Ocean's 11, the original Frank Sinatra version. The first half was aimless, the actual heist was better, but the ending was just depressing. The boys enjoyed this mostly as a glimpse to what Vegas used to look like (four casinos on a stretch of road, never out of sight of the desert, basically).
Speaking of George Clooney (well, we were inferring him above, yeah?), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind pretty much clinched my opinion that Clooney directs some great stories. Also, Sam Rockwell is awesome in everything. This movie was very strange but very interesting.
I finally saw Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and it has not been overpraised. Humphrey Bogart slowly losing it over a couple of sacks of gold dust is completely mesmerising.
The Warlords is a Jet Li movie that reminded me a bit of Scarface in that it involves a bunch of guys acting all gangsta until their entire world collapses around them. A cautionary tale. It also has Takeshi Kaneshiro, whom I saw recently in Red Cliff. Then I looked him up on Wikipedia and realized I'd seen him in all sorts of things from House of Flying Daggers to Chunking Express, so I'm a bit embarrassed it took me this long to really notice him. I like him; he's one of those actors who listens really well (giving speeches is easy; reacting to another actor giving a speech is much tougher to do in a captivating way, I'm thinking).
When the boys were at camp I went out to the movie theater twice, to see Inception and Salt. Inception is just as cool as everyone but the haters says it is. I also quite liked Salt, too. What a perfect name for a popcorn movie. Liev Schreiber seems to finally be getting lots of interesting work, which is cool.
One of the blogs I followed was on about Aguirre: The Wrath of God, only I can't remember which one. (Jerry Coyne?) At any rate, it's a strange movie that reminded me of a lot of other movies, only when I looked it up later it turns out it's actually a strange movie that inspired a lot of other movies. An interesting film, although not one I'm likely to watch again.
And then comes Bollywood: God Tussi Great Ho was just as bad as I had heard. It's the Bollywood version of Bruce Almighty starring Amitabh Bachchan as god, which sounds like it could be cool. Oliver watched this one with me, and when Salman Khan's character meets god for the first time, Oliver wondered how he knew which god it was. One of many potentially interesting questions the movie doesn't ask. The special effects were unbelievably hokey, but apparently ate the whole budget, as it looked like it'd been shot on video and not film. Plus, the songs weren't even any good.
Kambakkht Ishq is set in Hollywood and has appearances by Sylvester Stallone and Denise Richards plus that guy who's Justin Long's boyfriend in Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Sadly, it was one of those movies where the script was writing itself while they filmed, I'm guessing - silly and nonsensical and not very good. But Akshay Kumar is likeable even in crap films, and the title song is groovy:
Paa was interesting, with Amitabh Bachchan as a 12-year-old with progeria and his son Abhishek Bachchan playing his father. Abhishek's character is a politician trying to make a point about how politics doesn't have to equal corruption. Sadly, his whole plot line was dumped in the end, and I really wanted to see how all that came out.
Drona also stars Abhishek Bachchan playing a superhero who's really a mythological figure (think Thor, only he has a really shiny magic sword). He's also more laconic than Batman. The Big Bad in this one would have been creepier without the Ed Grimley hair-do. This wasn't really a great film, but I liked their story.
Veer I had heard was a bad film, and I went into it with low expectations, so low I was actually working on something else when I put it in and wasn't really reading the subtitles, just getting by on what little I could pick up by listening. By the end of the first dance number, I was completely sucked in and left my work undone to watch the next two hours. This movie is probably just as lovingly researched and historically accurate as, say, Troy. It's also as bombastic and fun as Troy, with one on one combat with swords and shields in front of massive city walls. It might be too lowbrow for the critics, but I loved it. Here's the first number which got my attention; check out all the little elements that make this so almost a Viking scene (like the big vat they keep filling their beer mugs from, and that carved pillar in the middle of the room):
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