Movie review: The Shining

(alternatively titled: No More Stanley Kubrick)

Yet another movie watched to add to the list. This one was mediocre. It wasn't horribly bad, but it also wasn't particularly good or spectacular or anything. I officially don't understand what the deal with Stanley Kubrick is; this is the second movie of his that I've seen. Good movies make you think "My life is better/more enriched/etc for having seen that movie" and mediocre ones make you think "I could've spent those [length of movie] minutes doing something else" and not regretted it. This one was certainly in the mediocre category to me.

Apparently it was based off of a Stephen King novel, and he's a famous author. Maybe the book was better but the movie doesn't really inspire me to go read it. This movie reminded me of the book In Cold Blood in some ways: in that book, when I read it, I was so impatient for the murders to actually happen since you know they're going to happen, but it takes awhile for the book to get to that part. I think I enjoyed In Cold Blood somewhat more than I enjoyed this movie though.

The movie is about a man, who is a writer, and who goes off with his wife and young son to an isolated hotel to take care of it for the winter. One of my questions is why wasn't the son in school? He seemed like he was maybe school aged. Naturally, unfortunate events come to pass. Apparently, this movie is considered to be a horror movie which I was not aware of prior to watching it. I don't really want to say it was a complete waste of time, but it kind of was. I was not particularly horrified/scared by this movie, for the record. It takes place when they still used typewriters, so there are some scenes of the writer man working on his book or whatever and the typewriter clacking along. It reminded me of All The President's Men, which also had a good deal of typewriting noises in it.

In the course of staying at the hotel, the man's nastier side begins to come out and it culminates in him trying to murder his family with an ax. Fun (not). This is all mentioned in the summary of the movie on Netflix/in the little thing that Google shows when you look up a movie. So really you don't exactly even need to watch the movie because there's not really much more to it than that. The actress who played the wife was kind of funky looking; she had really large eyelids and long teeth. It wasn't exactly conventionally attractive.

All in all, I don't really have a ton to say about this movie because it was quite mediocre and not particularly good/impressive. I wouldn't really recommend it. From what I've seen, I think I can safely conclude that Stanley Kubrick is overrated. And I'm not going to be watching any more movies by him, probably. I think I ought to get back to watching movies with actors that I like in them since I think I'd probably enjoy that more. On that note, theoretically, if a remake of this movie were to be done, I think Peter Sarsgaard and Chloe Sevigny would be interesting in the main roles. Theoretically.

Movie review: Devil's Knot

Like I have said in the past, I am on a roll with watching movies. I am still kind of cinematically cheating on my other favorite actors in favor of another movie with Colin Firth in it. This one, in addition to having a number of actors that I know of in it, was about a true crime/unresolved mystery, which is another subject matter that particularly interests me.

The crime dramatized in this movie is known as the West Memphis Three, and I've seen it mentioned on r/unresolvedmysteries although it's not one that I'm familiar with. I read a quick summary of the case prior to watching the movie, although it would be interesting to now go back and read more in depth about the actual case.

The case has to do with 3 young boys who were found murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas in the 1990s. The movie was released in 2013, so it's fairly recent. According to the credits, it was filmed entirely in Georgia. This is the second true crime movie I can recall watching; the other one was Zodiac which was underwhelming. I have watched other movies about fictional crimes, and the mobster movie which is technically a true crime, but I personally categorize mobsters in a different section than general murderers/serial killers.

This movie reminded me of the other movies To Kill a Mockingbird and Jagten (The Hunt, a Danish movie) in that one of the themes was the prosecution of (possibly) innocent people for crimes. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus defends a black man accused of a crime, in Jagten, a man is accused and shunned by his neighbors for supposedly committing a sex crime against a child. In Devil's Knot, three teenaged boys are tried for the murders of the young children although they may not be guilty. Colin Firth plays a character somewhat akin to Atticus in that he's trying to prevent the boys from getting convicted and sentenced to death. The movie was categorized as a courtroom drama in Netflix, which is an apt description and one that sits nicely with me due to my affinity for Law and Order.

