilians. On the one hand, we can certainly forgive a movie from the past for having a very optimistic view of the future. On the other... did Kubrick really think in 1968 that mankind was 33 years away from space colonization? But I guess the year in question doesn't really matter. Pretending this film takes place in 3001 instead of 2001 takes nothing away from it, and remembering that it was made back in 1968 is what's important. The special effects used in 2001 were seriously impressive. This was nine years before Star Wars, which seems to have set the precedent for space age special effects, and it holds up just as well to this day. So no matter how I look at it, 2001 was a very impressive filmmaking feat, both in hindsight and also contemporarily. But that story... so ambiguous. So strange. So light on narrative. The first twenty-five and final twenty-eight minutes of the film contain no spoken lines at all. They're fairly engrossing and visually engaging, for sure, but it cuts nearly an hour out of any expository or conclusive story that can be told. Now, without dialogue the film remains visually stunning and is loaded with iconic scenes and moments. There are also a number of well-made musical montages of sorts; at one point a number of man-made satellites spin through space to "The Blue Danube" for a few minutes, and frankly, it just plain works. Actually, the whole film "works." But it still gets extremely weird before it ends. I don't even want to ruin anything by trying to describe it, but if you've seen 2001 you know what I mean. Apparently the novelization of 2001 was written in parallel with the film's development, and provides a much better narrative to the story than the film (while the film provides musical and visual storytelling that the book simply can't). I'm definitely at least somewhat interested in reading the book someday and finding out just a little bit more about the monoliths, HAL, and that giant floating space fetus. The book even has three sequels that further expand the mythology and story of Kubrick's futuristic universe. Maybe they're all worth a read. But of course, due to the current heft of my backlog... not yet. Not yet.