Watched quite a few films this weekend, here's how it shakes out:
Good Morning, Vietnam: I'm a huge Robin Williams fan and having not seen this movie was a glaring hole, for me, so I finally got around to it as part of my 4th of July weekend viewing. It's a bit of a mess, but I thought Williams did a pretty solid impersonation of himself, right up until the end, when I got to see some of that brilliant acting that he's always good for. The soundtrack was fun, the film reminded me a lot of M*A*S*H, but a bit more serious. Overall, very much enjoyed it: 8/10
Thin Red Line: Along with the above and Team America: World Police this was the third and final film in my 4th of July weekend viewing. It was also the final Malick film for me to watch. It's definitely up there with his best, too. I thought it did a wonderful job of blending what we expect from him today, along with the brilliant story-telling of his early career. It's a nice transitional piece and the acting is, as usual, phenomenal. One of those few movies I really love Sean Penn in, too, so that's always a bonus. 8.5/10
Confessions - Watching a WWII movie got us talking about Japan in WWII and that led to wanting to watch a Samurai film, so we were going to watch Ran. Unfortunately, it's no longer streaming on Netflix, and I didn't want to watch a crap stream, so I'm waiting for the Disc to come from Netflix. In the meanwhile, we selected a film at random from our list of Japanese movies and came up with this. The direction is...basically too stylish, but I think, since he kept it up for the entire run of the film, it worked about as well as it could. The story is fantastic, though. I haven't had a film make my heart beat that hard through its entirety in quite a while. The beginning and the end are the stuff of masterpieces, as well. 8.5/10
Millennium Actress: After being so enthralled by Perfect Blue, I basically expect every film of Kon's to be gold. This was not quite what I was expecting, and it was a little hard to follow, but it was a treat to watch and things began to make sense by the end, so it came together beautifully. I was very much impressed and am anxious to finish his far-too-short filmography. 8/10
Hara-Kiri: This is basically one of the best Japanese films I have ever seen, at least from that particular era. It's similar in feel to Roshomon, but tells quite a different story. The sense of doom that surrounds the charactesr is palpable, and the reveal at the films ending is quite satisfying. Was very pleased and honestly, couldn't find anything to complain about, so it's getting the rare 10/10.