Aside from Colin Firth, Dane DeHaan and Mirielle Enos were in this movie. I don't think I've really watched anything else with Dane DeHaan in it (he was in one episode years ago of Law and Order SVU as a suspect, I think) but I don't mind seeing him since he's fairly nice looking and reminiscent of Leonardo DiCaprio a little bit. Mirielle Enos was in the show The Killing as one of the detectives; this role of hers was quite different in a number of ways. As the detective, her character was always wearing sweaters, no/minimal makeup, and wore her hair in a low ponytail. Her character in this movie was all made up, wore tank tops, and hair in an updo. Plus she had a southern accent in this movie, as did Colin Firth a little bit. I don't think his American accent is particularly bad; it was perfectly decent but I feel like it sounded maybe a little deeper than his regular voice. I haven't highly familiarized myself with his voice though, so I can't say for sure. Probably if I were more familiar with/used to him speaking in a British accent, I'd find the American accent in this movie to be a little distracting, perhaps.

As far as on my list to next watch, I've got a few things. Most/some are Peter Sarsgaard related things, one of which is Boys Don't Cry, which is also a true crime movie, actually. Peter plays the murderer. I still would not mind watching more Colin Firth movies, so I'll look through the other 6 on Netflix and see if anything strikes my fancy. I had wanted to watch The Stanford Prison Experiment movie and just got to doing that today, so that's no longer on my to-watch list. Oh. Inception is another one; I have it recorded on the DVR but since it was on TV I'm pretty sure it's probably been edited a little bit at least. And The Wolf of Wall Street, and a rewatch on the big tv of Shattered Glass, which I now own on DVD. Fun, right?

Movie review: The Stanford Prison Experiment

Currently, there is a fun set of movies on Netflix. One of them just was added today, the one I'm reviewing here. The other one that goes nicely with it is Experimenter; they are both about psychological experiments that are now considered to be unethical.

I had been waiting awhile for this movie to be on Netflix as I remembered reading that it was being added in June, and apparently today was the specific day. So I got to watching it. The only actor that I recognized in this movie was Ezra Miller; he played Prisoner 8612. I don't know how closely the movie reflects what actually happened in the experiment, but regardless it was interesting. However, I think that I liked Experimenter somewhat better because it was... I don't know, somewhat broader in scope? It was mostly about Milgram's obedience experiments, but it also went into things past that. Plus, it has to be mentioned that I enjoyed Peter Sarsgaard's performance in it. That's where it all began for me. I would say that The Stanford Prison Experiment was a bit duller of a movie than Experimenter. 

Speaking of Peter's performance as Milgram, I felt that the actor who played the pyschology professor conducing the experiment in The Stanford Prison experiment portrayed the man (Philip Zimbardo) in a more nefarious way than Milgram was portrayed in Experimenter. He seemed to almost relish, in a way, the sadism that the guards began to enact on the prisoners. Milgram, on the other hand, seemed to take a more objective perspective towards his obedience experiments and did not seem to overtly enjoy the way that the teachers shocked the learners when they were ordered to. Although of course this might just be chalked up to personal bias in that Peter Sarsgaard is one of my favorite actors now. But at the time I first watched the movie, I had never heard of him before, so I can't really say. I would be curious to know if other people without my bias towards Peter Sarsgaard would come to the same conclusion about these two people as they were portrayed in the movies.

As far as the experiments go, I think the Stanford Prison Experiment was more unethical because the guards were actually inflicting various unpleasant acts towards the prisoners, as opposed to the teacher in the Milgram experiment only being made to think he was shocking the learner, who was actually left unharmed. However, they both have similarities in that they involved the question of how far will people go (the guards, the teachers) when put in certain positions. They both have to do with authority, although in somewhat different ways. The Milgram experiment was focused on obedience to authority, whereas the prison experiment was focused on how people would abuse authority when given it. I am kind of curious about how far the prison experiment would have gone had they played it out for the intended 2 weeks, instead of stopping it after only 6 days. I belive that it took place a number of years after Milgram did his experiment, which is kind of interesting because they both are considered to be unethical. If Milgram's experiment was unethical, why/how did Philip Zimbardo come to do his experiment, which I think was more unethical?

