what i watched last week

Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984). Kurt Cobain’s favorite movie places character actor Harry Dean Stanton in a leading role, and he makes the most of it by underplaying. There is some fine acting here, not least by 8-year-old Hunter Carson in his film debut. The movie looks lovely, and Ry Cooder’s soundtrack sounds like the best parts of his contribution to Performance. Sam Shepard’s dialogue is a perfect match for Stanton’s quiet excellence. In other words, this is a very good movie. But its virtues, which are aggressively low-key, make it both a nice antidote to the Michael Bay School of Filmmaking, and something I admired more than I loved. #313 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They list of the Top 1000 films of all time.

District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009). Clearly Neill Blomkamp is influenced by Peter Jackson. I just didn’t expect that the influence would come from Jackson’s early splatter films. As the hero’s body started falling apart, I was reminded of Braindead/Dead Alive. It’s also pretty amazing that Sharlto Copley wasn’t an actor until this movie. District 9 is ambitious without losing its sense of humor (the Jackson influence again), and it succeeds on most of the levels it tries for. I don’t think the film is racist … it’s more misanthropic, humans in general pretty much suck in this movie. I’d probably feel differently if I were Nigerian. As is often the case with sci-fi, you have to close your mind to some parts … I don’t mind that the film is vague about some aspects of the backstory, but I’d still like to know exactly why the alien spaceship came to Earth in the first place, and why, if it was stranded for 20 years, Christopher and his son were able to get it working again so easily. But what the heck.