I think it would be interesting if obedience experiments were done today, but with the task being different: what different things would people obey or refuse to obey doing?  I'm currently reading the report about the obedience experiments, so it might be interesting to read the report about the prison experiment as well..

Shorts, short shorts

(Summary of topics covered in this post: Peter Sarsgaard's short shorts, my legs and shorts, other people's shorts, and online window shopping)

The other day I was at Costco and it was very crowded, and the weather was quite warm as it is summer after all. Therefore, a lot of people had their legs out (as did I) in shorts. There's this one picture that I had seen of Peter Sarsgaard wearing quite short swimming trunks (I think they were) and of course the scene in that documentary where he was running and wearing short running shorts (my [women's] athletic shorts are that length!). So I had the length of shorts on my mind, and what better place to observe such a thing than a crowded store? 

I focused on men, not to ogle their legs in a lascivious manner, but to observe the trends in men's shorts lengths in the area where I live. I wonder if any of them caught me looking. I don't think I was too obvious, but who knows. I think the crowdedness maybe helped, in that there were so many people that it'd be hard to notice some girl staring at your legs, if you're a man wearing shorts. And it's not like I stared for particularly long at each person. Just long enough to register the length of their shorts. 

Anyways, by far and large, and not surprisingly, the most common length was knee length with slight variations in exact amount of knee covered. Some shorts were pretty much exactly mid-knee, others covered the entire knee, and so on. Let's say a knee is about 2 or 3 inches long, so that's how much variation in knee length shorts there can be. Depending on the angle I saw them from, some men I saw the front of their knee and others I saw (or didn't see, as it was covered by their shorts) the back bend of their knee, whatever the name of that thing is (if it has a name). Some men were wearing longer shorts that definitely came below the knee. A small amount of men wore noticeably shorter shorts, in that they came above the knee, leaving it fully exposed. I would estimate that the shortest shorts on men I saw were about 4 inches above the top of the knee, so, safely in the mid thigh area. I did not see any shorts on men short enough to rival the ones in that picture or documentary scene of Peter Sarsgaard*. 

I did happen to see women, of course, and unsurprisingly they were more likely to have their knees exposed and their shorts/skirts hit around mid/low thigh level. I myself was wearing my short shorts that come to upper thigh level. I personally don't wear shorts that are longer than mid thigh. Anyways, while we're at it, I'd like to lament the unavailability of women's athletic shorts with full sized pockets and without built in underwear. I would love to have more than 1 pair of those, which took me months to come across. It's not like there aren't other women who would like to wear shorts like that for activities (walking, just being out and about) where things won't 

* I am all for men wearing what they want to wear, which may, for some people (Peter Sarsgaard) mean very short shorts. But I also can't help laughing a little bit (endearingly, not in a mean way) when I look at pictures of Peter in those short shorts. I wonder if he has to shop in the women's section for them. 
They are probably about the same length (if not shorter) as my own athletic shorts. Although I guess things would look longer on me and shorter on him due to height differences. And he is a runner so I guess he knows best about what's good to wear running, which apparently in his case is short athletic shorts. 
Curiosity got the better of me so I'm now online window shopping for (men's) running shorts. I'm not sure of the exact length of a certain pair of shorts that I have in mind, as they are somewhere in the laundry and I don't feel like digging through all of it to find them and measure them. However, 2" to 3" is the usual inseam length, probably, on women's shorts. It looks like Nike sells them with the shortest inseam length available being 2" to 3". There are only 4 different styles that short (the most common inseam lengths are 7 inches or longer). Some of them cost $80, which I don't really understand - why are they that expensive? Are you just paying for the brand? These $80 shorts kind of look like they're modeled on a woman's body, since the legs are slim and hairless. Upon second thought, I guess the hairlessness makes sense for professional runners. That guy's legs have less hair than mine, at the moment. I would be more diligent about shaving, but I consider the number of times I've looked at other women's legs and noticed they were hairy, which is zero, so I think I can safely assume that the general public are not closely scrutinizing my legs to see if they're hairy or not. I don't think I have particularly obvious leg hair compared to some people.  

Wikipedia has a short little article about running shorts which mentions that longer shorts are less ideal for running because the larger amount of fabric gets in the way. I guess that makes sense. I don't really do running so I can't say for myself. 

Also

Movie review: Bridget Jones's Diary

As I mentioned in the last post, I'm going to now review the movie I just watched because it had Colin Firth in it and I thought it would be a good starting point (and for convenience, it was on netflix). 

It was your fairly standard romantic comedy, I'd say, although I don't really watch that genre very much. This is the first one I can distinctly remember watching but I may have seen one or two in the past that aren't coming to mind. As far as romantic comedies go, it was pretty solid. It seemed to fit all the boxes for the genre. I think it's one of Colin Firth's more famous roles in addition to Pride and Prejudice, which is probably his most famous role (like Titanic and Leonardo). 

Colin Firth looked intensely (sometimes) apprehensive for many of the scenes in this movie. Or maybe that's just his natural expression. Regardless, he looked fairly good and had fluffy hair, which is always nice. He kind of reminds me of a better looking (and British) version of Mark Ruffalo, minus the weird sounding voice that Mark Ruffalo has where it sounds like he doesn't move his tongue around enough in his mouth when he talks. Colin Firth has a soft, squareish shaped face and for reasons I can't really pinpoint I think I'd say he looks kind of endearing. 

Watching such a movie now kind of has me in a sappy mood, and so I wouldn't really mind watching other similar movies. It made me wonder if Peter Sarsgaard has ever been in a romantic comedy but I think the closest is the romantic but not comedy movie where he plays a British man. So that might be fun even though I won't get to hear his natural voice. From the images I've seen of it, it looks like it's a very visually beautiful movie - nice colors and all. And of course, Peter Sarsgaard is part of the "visually beautiful" description. Although I don't really understand why they didn't just cast an actual British actor in the role. There have to have been plenty of decent looking British actors they could have used. It would've been interesting if they had cast, say, James D'Arcy, you know?? He probably would have been perfectly fine (although very tall). 

I think there are two sequels to this movie, but only one of them (also starring Patrick Dempsey) is on Netflix. I'm not sure if I'll watch it quite yet as there are 7 other options on Netflix for Colin Firth movies and at least some of them should be good. I definitely think that Colin Firth could become a nice addition to my current favorite actors, each of whom are my favorites in different ways, if that makes sense. Vincent is my favorite in a different way than James who is different than Peter who is different than Leonardo. Maybe what I mean is that they are my favorites for slightly different reasons? Or not. Reasons: they are/were at some point good looking, they are good actors/I've enjoyed the things I've watched them in. That pretty much sums it up. 

P.S.: I was going to just tack this on to the review of whatever I watched next, so here it is. The other day I watched All the President's Men, which is a movie about Watergate and Journalism. It's kind of old but I thought that it might be interesting especially in light of recent events and also since I wasn't alive to witness Watergate for myself. It was more boring than I expected but it wasn't a total waste of time. I still wouldn't watch it again though. The thing I liked most about it was the set decoration of the Washington Post's office, where a good portion of the movie took place since the journalists it was about worked for the Washington Post. As far as journalism movies (that I've seen) go, this one I liked less than Spotlight (with Mark Ruffalo), which in turn I liked less than Shattered Glass (with none other than Peter Sarsgaard). Spotlight was perfectly decent, but I thought that maybe it could have been more compelling or something, a little bit. Maybe I should watch it again and see if I like it better the second time around. 

Colin Firth

I think I'm going to cinematically cheat on my favorite actors of James D'Arcy and Peter Sarsgaard, among others, and watch some (lighter) things that another actor that I think I may get interested in has been in. Said actor is Colin Firth, who in my perception of things is kind of like a more famous James D'Arcy and sort of like a British version of Leonardo DiCaprio or someone like that. More famous James D'Arcy in that they're both British and tall and good looking and have more or less similar accents. In fact, in this one interview of James, he mentioned that one role he got was because he was mistaken for Colin Firth in that the people had wanted "that Darcy guy" meaning Colin Firth (who played Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice) but whoever was in charge of contacting the actors thought they meant James D'Arcy. So there's a little trivia for you.

As for Peter, I am now in possession of a DVD of one of the movies he's been in, a fact about which I am quite pleased. I already watched this movie, but I enjoyed it and the DVD only costed $3.17 at a thrift store. I haven't yet watched the DVD, and I probably should do that eventually. It's a nice thing just to have.. maybe I'll even give it the honor of watching it on the big tv instead of my computer.

There are 9 different things on Netflix that Colin Firth has been in, which is quite a large amount compared to other actors I like. I think I'll start with a romantic comedy since I've kind of been wanting to watch some lighter stuff, meaning not the movie where Peter plays a murderer, although I do think that would be interesting. I'll get to that eventually, but for now, lighter stuff.

After I watch this thing, I'll more than likely review it as I do most of the other things I watch and consider worth reviewing.

Seth Meyers, Anderson Cooper, and Peter Sarsgaard

(alternatively titled 
For some reason, I woke up at 5:20 AM this morning. I wasn't tired enough to go back to sleep so I tried to find something to watch to keep me entertained. I browsed on Netflix but the one movie that I was thinking might be on there now, wasn't. I considered watching the West Wing, but I was more in the mood for something more non-committal at 5:20 AM. I remembered that a number of years ago (11, to be exact), Peter Sarsgaard (who else?) had hosted SNL so I decided to give that a shot even though I'm not really a huge fan of the show (although in the last few months they've been doing pretty well).

This happened to be the episode where Seth Meyers does his Anderson Cooper impression and says "You can see the news reflected in the shimmering blue pools that are my eyes," of which there is a short clip on youtube but this time I got to watch the entire segment. Upon googling that quote, apparently Anderson was unhappy with a more recent parody SNL did of him with someone else, but thought that Seth Meyers' was good. 

Among other people, at the time, the SNL cast included names like Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, and Tina Fey. It was sort of interesting as by now those people are fairly well known for their work aside from SNL but I guess that's where they got their start. Currently, Seth Meyers is channeling Jon Stewart a bit in his Late Night with Seth Meyers show when he comments on all the recent political hoopla. In this episode, Amy Poehler played Hillary Clinton in one skit, which was kind of interesting in light of the more recent SNL portrayals of Hillary. 

Anyways, as for Peter, I think he gave a simpering performance (or maybe I was the one doing the simpering) and it was nice, as always, to hear him say things. I would watch a cereal infomercial for him, actually. Imagine that! If I ran SNL, I'd have him on again and have him do a cereal infomercial skit. He was a little chunky and lumpy (a synonym for "kinda fat") but not supremely so. Probably a lot of average everyday men out there have that type of figure. Pleasingly, he was also clean shaven. Anderson, for one, is pretty much always clean shaven (as he is a news anchor) and, to my knowledge, has never been chunky and lumpy. He works out and has pretty impressive arm muscles. (if you really want a picture, you can go look it up yourself since I'm too lazy to link one)

Surprisingly enough, this episode actually had a minimum of WTF-ery, which is mostly what I thought when I tried to watch SNL once a few years ago. I can't make this conclusion just off of seeing one episode, especially one with one of my favorite actors as host, which certainly sweetened the deal, but maybe SNL was better ~10 years ago (notwithstanding its recent resurgence). 

Some of the jokes/topics seemed interestingly prescient: Bill O'Reilly was mocked for sexually harassing women, there was a skit about the NSA listening to people's phone conversations, a part where "Al Gore" says that he should have been president, and so on. 

I wonder if Anderson will ever host SNL. That could be interesting. I'm not sure why he hasn't yet. Maybe he's just too busy or something.